March 9th, 2012

Ah, spring. You can smell it on the air — that bracing ammonia smell wafting off your neighbor’s lawn; the acrid odors at the local home store, where the first six aisles have been packed with heaping bags of the season’s poisons.
Hydramethylnon, glyphosate, dicambra, atrazine and 2,4-D.
There’s a little something to wipe out every potential lawn and garden interloper, but the most popular consumer weapons in the annual war on nature are the “weed and feeds.” These fertilizers-herbicide combos were conceived of more than 50 years ago in the US to enrich turf grass, while simultaneously stamping out invading weeds.

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February 23rd, 2012

Just in time for weed-and-feed season, the Natural Resources Defense Council has filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for failing to stop the use of the weed killed known as 2,4-D.
This neurotoxic chemical, infamous as a key ingredient in Agent Orange, is still allowed in products used to treat lawns, golf courses and in commercial operations.

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January 24th, 2012

In the brave new world of bio-tech agriculture, the big pesticide/herbicide makers have argued for years that their genetic seed inventions would reduce the use of chemicals.
It made sense, to argue for that. Almost everyone agrees that our health and the environment would benefit from reduced pesticide use. And Americans react strongly when they find their food has been compromised by chemicals. Think of the Alar apple scare, or the more recent outcry over strawberries doused with methyl iodide, a fumigant suspected of causing cancer.

Chemical companies tapped into citizen concern about pesticides by promising they could engineer corn and soybeans to resist certain “safer” chemicals, such as Monsanto’s Roundup. That would reduce environmental harm and give farmers a break, because they could use Roundup whenever they wanted without fear of harming their crops. They’d get higher yields with little downside, because the Roundup would biodegrade, and America would feed the world….

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