TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=91TT1203> <title> June 03, 1991: Can Lawns Be Justified? </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991 June 03, 1991 Date Rape </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> ENVIRONMENT, Page 63 Can Lawns Be Justified? </hdr><body> Awash in fertilizers and pesticides, they may be a hazard to homeowners--and children, pets and neighbors By JOHN SKOW--Reported by Andrea Dorfman/New York and Joyce Leviton/Atlanta Lawn is the curse of suburban man, his bizarre fetish, the great green god he sprays to. Lawn must be barbered to the satisfaction of one's neighbors, or it earns their dirty looks and, in some tightly strung communities, a summons from city hall. The ideal lawn is featureless, a living imitation of Astroturf. Striving to achieve it soaks up water, money and weekend goof-off time in fantastic quantities. Never mind that trying to grow grass in hot, cold or arid regions is almost as silly as trying to grow kelp. Americans have belawned 25 million to 30 million acres, an area larger than Virginia. Lawn is our connection to the English manor houses to which most of us cannot trace our ancestors; it is the decent, respectably dull necktie we knot around our houses. Now--is this really a surprise?--lawn owners are hearing from environmental activists what common sense has been telling them for some time. The herbicides and insecticides they spread on their lawns are poisons. They can be deadly, the charge goes, not only to the noxious bugs and broad-leaf weeds they are supposed to kill but also to useful bugs, to the earthworms that aerate the soil and to pets and people. Do-it-yourselfers don't read warning labels or take precautions to protect themselves, and they use up to six times as much pesticide per acre as farmers do. Runoff of fertilizers from farmlands has tainted water supplies, and though industry experts say it doesn't happen, critics fear similar troubles from suburban lawn runoff. Children are especially vulnerable to the junk that your neighbor's lawn service fogs around or to the "completely safe for humans" stuff that you bought at the hardware store. Lawn poisons can cause headaches, dizziness, eye problems, mental disorientation and lasting damage to the nervous system. Cancer is also a possibility, since some pesticides contain known carcinogens. Of course, your lawn looks great. So the testimony, much of it bitter, went this month before the Senate environment and public-works subcommittee on toxic substances. Dallas petroleum consultant Tom Latimer, 36, testified that he used the widely sold insecticide diazinon six years ago to control grubs eating grass roots at the same time that he was taking the drug Tagamet to control warts. Neither chemical came with a warning of dangerous interaction, but the impact of diazinon, an organophosphate that inhibits nerve action, was apparently magnified by the Tagamet. Today his eyesight remains severely damaged; he has constant headaches; his memory, concentration and mental acuity are dulled. Proving legal responsibility and collecting damages in such cases are difficult, and Latimer has had no luck. Nor, so far, has Christina Locek, 42, of River Grove, Ill., a onetime professional ice skater and pianist who says her health was destroyed in 1985 when a lawn-care service sprayed her neighbor's yard. Her cat and dog died the same day, she says, and she continues to suffer partial paralysis, substantial vision loss, headaches and blood disorders. Another woman told the Senate subcommittee that she sometimes slept in her car to avoid lawn spraying in her neighborhood. Such people can seem distraught to the point of crankiness, but extreme sensitivity to chemicals is not a rare condition. How much regulation the multibillion-dollar lawn-care industry should have was the main issue before the subcommittee. Neighborhood warnings before pesticide dousings and signs on treated lawns afterward were proposed. ChemLawn, the big lawn-care outfit with headquarters in Columbus does not oppose such measures, though a spokesperson said last week that a study of 100 employees who applied lawn chemicals showed "no long-term health effects." Until now, government supervision of lawn pesticides has been notably drowsy. The Environmental Protection Agency is required to review the dangers of pesticides that were in use before 1972, when more stringent regulations went into effect, but so far has completely cleared only two of the 34 most used chemical agents. While the EPA deliberates, all of them continue to be used on lawns. According to the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides, an advocacy group critical of the lawn-care industry, nine of the pesticides may be carcinogenic, 10 may cause birth defects, three can affect reproduction, nine can damage the liver or kidneys, 20 attack the nervous system, and 29 cause rashes or skin disease. Pesticides, says NCAMP national coordinator Jay Feldman, are defined "as acceptable poisons. But nothing out there is safe." In a political climate that favors market forces, not regulation, the EPA has been unwilling to crack down. Noting that geese had been dying from ingesting diazinon, the pesticide that gave Latimer so much trouble, the agency did ban the chemical for use on sod farms and golf courses. What it failed to do, perhaps fearing the wrath of the pesticide industry, was ban diazinon's much more extensive use on home lawns. Those fellows at the hardware store will still sell you as much as you want. Tom Adamczyk, EPA deputy branch chief of herbicides, says it did not seem likely that geese would be landing on suburban lawns (though ornithologists have known for several years that lawn-care pesticides are killing songbirds). Adamczyk went on to note that the EPA has banned the pesticides chlordane, 2,4,5-T and Silvex from the market. He says quicker re-evaluation would be desirable "in the ideal world" but the agency has not had the money or personnel to speed up the process. "You can't just yank a product off the market without incontrovertible proof that it's harmful." Pesticides, it seems, are innocent until proved guilty. Tom Watschke, a turf-grass scientist at Penn State University, derides pesticide critics for "saying that until the EPA can prove that any chemical for sale in a garden center is safe, it shouldn't be available. That's ridiculous. The real risk is the person who has no knowledge of agronomic principles and thinks if a certain dose of pesticide is good, then double is better." Worry about fertilizers and pesticides running off into lakes, rivers and groundwater and causing fish kills and algal blooms, Watschke insists, "is just propaganda that unfortunately is scaring the public unnecessarily." Maybe, but why take the risk? Brain tumors must be excised, if possible, but dandelions don't really do any harm. In fact, they are pretty, enthusiastic, nutritious in salads and excellent for wine making. Of course, if they ever became popular, the lawn-care megacorporations would sell us patent medicine to encourage them by killing the grass. In the meantime, California may be the waterless wave of the future. In Los Angeles, Robin Thomas is trying to revive his dried yellow grass with organic products, not chemicals, because "I have children, and they play on the lawn." In Oakland, Rachel Blau's lawn is green because it rained recently. But if there's no rain, "we let it go," she says, bravely adding the unsayable "I don't care how it looks." </body></article> </text>