Safelawns Daily Post and Q&A Blog

A legislative committee in New Jersey has approved legislation that would allow the state to join New York and Connecticut with laws that would protect schoolchildren from pesticide exposures. If approved by the entire legislature, the law would ban products like Roundup and weed ‘n feed from school grounds.

Here’s the story:
http://njtoday.net/2011/12/15/bill-to-protect-school-children-from-pesticide-exposure-advanced-by-assembly-committee/.

The Institute of Science in Society published this concise report detailing the myriad evidence that overwhelmingly concludes that corn crops bio-engineered to contain Bt have been a complete failure: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Bt_crops_failures_and_hazards.php

Lips quivered on ashen faces. Hair stood on forearms. Heads shook and, in some cases, tears formed.

The forum, at the Acres USA conference in Columbus, Ohio, last Friday, lasted two and a half hours. For 150 minutes, Dr. Don Huber dispassionately laid out fact after fact, more research than was possible to digest, with almost surgical precision that led to the same unavoidable conclusion: “Roundup is the most widely abused product in American history.”

Don Huber addresses the Acres USA conference on Friday.

The result, he said, is the death of agriculture, our livelihoods and the planet as we know it. A pesticide product which was supposed to just be killing weeds, he stated bluntly, is systematically killing us.

When he was done, I snapped a photo of his final slide with my iPhone (above) that talked about our children’s futures. I knew I would soon be heading home to enjoy a holiday weekend setting out decorations, cutting down a tree and sipping hot chocolate with two precious little girls — yet I also knew my life would never quite be the same.

“Future historians may well look back and write about our time, not about how many pounds of pesticide we did or did not apply; but by how willing we were to sacrifice our children and jeopardize future generations based on false promises and flawed science, just to benefit the “bottom line” of a commercial enterprise.”

You simply can’t hear what Don Huber had to say and then go blindly about your life. At least I can’t.

Last Christmas . . . my daughter kissed my grandmother for the last time.

So this weekend I shuddered when I looked at the base of the Christmas trees . . . where Roundup had been sprayed to make things look “clean” for holiday lumberjacks. I scowled at the shelves of the garden center where the poinsettias stood like bright sentries announcing the season at hand. At the end of the row canisters of Roundup awaited spring, when they would be as eagerly gobbled up by customers as the Christmas flowers were on this day.

We sang Christmas carols. We baked cookies and set our tree in its stand, yet as I draped lights and hung ornaments, Dr. Huber’s words echoed in my ears. I kept thinking about the fact this would be my first holiday season without my grandmother and my aunt, both of whom were claimed by Alzheimer’s Disease. Dr. Huber told the audience the incidence of Alzheimer’s is expected to skyrocket in the next 20 years — probably because Roundup robs so many essential micronutrients from our food.

Our friends Mary, left, and Michael.

As we talked of our holiday plans and the friends and family we’ll visit, our hearts ached for our lovely, amazing friend, Mary, who will spend Christmas week tethered to a chemotherapy drip. She’ll make it through, because she’s a ferocious fighter. But why should she have to fight so hard? Is it because when we inhale Roundup it then targets our livers, our kidneys, our hormones, our bones, our thyroids and our sex organs . . . and Roundup is literally everywhere in the air and water we breathe?

It’s impossible not to take this personally if you let yourself think about it. Do you know anyone with autism, ADHD, endometriosis, Crohn’s disease, dementia, Parkinson’s? If so, then you know someone who has been affected by the atrocities of Roundup. Do you know anyone who’s overweight, even obese? Of course you do, since one in three Americans now fall into that category. Well, it’s probably not because those people are lazy, or want to eat too much, or because their grandparents were fat and the gene was passed down. It’s more likely because people don’t get enough essential nutrition in their meals each day, so they eat more to compensate.

And why don’t the meals have enough nutrition? It’s because most of our food is grown while being sprayed with Roundup, which reaches into our bodies and soils and steals things like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, boron, copper, and especially iron, manganese and zinc. Whether you understand bodily function, or not, all you need to know is that without these essential elements in their daily essential amounts, your body stops working properly. Disease becomes rampant.

And whether you understand soil science, or not, understand this: Mother Nature is pissed off . . . and Mother Nature always wins.

Dr. Huber told the audience last Friday that his life changed profoundly the day he allowed SafeLawns to “leak” his letter to the Secretary of Agriculture to the general public last February. In that letter he warned that a newly studied soil organism was capable of living among plants, and animals, and that it was causing spontaneous miscarriage in humans. He warned that the appearance of the organism was heightened when Roundup was sprayed, as if Mother Nature were fighting back.

He was vilified. Mercilessly. Often by academics who had been his colleagues for decades.

But on Friday the 75-year-old emeritus professor — who was widely regarded in all circles as one of the planet’s most respected scientists until he began pointing out a rather inconvenient truth about Roundup — showed us pictures. They were images of a sinister organism that appears to be wreaking havoc that is perhaps irreversible.

