The pink nodules store nitrogen on the roots of clover.

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I always like to espouse the virtues of clover, once considered the greatest lawn plant of all because it’s low-growing, evergreen, drought tolerant and manufactures its own fertilizer by storing atmospheric nitrogen on its roots (see photo). I also highly recommend watching this video, which features my friend and colleague, Roger Swain, offering an historical essay about clover: http://www.safelawns.org/video.cfm (click on clover).

I also offer up an excerpt of an as yet untitled book by yours truly, which will be published soon, about the history of lawn chemicals in North America:

IN THE AGE OF MODERN commerce, almost everyone understands the desire to turn a profit. In the world of horticulture, however, I have found another motivation to be most often predominant. From the rose breeder who tries for years to cross-pollinate the perfect pink bloom, to the pumpkin grower who is aiming to nurture a 1,500-pound behemoth for first prize at the county fair, nearly every gardener, professional or amateur, desires most of all to be first. The bragging rights, ultimately, are worth more than any amount of cash.

So it was with Dr. Reginald Milton Carleton, the head researcher for the Vaughn Seed Company of Chicago. Author of numerous horticultural books and enormously respected by his peers, Carelton was often quoted espousing one breakthrough or another in vegetables and flowers. Though he was never considered a weathly man, he apparently went to his grave at age 87 believing he had been personally responsible for one of the greatest gardening discoveries of all — and the product that would be at the epicenter of a Canadian firestorm in the generations to come.

Art Drysdale knew Carleton well, easily recalling a decades-old encounter with his friend and mentor as if it happened yesterday. Then an aspiring author and entertainer, Drysdale was the young Canadian buck with a booming voice and bigger personality, yet he was content to play wallflower in the presence of two titans of his industry. His companions for the early March evening of 1962 were John Bradshaw of Toronto, host of Canada’s most popular gardening radio show, and “Milt” Carleton, a most coveted local dinner guest during the annual Chicago Flower Show at McCormick Place.

Carleton was a proud member of the prestigious gentleman’s club known as The Cliff Dwellers, which still operates today from atop the office building at the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue at Adams Street on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. In those days, The Cliff Dwellers was still perched above Symphony Center and provided a fashionable venue for an annual debate about the origins of fine wine.

“We get there first, appropriately dressed, and in strolls Milt in his three-piece suit,” recalled Drysdale during our conversation in 2008. “Right away the two of them begin their customary argument. For Bradshaw, the wine had to be French to be considered any good; Milt was a promoter of the wine from California. So Milt, of course, tells the waiter to bring both bottles to the table. ‘We’ll see if you can really tell the difference,’ he says to Bradshaw.

“When the wine bottles arrive Milt challenges him to a taste test. ‘But before I have any wine,’ he says, ‘I need to have my 2,4-D.’ And out comes a little flask from his inside suit pockets. He takes a big swig of it. You could tell right away it was 2,4-D because of the smell. He pronounces, proudly, ‘I do that every day! I’m not afraid of the stuff!’”

By then, it had already been 15 years since Carleton had introduced a synthetic chemical plant-growth regulator known as 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid to the American gardening public. Developed during World War II at Rothamsted Experimental Station in Hertfordshire, England, the product was originally brought to the world’s agricultural market to kill weeds in crops that belong to the grass family including wheat, corn and rice. By allowing the good plants to live, yet causing the undesirable plants to die overnight, 2,4-D instantly spawned one of the greatest perceived advances in farming technology in a generation.

That almost paled by comparison, though, to revolution that 2,4-D would bring to the North American back yard. Milt Carleton immediately saw its potential, as detailed in a personal letter to Art Drysdale in December of 1979:

“I probably know more about the history and use of this chemical than
anyone alive. Dr. Franklin D. Jones, who discovered its phytochemical
properties and patented its use as a control for unwanted plants, walked into
my office right after WWII. He said he had a marvelous weed killer for
driveways! My answer was, ‘Frank, we have plenty of chemicals that will do
that — even old crank case oil will do the job. What we need is a better control for
crabgrass!’ ‘Unfortunately,’ he replied, ‘it doesn’t do too good a job on grasses.’ This
set me to thinking — if it doesn’t kill crabgrass, maybe it won’t kill bluegrass, which
proved to be true when I ran tests. That was the birth of modern selective weed killers.”

