Every alternative will kill even more people. Other herbicides are even more dangerous, and not using herbicide will cause food prices to go up. High food prices kill far more people than herbicides do.
There are other alternatives than use a herbicide that kills a certain number of people. The thing is that massive multi-billion dollar companies absolutely try to sabotage any consideration of the safety of their pesticides, because it's so much money to them. If you are a researcher, you'll be getting into a fraught area if you are doing a study to validate it's safety. It's similar to looking into climate science - the crazies will come for you, and probably the pseudo-non-climate-scientist people taking money from exxon.
