Concerns have been raised about a potentially carcinogenic chemical being used near a Falmouth school.

Grandmother Mya Gleny said she was "dismayed and shocked" to find a council gardener using the controversial weedkiller Glyphosate outside school grounds as children were walking in. 

She said: "I'm dismayed by the lack of awareness and understanding of the environment for our children to live in.

"It's not to be argued, I know there are other ways of tackling the weeds.

"For the sake of the aesthetics of nice clean roads, I'm dismayed and shocked by it really.

"I would like people to accept the science and work towards a cleaner world."

Glyphosate is one of the world's most common herbicides. Last August, a US jury ruled in favour of a man who claimed that the chemical gave him cancer, according to the BBC.

It is banned in several countries including Austria and Vietnam and its use is restricted in several others.

Mya said: "There's an initiative for pesticide free towns and I don't see why Falmouth shouldn't be one of them."

Although there are suggestions that the chemical may cause cancer, studies on the risks of Glyphosate do not show a clear consensus.

Simon Penna, Falmouth Town Council's grounds and facilities manager, addressed Mya's concerns about the use of the weedkiller.

He said: "We are treating weed in the kerbs and pavements, if this operation isn’t carried out then in a few years the pavements in many areas would become impassable as the perennial weeds take over.

"We use the safest method of application which is a controlled droplet applicator (CDA), not by spraying as was suggested, this eliminates inhalation.

"There aren’t realistic alternatives that we can use I’m afraid, alternatives like hand weeding would be prohibitive in cost and other methods actually have a more environmental impact.

"Whether Glyphosate is carcinogenic remains unproven either way. The trouble is, for every research paper that purports to show a link between Glyphosate-based herbicides and cancer, there is another which finds the exact opposite.

"This hasn’t been helped by the fact that many of the studies may not have been entirely objective, studies backing Glyphosate have been funded by entities in a position to profit from the continuing sales and many of those which point towards significant risks are funded by groups who are either engaged in lawsuits against the makers of Glyphosate, or are in the position to benefit from sales of Glyphosate alternatives.

"So it gets very, very tricky. The upshot of all the research is that Glyphosate-based products are licensed for use in the UK.

“But even some of the largest independent population-based studies have failed to find any sort of definitive proof.

"Last year, a two-decade-long analysis of data of nearly 45,000 farmworkers who applied Glyphosate-based herbicides to their crops, conducted by the US National Institute of Health, showed no association with non-Hodgkin lymphoma or overall cancer risk.”