By bringing 2,4-D to the lawn industry, Carleton had simultaneously instigated a gold rush and a controversy that is still raging six decades later. He was immediately a hero to his employers, the descendents of John Charles Vaughn, who had suddenly become manufacturers of one of the hottest commodities ever to hit suburbia. The Vaughn family’s largest wholesale customers soon became the heirs of O.M. Scott, a hardware store owner who had been professing a “white-hot hatred” of weeds since the 1860s. The Scotts Company had long since carved a market niche by selling the Ivory Soap standard of grass seed: 99.8 percent pure and free of weeds. This new weed killer, however, had the clever marketers working overtime by the end of the war.

In 1948, advertisements for Scotts’ new product, “Killex,” began appearing in Better Homes & Gardens, Ladies Home Journal, Horticulture and other magazines of the day. Comely barehanded homemakers were depicted sprinkling Killex onto their lawns to remove dandelions, plantain, chickweed and 50 or so other so-called weeds. Soon after, an even more popular amalgamation emerged. When the first bag of Scotts Weed ’n Feed rolled off the conveyor belts at the Scotts headquarters in the central Ohio town of Marysville, it changed the very nature of lawn care. Instead of applying fertilizer in one pass and weed killer in another, homeowners and gardeners could now put down weed ’n feed to do both jobs at once — usually across the entire lawn — thereby creating an explosion for the demand for Milt Carleton’s new miracle acid.

The fact that 2,4-D smelled acutely toxic, ironically, was not the first big dilemma facing the product. Early activists rallied because Killex and Scotts Weed ’n Feed eradicated the clover that theretofore had been North America’s favorite lawn plant. Since it was evergreen, drought-tolerant, low-growing and capable of manufacturing its own fertilizer by attaching nitrogen from the atmosphere to its roots, clover had been a part of virtually all seed mixes ever since Americans began consciously cultivating lawns. No matter how hard Carleton and others tried, though, they couldn’t come up with a formulation of 2,4-D that allowed the clover and grass to live in harmony. The issue was acknowledged in Carleton’s 1957 book titled A New Way to Kill Weeds:

“The thought of white Dutch clover as a lawn weed will come as a distinct
shock to old-time gardeners. I can remember the day when lawn mixtures
were judged for quality by the percentage of clover seed they contained.
The higher this figure, the better the mixture. . . I can remember the loving
care which old-time gardeners gave their clover lawns. The smug look on the
face of the proud homeowner whose stand was the best in the neighborhood
was really something to behold.”

The clover quandary was deftly handled by the same marketers who had, seemingly overnight, made the phrase “weed ’n feed” part of American vernacular. In this case, clover was re-branded as a weed by use of the oldest promotional ploy in the book: manufacturing fear. Clover, you see, attracts bees by the thousands when the flowers bloom in mid summer. Bees, claimed the deft advertisements, sting children. Young mothers took note and, within a generation, clover was gone from most seed mixes. Soon, the three- and four-leafed plants, just like the bees, were disappearing from lawns.

As for those pesky and persistent claims that exposure to 2,4-D also carried other side effects — among them diarrhea, blurred vision, respiratory irritation, confusion, numbness and tingling, bleeding from the nose and chemical hypersensitivity — they were quickly cast aside by a hearty gulp in clear public view. The man who had effectively launched the weed ’n feed industry utterly scoffed at the notion that his product was harmful to human or environmental health.

“It’s safe enough to drink,” said Milt Carleton, time after time and day after day. Like the proudly defiant cigarette smoker who lives a long life despite a pack-a-day habit, he was a poster boy for the weed killer that remains vastly popular. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates more 16 million pounds of 2,4-D are applied to home lawns, parks and golf courses annually; the product’s use continues to increase each year everywhere in North America, except Canada.

