|
|||
By Michael Schacker Excerpted from his book: A Spring without Bees: How Colony Collapse Disorder Has Endangered Our Food Supply After agriculture and horticulture, the next biggest use for IMD (imidacloprid) is to kill grubs on lawns and golf courses. The lawn and garden industry is a $35 billion industry, with pesticides and fertilizers making up a major part of the revenue stream, over $9 billion annually for pesticides alone. Beyond just IMD, seventy-eight million U.S. homes use insecticides in the house or outside. It may surprise you to learn that chemically maintained lawns in the U.S. use more pesticides per acre than any food crop. The National Academy of Sciences reports that three to ten pounds per acre of pesticides were applied annually on residential lawns and gardens, compared to about two pounds per acre of soybeans. Each and every year, homeowners apply at least ninety million pounds of pesticides to lawns in the United States. The home lawn chemical industry is big business. Americans in particular can get obsessed with their lawns, often equating a green lawn with upstanding behavior and morality. To many, it’s a status symbol, like their automobile. Whatever the reason, the trend for greener, more perfect lawns has gotten intense in recent years, as new, sophisticated marketing programs target the homeowner, landscaper, and golf course superintendent. While this has been an economic boon to chemical marketers, the toll on health and the environment is only now being understood. Unwittingly, homeowners are violating the "Law of Unintended Consequences" on a daily basis and putting their family and even their pets at risk. With large marketing campaigns by the pesticide industry, home use of lawn chemicals soared 42% between 1998 and 2001 and now represents the only growth sector of the U.S. market. Groups have recently organized to fight back against their use. In Boston, the Toxics Action Center has targeted the ChemLawn company in a nationwide boycott called “Refuse to Use ChemLawn.” The Center accuses ChemLawn of pollution, of using known carcinogens, and of not informing potential customers about the true hazards that come with their service. All of the chemicals sprayed or injected by ChemLawn have been shown to adversely impact water quality, aquatic life-forms, and non-target insects, says the Toxics Action Center. Another group, the National Coalition for Pesticide-Free Lawns, meanwhile asks that homeowners use nontoxic alternatives on their yards and wants nurseries to stock nontoxic lawn care products. They furthermore request that the public demand protection from pesticide use for solely aesthetic reasons. The Toxics Action Center states that ChemLawn will use over thirty different chemicals on a lawn; some of them are banned for food crops, or have been declared illegal overseas for being too hazardous. A homeowner is not even told to be wary of exposure after application, as a farm worker is. Children, of course, run barefoot all over a lawn and get a dermal dose that could affect them in several deleterious ways, from brain cancer and asthma to learning disabilities. While people are putting out birdseed in the backyard to attract feathered friends, they are hurting the birds, themselves, their children, and likely the bees with chemicals they spray in the front yard. Insecticides are also applied in and around the home to control termites, fleas, and ants. IMD and fipronil are permanently approved as insecticides for these pests, although the honeybee is likely not threatened by indoor or underground use of IMD as it seems to be by agricultural use or for turf management. Again, there are organic methods that can be used as alternatives to chemicals. Prevention of termites, fleas, and ants is the key to success. Buildings must be made tight enough to stop entry of termites, and inspection and early detection is critical. Boric acid, in the form of treating wood with borate sprays, can control termites by interfering with feeding, but inform yourself fully before using any treatment and apply carefully. In addition, the fungus Metarhizium anisopliae has been used successfully by commercial pest control services to destroy above-ground colonies of drywood, powderpost, and subterranean termites. Ants can be controlled with orange oil and other natural means, while there are essential oil remedies for fleas that seem to be effective, from pennroyal oil, eucalyptus oil, and rosemary oil to citronella. See if these treatments can replace your pet’s flea collar, which might contain fipronil or Sevin. A cloth with a light oil can be used to apply it to a dog’s coat, while a cat can have a drop placed behind its neck, where it cannot lick. Boric acid solutions can be used to remove fleas from rugs, but should be applied carefully and only after reading instructions. For cockroaches, Natural Castile Peppermint Lavender Soap can repel invasion, but here again cleaning up the premises and removing food and water is key to control. Try these natural methods first and see if they work in your situation. They just might do the trick, and then you can avoid the chemicals.