“I have practically begged our government to invest more resources into studying this organism before it’s too late,” he said. “To date, I’m not seeing any action being taken.”

Since the government won’t act against the manufacturer, Monsanto, or the sellers like Scotts Miracle Gro or your local garden center, that means it’s up to you to vote with your wallet by not buying the stuff. It’s up to you to understand that approximately 80 percent of our commercial food supply is grown in a “Roundup Ready” environment — and that to support organic food and farming is to support a planet without Roundup.

Maybe instead of Christmas cards this holiday season, you can send a strong message to your elected officials that foods genetically modified to resist Roundup ought to be banned as they are in many European communities — where they call our sustenance Frankenfood.

The world has a lot of problems these days and it can come off as hyperbolic ranting to suggest that so many problems are the result of a weed killer that comes in a ready-to-use spray bottle at your local hardware store. There’s lots of other bad stuff out there. The thing about Roundup, though, is that unlike many maladies it’s a problem we can control. We don’t have to use Roundup. We don’t have to eat the food produced with it.

And if we stop doing that, the problem could conceivably go away.

For our children’s sake we need to make this happen. Now.

In the meantime, don’t just take it from me. Here’s a great interview with Dr. Huber:
http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Safety/gmo/gut_flora_1210110827.html. It encapsulates many of the similar points he made last Friday before the audience, numbering in the hundreds, stood for a long, almost sobering, standing ovation. It wasn’t the kind of raucous applause we lavish on Broadway actors or athletes on a field, but rather a respectful, somber homage to a man who is daring to try to save us from ourselves.

Calendar Filling Fast for New Lawn Games for Life Tour & Book Signings

Although our next book, co-authored with actress Victoria Rowell, is still at the printer and won’t be unveiled until the Philadelphia Flower Show and numerous other venues in March, the official cover was released by the publisher today. Titled Tag, Toss & Run, the book is a culmination of several years of planning in advance of next year’s 40th anniversary of the first video game.

Since Pong came out in 1972, the impact of all that sedentary time in front of TV and computer screens has had a profound impact on children — who are now far more likely to be obese, suffer from attention deficit disorders and other physiological and psychological maladies. Before we relegate an old-fashioned outdoor childhood to distant memory, both Victoria and I thought we needed to get this book and our campaign, Lawn Games for Life, out in the public consciousness.

Like I tell everyone, we had a blast re-living our childhoods in writing this book. We think the readers — many who will be learning some of these games for the first time — will love it, too. All the classic games are in there, the various forms of tag, hide ‘n seek, along with Bocce, Croquet and Badminton. But we unearthed a bunch of new-to-us games, too, like Kubb from Norway and Molkky from Finland.

What was your favorite game? We’ve already played run through that exercise with a local radio station; people were calling in from their cars with nostalgic childhood stories. With 40 games and numerous other variations included in the pages from Storey/Workman Publishers, chances are you’ll find that blast from your past.

Behind the scenes we’re developing an interactive web site, a set of how-to-play-the-games videos, along with plans for outdoor “Lawn-A-Thon” family festivals and all sorts of learning information for schools, daycare centers and parents to share with the children in their care. We’re partnering with organizations like the nPlay Foundation and championing the work of the International Play Association, which is proactively trying to restore recess to the 60 percent of U.S. schools that no longer allow the students to get outside to play each day. We’ve already begun scheduling a tour that will take us across the country and probably around the world before we’re through.

This work represents a bit of a change of focus for me and for SafeLawns, since we’re leading this new campaign with the message of exercise and outdoor activity. But once children do get outside to play, we’ll be reminding folks that the grass beneath the games should be pesticide and toxin free — since our kids will be rolling around in what should be a safe environment. Don’t just grow a chemical lawn for aesthetics, in other words, but rather USE IT to have fun and reconnect with your family.

I only wish the book could be out for the holiday season, but the decision was made long ago to have it out in time for the spring playing season instead. So stay tuned. We’ll have lots of updates in the weeks and months ahead. If your organization is interested in a talk or a signing, either with Victoria, myself or both, just let us know. The calendar is filling up fast.

Long-time chemical industry shill Jim Jones has been named acting head of the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), which has the responsibility for regulation of pesticides. He replaces Steve Owens, the current OCSPP director, who announced he will leave the position at year end.

Jones, who has been at the EPA for 30 years, has steadfastly defended the agency against assertions from its own scientists that it’s not doing enough to protect the public from pesticide toxicity.

“I feel very comfortable for the American public that we will have assured the safety of pesticides for infants and children, for senior citizens, for the American public at large,” he recently told Marketplace.

His acting appointment would only become permanent with approval of the U.S. Senate and many political strategists believe the Obama administration may wait until after next year’s election before bringing a potentially contentious fight forward.