“It was a religion to Milt,” chimed his friend Drysdale. “I don’t think Milt ever made any real money from 2, 4-D, but it was still his baby and he defended it to his death. Well into old age he would drive himself every summer from Chicago to Maine, and then later on to Florida. The stuff didn’t seem to hurt him a bit.”

Before we ended our conversation, I did have to ask Art Drysdale one further question: Had he ever taken a drink of 2,4-D himself?

“No,” he said, “I can’t say as I have.”

NOTE: Art Drysdale is still a devout critic of the organic lawn revolution and a proponent of chemical weed killers such as 2,4-D.

A report out of a major California university today reached the same conclusion: http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/jan/28/another-pesticide-link-vanishing-honeybees/

Researchers Propose GMOs for 2,4-D Resistant Plants

In May of this year 20 years will have passed since Hudson, Quebec, became the first community in North America to ban synthetic lawn and garden pesticides. With the passage of a bylaw banning certain lawn and garden pesticides in the town of Oak Bay, British Columbia, earlier this month, the total number of municipal pesticide bylaws in Canada has reached 172.

That means 80 percent of the Canadian population now lives under the auspices of bans of products like weed ‘n feed and Roundup. That begs the question even more loudly: When will the United States begin to catch up?

Meanwhile, the proof of the factors in why we should ban these products continues to stack up from scientific sources. Here are just a few of the reasons to not use the weed killer known as Roundup, for example:

HUMAN HEALTH — The product can cause an increase in human disease due to the way Roundup causes restriction of nutrients such as calcium (which affects bone density), iron (blood), manganese, zinc (liver, kidney) and copper, magnesium (brain). Tests show an “inert” ingredient in Roundup, polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, kills human cells. Traces of Roundup found on corn and soybeans, among other crops, can cause cell damage in humans.

PLANT HEALTH — Roundup increases plant stress and disease due to its interaction with biology in the soil. In some cases, the plant toxicity can have residual negative impacts on animals and humans.

NUTRIENT REDUCTION — Widespread use of the product reduces the nutrient value of food because the Roundup binds and inhibits the movement of essential micronutrients.

MUTANT WEEDS — After nearly four decades of use, many areas of the country are seeing an increase in new species of weeds resistant to Roundup.

PESTICIDE RELIANCE — Since the introduction of “Roundup Ready” genetically modified plants in 1996, use of Roundup has increased exponentially. Uses of other pesticides have also increased due to additional weed, insect and disease pressure caused by over reliance on Roundup.

YIELD REDUCTION — Farmers generally see a significant decrease in the yields of fields after the first two years using Roundup.

SPECIES REDUCTION — Roundup causes the destruction of important soil flora, plants that are important in nitrogen fixation, mineralization, and other soil fertility processes.

WATER QUALITY — Roundup causes increased leaching of phosphorus and other nutrients into waterways.

ADDITIONAL GMOS — As more and more weeds mutate and become resistant to Roundup, the pesticide industry races to develop more genetically modified plants. News out of the University of Missouri this week states that researchers there plan to genetically modify plants to resist the herbicide 2,4-D, a product that has been show in peer-reviewed scientific journals to increase the likelihood of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, endocrine disruption, reproductive and developmental effects, as well as water contamination and toxicity to aquatic organisms.

IT’S THAT LAST POINT THAT IS PERHAPS MOST DISTURBING. Rather than take the rational approach and get the dangerous stuff off the market, as the folks in Canada have been systematically doing in the past 20 years, Americans just race to fix one problem by replacing it with a potentially larger problem. The view, clearly, is that “science will cure all ills” when a heavy dose of common sense would clearly be the best path.

The good news to report is that the Canadian example is not being wholly ignored. Bills in at least two states are following the lead set by New York last year with its Child Safe Playing Field Act. We’ll have more information on this issue in the coming days.