Children, Pets, and Lawn Pesticides So what are some of the unintended consequences, the side effects on your family’s health? Because they roll around in the grass and the carpets and get a large dose through their skin, children and pets are the most in danger from use of lawn chemicals. Sadly, those who appear to be affected the worst are exactly the parts of the population that the EPA never thought to include in its safety tests. The embryos of pregnant women, as well as infants and children are most at risk from the toxic soup applied to lawns, as are the aged and the chronically ill, yet these populations were never tested. Chemicals can also suppress the immune system, increasing susceptibility to cancer and other diseases, especially in the sick and elderly, so they are at increased risk as well. Once a chemical has been applied to a lawn, there is little escape for those in the house. Research has found that because of drift and track-in, the weedkiller 2,4-D and the insecticide carbaryl can contaminate air, dust, and carpets inside a home, rapidly reaching rates ten times higher than pre-application levels. In short, if you spray it outside, it’s bound to get inside. The common herbicide 2,4-D is suspected of being carcinogenic and of causing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It was the active ingredient in the infamous Agent Orange, responsible for many veteran and civilian health problems during and after the Vietnam War. Weed-and-feed mixtures usually contain IMD and 2,4-D together, and are especially popular. Since these chemicals are not subject to rain or sunlight when they get indoors, chemicals can persist for years in a carpet, where they might actually accumulate. Maybe that’s why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report of July 2005 found 2,4-D in 25% of blood samples taken in 2001-02, reflecting its widespread home use and resulting pollution. Children are far more susceptible to exposure to pesticides than adults. Childhood leukemia is seven times as likely to occur if lawn chemicals are used, according to the Journal of the National Cancer institute, while other studies have found that asthma can develop. A 2004 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences study discovered that herbicide and insecticide exposure in a child’s first year created a significantly higher risk of asthma compared to a control group. Children exposed to herbicides develop asthma by the age of five, four and a half times the normal rate, while insecticides raised the risk nearly two and a half times. The Law of Unintended Consequences is a harsh mistress. Pesticides have also been linked to hyperactivity, developmental delays, behavioral disorders, and motor dysfunction. A report called In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development by the Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility found that by measuring blood levels of chemicals in children and correlating that to schoolwork, lawn chemicals were closely related to test scores. It typically takes but a few weeks to dramatically reduce the learning disabilities of many of these contaminated children. As a neurotoxin, the spraying of IMD could theoretically add to a learning disability problem. If the honeybee is getting intoxicated after sipping just a trace amount of IMD, how does putting a powerful neurotoxin on your own lawn affect your child’s ability to learn and remember? Well, we don’t know exactly because, again, the developmental neurotoxicity tests on IMD have never been done, even though one of the metabolites has been shown to affect the nervous systems of mammals. This is why the Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Natural Resources Defense Council have teamed up to sue the EPA over those DNT tests for IMD. Dr. Ted Schettler, one of the authors of In Harm’s Way, said, “ The urgency of this issue is underscored by the fact that between 5 and 10 percent of American schoolchildren have learning disabilities, and an equivalent amount have ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder).” The other primary author, Dr. Jill Stein, added, “We risk needless and irreversible harm to current and future generations if we fail to overhaul our flawed regulatory system.” The smaller the organism, the stronger the potential impact for the same size dose. While that rule certainly applies to children, it is especially true for the even-smaller denizens of the yard and neighborhood. Of thirty commonly used pesticides, eleven are toxic to bees, sixteen to birds, and twenty-four to fish, not to mention the effect some of those poisons have on pets. Canine lymphoma, for instance, is said to double in dogs exposed to herbicide-treated lawns and gardens, while bladder cancer in certain breeds can increase by four to seven times.
To learn more about what you can do to help, visit the Plan Bee Special Report and join the Bee Team. You can also support local beekeepers by buying domestic organic honey that hasn’t been filtered or heated, with no preservatives added and cultivated from plants grown in organic soil. This honey is so pure it’s also used in medicinal and herbal remedies as a natural antioxidant, cold & flu remedy and cough syrup. |
|||
|