That’s ashame, though. The President, if he were forward thinking, could score many high-profile points with the business community by getting rid of someone like Jones, who has clearly operated with blinders on for far too long.

As reported here last month, the world’s six largest manufacturers of pesticides are being put on trial for their crimes against humanity. And while the proceedings are largely symbolic, they are providing a valuable forum for folks impacted by the toxicity: http://www.grist.org/industrial-agriculture/2011-11-30-pesticide-on-trial

Happy Holidays . . . Louise Quigley has the seventh day of her Advent calendar marked for a not-so-warm celebration. She’s headed to court to defend her right to grow native plants on what some in the neighborhood think should be a traditionally mown lawn.

While she claims that in the past 20 years numerous people in her suburban Shorewood neighborhood have stopped by to tell her how much they love her roadside garden, that includes prairie grasses that grow to six feet tall, town officials say they’ve received “a slew” of complaints — that number as many as three a year.

“I put in some prairie grasses…purple coneflowers, goldenrods, milkweeds and butterfly weeds,” she told the local newspaper. “They are less work, they come up every year, they are pretty. Native perennials have all kinds of environment benefits because the native plants feed the native bugs, feed the birds; it’s the bottom of the food chain. You can promote the survival of our ecosystem and our biosphere if you plant native plants.”

The local code enforcement officers would have none of it, however. What does preserving an ecosystem and a biosphere mean in the face of three complaints a year?

Here’s the story: http://shorewood.patch.com/articles/battle-rages-on-over-gardens-accenting-shorewood-homes. It’s the lead item of the week for the paper in the town of 1,500. When true crime happens, these guys are on it.

An international team of 22 researchers released a report yesterday that reiterated the overwhelming evidence that a commonly used synthetic chemical weed killer causes birth defects and other problems related to reproduction in many forms of life including mammals.

Here is the link: http://www.newsroomamerica.com/story/195601/herbicide_spurs_reproductive_problems_in_many_animals:_research.html

While those of us in the North are primarily concerned with collecting those last few leaves from the lawn to avoid winterkill next spring, many folks in the South are actually preparing to plant.

When December arrives, the cooler temperatures turn many Southern lawns brown — which is the natural dormant state. To combat that appearance, the planting of annual and perennial ryegrasses is common. Ryegrasses germinate quickly without a lot of soil preparation and will provide a winter of green before the heat returns next spring.

So which seed should you choose? Annual ryegrasses are generally less expensive to purchase and in most cases they will suffice for a three- or four-month color fix before the plants die back. NOTE: If by chance you grow a centipede lawn, you should only overseed with annual ryegrasses. The roots of perennial ryegrasses will harm the roots of the centipede plants.

Otherwise perennial ryegrass seeds are gaining slightly more favor in the South, especially in somewhat shaded areas where the grasses can persist even during the warmest times of the year. Sometimes, though, it’s just too hot and sunny for perennial ryegrass and the plants won’t make it through summer. It would be ashame to spend the extra money.

Here’s a great web site that spells out some of the subtleties: http://www.seedland.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=Seedland&Category_Code=RG.

Meanwhile up here in Rhode Island, I didn’t get around to overseeding our lawn with perennial ryegrass until two weeks ago and we’ve since had several fairly hard frosts. Germination, which should have occurred by now during warmer times of the year, has been minimal. Some of the seed may germinate in Spring when the soil warms, but I’m doubting it.

Serves me right for procrastinating.

Purdue University professors Angus Murphy and Wendy Peer, partnering with scientists at the Institute of Experimental Botany at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, have revealed the mechanism by which the popular weed killer 2,4-D also harms grass plants, in addition to killing the surrounding weeds.

Since the mid 1940s, 2,4-D’s claim to fame is that it kills dicot weeds such as plantain and dandelions, but allows grass plants to live. In a press release posted two days ago on the Purdue web site, the professors revealed that the application of 2,4-D — the primary ingredient in many weed ‘n feed products for lawns, as well as myriad weed products for agriculture — reduces the vigor and length of root hairs on grass plants.

That means that 2,4-D likely has the unintended consequence of requiring the application of more water and fertilizer for a plant to achieve optimum health.

Many of us in the fields of landscaping and horticulture have observed this effect for years, but the Purdue study is the first to unlock this key reason behind the phenomenon.

This finding should send shock waves through agriculture, which has been hurtling toward using even more 2,4-D in recent months in response to the fact that weeds are developing so much resistance to Roundup. The Dow chemical company announced last March that it planned to genetically modify plants to resist 2,4-D — which means far more 2,4-D will wind up in the soil. Because we now know that 2,4-D causes plants to require more inputs, food will become more expensive to produce.

It’s all part of a vicious cycle of more and more chemical inputs — one that can only be stopped by a wholesale adoptance of natural, organic technique and products.