Meanwhile, take a look at the chart above and ask yourself how you can help the United States one day be in the same position as Canada. Lord knows if they can do it, we can to.

Unfortunately, I receive these sorts of emails all the time from parents who are obviously looking for any answers they can find. This woman in particular asked for leads to physicians inside our country who have followed Dr. June Irwin’s lead in testing patients for evidence of pesticide residues.

Moved by her story, I spent some time compiling information on a few notable health care professionals who confirm the pesticide/health issue each day in their practices:

Dr. John Laseter, Accu-Chem Laboratories, 990 N Bowser Rd, Richardson TX 75081
Phone: 972 234-5412

Note: This is where Dr. Irwin sends many of her blood samples when she suspects patients have been chemically injured.

Dr. Walter Crinnion, Healing Naturally, 11811 N.E. 128th Street, Kirkland, WA 98034
Phone: 425-821-8118 Web: www.scnm.edu/walter-crinnion-nd.html

Note: Dr. Crinnion is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-walter-crinnion/organic-food-are-organic_b_558093.html. He also appears regularly in local, regional and national news stories about pesticides in food and the landscape: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB9xPfhbSR0. Although I don’t have an personal experience with him and have never talked to an affiliated doctor about him, the reports online indicate Dr. Crinnion trains medical doctors how to check for chemical poisoning.

Dr. William Rea, Environmental Health Center, 8345 Walnut Hill Lane, Suite 220, Dallas, Texas 75231
Phone: 214-368-4132 Web: www.ehcd.com

Note: Dr. Rea runs an in-patient detoxification clinic for severely sensitive patients. I’ve met dozens of people across the country who swear by his techniques, although most say you feel worse before you feel better.

Dr. Grace Ziem, 16926 Eylers Valley Road, Emmitsburg, MD 21727
Phone: 301-241-4346 www.mcsbeaconofhope.com/MCS%20BOH/ziem_main.htm

Note: Here is a good interview from Healthline featuring Dr. Ziem: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvrMeuzsDWk

Dr. Allen Vinitsky, Enlightened Medicine, 902 Wind River Lane Suite 201, Gaithersburg, MD 20878
Phone: 301-840-0002 Web: http://enlightenedmedicine.net/the_doctor_-_alan_r_vinitsky

Note: Dr. Vinitsky granted this interview to SafeLawns in 2008:

Paul Tukey: How did you become interested in a new way of treating your patients?

Alan Vinitsky: “Dr. William Rea (a double-board certified pediatrician and internist practices at the Environmental Health Center, Dallas) introduced me to Natalie Golos and, eventually, Natalie and I wrote a book together. Natalie, who had herself suffered from pesticide poisoning, had been researching safe living since 1966. She has written five seminal books on environmental medicine and bio-energy therapy.

“After meeting Dr. Rea and Natalie, my practice completely changed from conventional medicine to learning about environmental health and treating our bodies safely using nutrition, avoiding exposure to toxins and knowing what that kind of exposure can do. This is the focus of how I practice medicine today.”

PT: I’ve heard you mention “the accordion reserve.” What is it?

“The accordion model relates to the autonomic nervous system, which is our own stress response – fright or flight. When the accordion is expanded and flexible, then you’re in optimal health. To achieve this, you start with yourself and you create a safe place both in and around your home. To make a safe exterior environment, you stay away from pesticides. Now, of course, if you have neighbors who aren’t doing the right thing, they can potentially contaminate the air and water around you so you have to kind of build a network to make things happen properly.

“One thing that I should point out is that I take care of a lot of kids and adults with chronic diseases and illnesses such as Lyme disease. The deer population has spread in our community and up in your area too — Connecticut is where Lyme disease was first identified. My particular model relates nutrition to helping the autonomic nervous system work better. I developed a combination concept of using vitamins and minerals to help the body deal with stress – both physical and emotional. We work on treating stress first and that helps people start to heal.”

