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By Rob Carillio
Once
upon a time, Spring time was a glow with the colors of benign yet
beautiful little plants like dandelion and clover, which had numerous
culinary/nutritional values and medicinal properties. We made greens,
salads and some even made coffee! After a long dreary and bland
winter, seeing the avenues become a suddenly corridor of colors
and sweet fragrance was a common and accepted sight in the mind.
How have times changed...
Now the commercial lawn chemical services came along and through
their marketing methods have re-shaped our vision of what a lawn
should look like. They convinced us that anything in the lawn
other than a blade of grass is a terrible thing. "It must
be destroyed or it will kill your lawn" they told us----And
hence was born the lawn chemical company's vision and version
of what a lawn should look like: A sterile bland patch of green
with absolutely no signs of nature or life--a mono culture patch
of turf. It is truly disturbing how many people have bought on
to this relentless spraying of chemicals in the neighborhood.
With this in mind, I stop and think for a moment...who suddenly
became the Lawn God here and had the final say in what a lawn should
actually consist of? I think it has a lot to do with conditioning
of the mind to accept the mono-culture (one plant species only)
look mentioned above. Let's get to the "root" of
the matter...
Commercial lawn chemicals despite claims from services as "being
safe" are not in the best interest of a cleaner and safer
environment and as we forge into the future hoping to set better
examples of becoming a more environmentally friendly society, the
use of lawn chemicals are counter productive to this effort. Getting
a lawn hooked on these chemicals renders it virtually useless in
fighting infection and pests on it's own, as it's "immune
system" gets weakened, and therefore becomes even more susceptible
to disease and/or pests these companies apparently set out to destroy
in the first place.
If you think of a lawn as one living body or organism with different
functioning life support systems (i.e.: respiratory, circulatory,
immune, etc) just like the human body is, then uses of these chemicals
would be in a generic way to explain it, kind of analogous to an
overuse of antibiotics on the human body---contributing to deteriorating
our own natural defense systems because of the situation of antibiotics
killing the bad things - AND the good things which would have
helped our body ward off other the bad. The lawn chemicals basically
do the same thing to a lawn's natural defense system--by
killing many organisms that would have kept other organisms in
check. Now we have to rely on this never ending spraying of chemicals
to do what nature used to do for free and by interfering with nature's
natural system of checks and balances we often do more harm than
good.
Ever notice which lawns seem to scorch out first in dry weather
conditions? It's usually those that have been sprayed with
chemicals.
Here are just a few thoughts about lawn chemical uses:
- Phosphates from fertilizers getting into storm runoff travel
directly to our lake/water sources via storm drains after rains.
This scenario contributes to these waters becoming smothered
with algae blooms that lead to oxygen depletion in the water
and more
fish kills.
- Pesticides like 24-D (a defoliant used in Agent Orange),
Diazinon, Dursban and others are all linked to cancer according
to the USEPA.
- Chemical drift remains in the air days after application
that contributes to respiratory irritation from fumes. This is
not good
for asthma sufferers or those who have allergies, young or
old.
- Residue (petroleum based) from chemicals remains on lawn
for days after application and can get tracked indoors despite
contrary
claims. People and pets are walking through and exposed to
this without even knowing.
- Several US cities and many Canadian communities have either
banned uses of many lawn chemicals or placed restrictions of
their uses.
Minneapolis and Buffalo are such cities that have looked at
restricting uses of many chemicals. In several Canadian communities
and many
across Europe , these chemicals are banned for mere cosmetic
uses, and if used, the user must demonstrate a need by showing
that there
is an infestation of an uncontrollable and threatening pest.
Think about it......this is just a lawn we are talking about.
Not a food source we are trying to protect from a devastating pest.
Lawns do not have to resemble a putting green, remain green year
round in dormant times, or resemble the turf in a stadium as the
lawn care companies have us believing they should. A "weed" is
not always a bad thing and in fact is just a non-scientific name
given to any plant growing where we don't want it to grow. Is it
worth poisoning a neighborhood just for the sake of a particular
look sold to us by heavy advertising?
Let's not let the lawn care companies tell us what the lawn should
look like. It's up to each person to decide. If any readers still
desire a monoculture look of just green, please considering discussing
this with me. There are many organic and safer alternatives to
lawn chemicals.
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