Facts about pesticides

It’s summer. The kids are playing in the yard. The family is outside, the neighbors are walking by. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if your lawn had that fresh, unspoiled even greenness? Are pesticides a temptation? Here are ten reasons to just say no:

1. We are all concerned about pesticide use on our food, but suburban lawns use more pesticide per acre than agricultural farmland.
2. More than half of all lawn pesticides are known carcinogens.
3. There are studies linking pesticides to increased occurrence of miscarriage.
4. Pesticides have been been found in umbilical cord blood. They pass from mother to baby.
5. Not only that, pesticide chemicals have also been discovered in breast milk. Your baby doesn’t have to get close to the lawn to still experience the harmful effects of pesticides.
6. Lawn pesticides have been linked to childhood leukemia.
7. It’s not just your children, pets are also affected. Dogs exposed to lawn pesticides have double the risk of canine lymphoma.
8. Pesticides don’t discriminate between the good bugs and the bad bugs.
9. Pesticide run off gets into streams, the ocean, and drinking supplies.
10. At least 12 commonly used lawn chemicals are on the EPS’s list of drinking water contaminants.

Think about it next time you envy your neighbor’s yard. Is he killing off precious environmental resources and harming people’s health for a well managed yard? When taken on balance, there is no good reason to use lawn pesticides. Feed and water. Let the beneficial bugs to their thing. There is nothing nicer than laying on the grass in summer, watching the ladybugs crawl through the grass or the butterflies moving through the flowers. Unless you count a long, healthy life.

Source: My Dandelion is a Flower