PT: If I take this back to the lawn and landscaping, part of removing that stress, I assume, is getting rid of the toxins — going organic in our landscape, getting rid of the pesticides that kill the insects, kill the weeds, getting rid of synthetic chemical fertilizers. There are very few environmental exposures you can actually control — but what you put on your lawn and landscape is certainly one of them.

AV: “We are talking about creating a safe exterior environment, so stay away from pesticides. Your lawn needs good water, too, and clean air, and if you start with that then you start to improve the situation. Most chemicals are applied as part of weed and feed on the lawn. You or your neighbor puts this stuff down and then your dog runs across the property – they’re tracking toxins into the house. If you’ve got a toddler on the floor and you’re rolling around on the carpet, wrestling, thinking you’re having a good time, not thinking about the pesticide residue on your dog’s paws. Maybe the dog even climbs into bed with you — I wouldn’t do it but a lot of people sleep with their pets. They are sleeping with very poisonous substances.”

PT: Is there enough evidence out there for you to say pesticides and a toxic environment are the reasons behind some of our country’s chronic illnesses?

AV: “You can review Environmental Protection Agency and Center for Disease Control toxicology studies of various substances. So many people are exposed to so many different things. It would be difficult to categorically say this particular substance caused this particular condition, never the less you can say there’s a very strong association with a substance. The connection is move obvious when a patient works in a particular industry where the exposures are high and consistent.

“It’s the cumulative impact of multiple exposures that cause the greatest problems. When a new patient walks into the office I begin treatment immediately – clean air, clean fuel, clean water.

“It turns out that our bodies use up vitamin B12 and folic acid, and an amino acid called glutathione. These three are scavengers in our bodies and they work on the chemical assembly lines called enzymes. They actually clean up the stress and when we start to clean up the stress then the body starts to function better. In addition, we find all kinds of other deficiencies. I see amino aced and nitrogen deficiencies in infants and toddlers. I see it in older folks, even when they are eating a mixed diet of meat sources and plant sources. Almost everybody is deficient when they have chronic illness. So we work on straightening out the amino acids and when you get nitrogen sufficiency then people start to feel better.”

RECOMMENDED READING: In Energy – the Essence of Environmental Health by Dr. Alan Vinitsky and Natalie Golos, plus Coping With Your Allergies, by Natalie Golos

Why have we made so little progress in pesticide activism during the past decade?

We know profits are at the heart of this but that has always been the case. An additional impediment is that we are also a people devoted to routines and customs, hesitant to explore new avenues of action. We become attached to ‘life-style’ rather than ‘life’, even in roles which have traditionally challenged established authority in matters of harmful public policies.

Let’s review some major issues which have barred us from attaining our goals:

Activist strategies for influencing public policy need to be updated. Petitions lead legislators to offer lip service to stated demands from significant numbers of signers, but they don’t have the power to enact change. NAFTA rules bar the US government from banning products or otherwise interfering with profits to which industry feels ‘entitled’ (chapter 11). Arguing bans won’t work because Congress won’t pass them and EPA won’t litigate them. Restrictions can be managed for long periods of time despite industry objections (see current policy change on GMO alfalfa by the USDA). When the evidence is sufficiently common knowledge to discourage litigation by industry, such restrictions are ultimately accepted (see the history of Dursban regulation). Restrictions over bans are far more likely to succeed and have the added advantage of showing we have no problem with research and development of products or industry profits. We care about honest profits through the manufacture and use of products under conditions which don’t leave a trail of sick and injured citizens, costly to all of society.

Activists will attain faster results by litigating/pushing for enforcement of existing laws. In attempting to draft new legislation, we must recognize the reasons for failure over the past decade and change the manner in which particular bills are released to the floor of the legislature for actual voting. For example, the School Environment Protection Act, (SEPA), passed twice in the Senate and is mainly remembered as a ’success’. However, legislators involved knew that it would fail in the next hurdle of passing in the House of Representatives. In fact, SEPA has been held hostage by the Committee on Agriculture for over a decade now and will never see a floor vote. Schools aren’t farms and the HHS committees ought to be in charge of it. The Committee on Agriculture should have nothing to do with bills involving pesticides used off of farms. This is an HHS matter. Legislative lobbying needs to take a different direction in identifying barriers such as these.

