By Patti Wood
Have you noticed the bright yellow pesticide warning flags sprouting on lawns in your neighborhood like harbingers of spring? We have grown accustomed to seeing them, alongside the daffodils and tulips, and their presence doesn’t set off any alarms. But it really should.
For many Americans, striving for a weed-free “perfect” lawn is just part of home ownership. And it’s big business for the industry. Homeowners spend about $48 billion annually on lawn and garden products, and spring is the season when aggressive advertising campaigns begin, both in the media and in stores. The message is clear – dandelions need to be destroyed and crabgrass eliminated before it has a chance to break through the soil. Nitrogen-rich fertilizers will make your lawn grow green and lush.
Synthetic, chemical-based lawn-care products may provide short-term fixes, but they are harmful to our health, they destroy beneficial organisms in the soil, they contaminate drinking water sources, put wildlife at risk and won’t lead to a healthy ecosystem in the long run.
“You wonder,” asks Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, a nonprofit that advocates for transitioning away from synthetic pesticides, “why are we still using these things?”
My particular interest in pesticide exposures is the impact they may have on our children. Kids are uniquely vulnerable to pesticides due to a variety of physiological and behavioral factors. According to leading children’s health experts, exposures that occur in utero or early in life are more likely to result in disease than similar exposures that occur later.
This makes perfect sense considering the complexity and fragility of developing body systems. And unlike adults, children spend hours playing outdoors in the grass or indoors on carpeting where lawn chemicals may have been tracked into the house on shoes. Family pets who follow children outdoors and back into the home add to this accumulation.
Some pesticides that would normally break down outdoors with exposure to sun, rain and soil microbes remain active much longer indoors. Children can absorb pesticides through inhalation, skin absorption and accidental ingestion, with the latter being particularly true of young children who engage in hand-to-mouth behavior.
Other unintended pesticide exposures in the form of runoff or drift impact many non-target species. There are documented reports of massive bird kills on golf courses, fish die-offs, mutations in frogs and other reptiles, and higher than normal cancer incidence in domestic pets and human populations living near sites with high pesticide use.
As with most troubling toxic environmental exposures where the economics of maintaining a “business as usual” approach wins the day, scientific research will take years and cost millions of dollars. In the meantime, what can we do to protect our families?
Physicians and scientists around the world who are concerned about the adverse effects of toxic chemicals on human health have developed what they call the Precautionary Principle. While there are many different versions, the most commonly cited states, “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause-and-effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.” In other words, until we know for certain what the long-term effects of exposure to pesticides are, we should err on the side of caution.
Along with several other New York counties, Nassau and Suffolk have adopted a Neighbor Notification law that requires landscapers to warn neighbors 48 hours in advance of an impending pesticide application. This is intended to give adjacent homeowners the chance to close their windows, bring in children’s toys and dog bowls and cover sandboxes. This is a good start, but it doesn’t go far enough.
2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), a widely used pre-emergent weed control (and one of two ingredients that make up the widely used and infamous Vietnam War era “Agent Orange” defoliant), falls into this category. It has been linked t3o several types of cancer, endocrine disruption and birth defects.
Other commonly used lawn care pesticides are associated with several types of cancer, birth defects, neurological disorders, hormone disruption and asthma. If you are concerned, a comprehensive database of pesticides and their health and environmental risks can be found here: https://www.panna.org/legacy/panups/panna-new-pan-pesticide-database
It’s time to ask ourselves if the aesthetic use of pesticides on our lawns is worth the risk, especially when safe and effective alternatives are widely available. A New York State law passed in 2010 prohibits the use of pesticides on school fields and New York City recently adopted a new law prohibiting the use of chemical pesticides on all of its 3,000-plus city parks across the five boroughs.
People around the world are successfully using non-chemical methods to obtain healthy, resilient and attractive turf for lawns, landscapes and fields. Please visit www.grassrootsinfo.org for further information for both DIY homeowners and landscapers.