It is inefficient for activists to only highlight groups of people in particular need of a new law or a ban on a particular practices (e.g.spraying malathion from helicopters in NYC). Intense local activism may succeed as it did in 2000. However, we know that individuals do very little when they feel personally disengaged from a situation which permits practices banned in one area to spread to many others quite successfully. If everyone were required to have a ’smart meter’ (and eventually they will), the arrests of demonstrators or the calls for help on a national level would be more widespread than at present.

It is ineffective for activists to argue with industry claims that only human testing can prove a product should be restricted or removed from the marketplace. We don’t need to rely on the precautionary principle to utilize existing research in these areas. Cells respond in particular ways to poisons and those responses from animal testing has long been deemed sufficient for marketing purposes. Why not take action for ‘de-marketing’ purposes when we see evidence of abnormal endocrine responses of amphibians to atrazine herbicide or in the evidence of neuronal and immunological damage to fish species from pyrethroids? Since the active ingredients are intended to disrupt cellular function and synergists are intended to reduce detoxification efficiency, there can be no court-worthy arguments that similar effects have to be induced in live humans to know they occur. In fact, to administer or expose humans to any pesticide for non-medicinal purposes of market research for a poisonous product is a violation of the Hippocratic Oath for participating physicians since administration of poison harms by definition. While companies see the NOEL limits (No observable Effect Level), harm occurs sub-clinically. Overt harm is based upon initially ‘non-visible’ alteration of bodily functions.

Strategies for educating the public:

Make it personal: Let people know there is no indoor pest control industry. Farm chemicals have been displaced to the interior of your home, school and office. There have been no requirement for new tests in those environments of need, efficacy, residues absorbed by furnishings and porous flooring/sheet-rock etc., degradation in the absence of sunlight and content in the air circulating within closed rooms (by ppm/ppb) longitudinally following applications to interiors and/or exteriors of buildings. No studies of the effects of repeat applications of pesticides on successive days/weeks etc. have been done with regard to effects on indoor air quality. If such an industry were to be developed, it would be enormously profitable and the EPA could require an entirely new set of parameters for indoor applications.

Make it personal: Let people know that even if you suspect you were made ill by pesticides, there is virtually no way your physician can test you for recent exposures to current use pesticides including those ordered by your town! No medical labs are conducting such tests commercially at this time. This enables industry to claim they are non-toxic for lack of data challenging that statement. This should be litigated immediately on the premise that bio-monitoring for any approved chemical on the market today ought to be possible. Low or no-cost permits must be given to labs for such tests and appropriate equipment supplied regionally. This ‘coincidentally’ leads to a lack of evidence which permits formal legal challenges to proceed in the courts. Please make careful note of the fact that veterinary clinics can test animals for metabolites of these chemicals. So, when pets sicken and die from pesticides, such information is available to ‘enquiring minds’.

Make it personal: Non-profit laboratory facilities are desperately needed for use by consumers to test materials in their homes for absorption of pollutants. This includes clothing and fabrics, carpet fibers and HEPA filters in air purifiers which all easily capture particulates allowing people to know something about their homes which is otherwise invisible in every way now that low-odor pesticides have become prevalent and masking fragrances completely disguise the presence of such harmful residues for workers and tenants. Individuals submitting samples to labs must do so at high expense to companies dedicated to agricultural interests which would compete with the interests of consumers, making business relations unnecessarily complicated. We need to know the reality of pesticide concentrations in our homes from both current use pesticides and older/banned ones. Once you’ve measured (as I have) levels of chlordane above OSHA levels in homes, it is certainly ‘personal’. Chlordane was banned in 1988. Absorption by food products during storage in treated stores and home is not addressed by any agency or researcher yet is a definite hazard since kitchens are routinely treated during fumigation and one informant told me of a company used by her own landlord which sprayed the interior of her microwave oven.

Make it public: The practice of adding scents and masking fragrances to pesticides confuses consumers about the difference between ‘low-odor’ and low-toxicity chemicals. Too many consider odor a clue to the presence or absence of harmful fumes. The EPA must insist upon the addition of odorants to pesticides so all citizens (who are primary or secondary users), are aware of exposures and can attempt to limit contact. Sometimes it means altering schedules of applications between home and work or altering what is applied in one or both locales. Certainly it would permit consumers to be alert to signs and symptoms of over-exposure and be able to request information or seek medical attention for recurring problems associated with such exposures.

Make it public: The pervasive use of legal poisons is based in the absence of legal precedents which discourage misuse of toxic chemicals. The deaths of two little girls in Utah became a matter of criminal negligence because the pesticide was applied too close to the house. What if it had been applied as per ‘legal’ requirement, and the children merely became chronically ill or learning disabled? Or an elderly member of the household suddenly developed dementia? When these things are discovered, they are kept from setting precedents because lawyers no longer go to trial. Many ‘toxics’ cases are dismissed for poor prosecution on the basis of ’sensitivity’ rather than frank poisoning. Others are dismissed for lack of evidence and some for immunity from prosecution when connected with municipal applications. The majority which retain standing with the court are settled in sealed agreements so the abuses continue in society. Litigants must obey their lawyers in consenting to such terms or be ‘fired’ as clients with no one else to take the case. Settlements must be altered to permit public disclosure as to the nature of the argument even if financial details aren’t disclosed. Anything else is really a private contract and should not concern the courts.

Make it public: Ask pesticide activist groups to compile and publish lists of court cases as reference points which will allow more of these cases to be filed and prosecuted. Too few lawyers know how to go about this and too few physicians can comfortably investigate such cases on behalf of patients. Experts need to write ‘how-to’ guides in differential diagnosis and we need to disseminate free literature (like the EPA book on Recognition and Management of Pesticide Poisoning) to medical associations.

Make it public: Require officials to add activists and litigants to the list of protected classes under discrimination laws. You may not be aware that activists and litigants are denied all manner of privileges in this country such as leases to residential properties, jobs, police protection etc. Harassment and abuse are extremely common just as union activists suffered egregious harm in earlier years (and still do). It is unfair to urge others to action without their understanding of associated risks and in the absence of recourse within the system. Currently, only employees can claim protections as whistle-blowers. Yet, many who are sickened by the practices of individuals and companies who do not employ them are subject to retaliation from social consequences to vandalism of property and brutal assaults

Make it public: We know that polluters and their ‘yes-men’ in government discriminate. Minorities and those comprising the lowest economic strata of society are far more likely to live in highly polluted areas. Many activists come from that naturally beleaguered group of citizens. The struggle for survival—making a living, dealing with environmentally induced illness and those costs—are already reducing the time and energy activists can devote to our causes. We know that industry has hired security companies, including the infamous ‘Blackwater’, to stalk and harass activists in documentation compiled by Greenpeace and award-winning journalist Jeremy Scahill. It has been my personal experience that industry tactics to further reduce the ability of effective activists to create change is through the enlistment of ‘hate’ groups to target those who can be labeled using reasons sufficient to inspire criminal action among such persons. Identifying others by race, creed, color or alleged past activities, is an easy way to direct easily manipulated people on the fringes of their own societal groupings to act while redirecting attention away from the actual source of subsversive activity. One detective termed this ’cause-stalking’ in which paid and unpaid community members bent up on removing targeted individuals from their communities for reasons of bigotry or misinformation about their history (e.g. sex offender). I believe such groups are being given funding, training and materials with which to do harm to selected ‘targets’ and will become far more numerous and powerful with such backing. I am also sending this to the Southern Poverty Law center for their further research on this matter.

One of the aspects of this that I find encouraging in this article is that the two landscape professionals quoted herein, Al Lappin Jr. and Jesse O’Brien, are two of my closest friends. We would go through the proverbial wall for each other and if I were going into any kind of battle, these are two of the guys I’d want to have with me. In other words, you can disagree about an issue, but still be respectful.

We all agree that continuing education and dialogue will be the key moving forward.

This article, from Buffalo, N.Y., cable station YNN, shows children wearing Debug the Myths T-shirts planting donated plants from the lawn chemical industry.

As we reported here in March, the lawn pesticide industry’s leading lobby firm from Washington, D.C., has launched a propaganda campaign aimed directly at children. During 2010 a van stacked full of pro-pesticide paraphernalia made its way up the Eastern Seaboard, stopping at schools and other places children routinely congregate. The stated goal is to “debug the myth” that pesticides are dangerous.

The tactics are now routine: donate some plants, time and labor to the children’s facility in question and pass out “educational” materials that scare the bejeezus out of children and their caregivers so that they’ll want to run home and kill every insect and weed in sight.

The recent news that the bogus campaign — managed by The Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment — had come to a boys club in Manchester had our friends in the pro-organic lawn movement up in arms. This statement in particular, linked from the web site of Lawn Dawg, New Hampshire’s largest purveyor of toxic lawn products, is really most laughable: “Proper management of the grounds in outdoor gathering places — like community parks, playgrounds and sporting fields — is important to reduce tripping hazards and other ailments or injuries that can occur due to invasive weeds or poorly kept grass.” Here is a link to the complete statement from the chemical industry: http://blog.debugthemyth.com/?p=414. In other words, they’re saying that if a dandelion grows on the football field, the football player might trip over it and hurt himself. So we better spray the field with weed killers to protect the kids.

Some of us just want to scream when we see this stuff. Others, like Dr. Meg Sears, are more rational in their approach.

“In pesticide consultations (in Canada) several years ago we heard repeatedly that herbicides were essential to maintain safe playing fields; I never saw a scientific study to substantiate this claim,” she said. “I am associated with the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), so I asked the head of the Emergency Department about injuries related to weeds on playing fields. He had not heard of such a problem, so he checked with staff, who also had not heard of such a problem. He reported that injuries such as sprains generally arose from collisions between players. In terms of long term health effects, they were most concerned that children should not be ‘heading’ the ball in soccer. CHEO also supports eliminating unnecessary (i.e. with no health benefit) pesticide use, to reduce potential long term health effects of pesticides.

“I also searched the peer-reviewed medical literature for evidence about weeds and injuries. At the time the only information I found was that rocks and mud were the features of the ground linked to football injuries. The species of greenery did not affect field safety, but a lack of vegetation might. Claims regarding the need to kill non-grass species seemed strange to us soccer-moms. On overused fields here, knotweed was a predominant groundcover around (soccer) goals. The knotweed would reduce any problem with mud, so in that context killing it with a herbicide would make a playing field less safe.”

It’s hard to blame the facility managers, who are justifiably happy to get the free plants donated by the chemical industry. None of them seem to have any idea that they are inadvertently supporting a pro-pesticide campaign and, indirectly at least, harming children. As with everything in life, though, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is. We all need to send warnings to our schools, our boys and girls clubs, our churches etc. and warn them to ask one simple question when someone from the landscape industry is offering something for free: “Who’s really paying for it?”

I have hundreds of friends in the landscape industry who donate time and labor to this sort of project, simply because it’s a GREAT community effort. That should never, ever stop. When you slap the “Debug the Myth” label on the front of it, though, the real sinister motivation becomes clear: These people want you to keep applying poisons, to your schools, your homes — anywhere a bug and your child may crawl. If the cigarette industry showed up and passed out a bunch of free stuff at a boys club, most people would probably catch the whiff of second-hand propaganda fairly quickly and send them away. We need to stand just as strong against pesticides.

Smith noted, however, that three primary supporters of the anti-pesticide movement were not re-elected in Tuesday’s nationwide Republican sweep of legislative power. Only time will tell if the newly elected officials will support efforts to protect children from the toxicity associated with lawn chemicals.