Article by Marie Cargill:
PESTICIDES AND YOU

Buy books by Marie Cargill on Amazon.com

Do you have a landscape utopia: a home with pest-free gardens and lawns? No ants, wasps, bees, butterflies, moths, but grass that grows thick through genetic modification and flowers and vegetables aphid free through pesticides?

Hundreds of chemicals are used all over the world presenting us with a complex issue. Feeding the people of an over populated world uses these chemicals, and these chemicals are problematic. But personal gardening and landscaping - suburban lawns and gardens - use more chemicals per acre than industrialized agriculture. By their very nature, pesticides put humans, animals, insects and the environment at risk: they are designed to kill.

There are 30 commonly used lawn pesticides:

13 of them are probable carcinogens,
14 are linked to birth defects,
18 to reproductive effects such as infertility and low sperm count,
20 of them are linked to liver and cancer damage,
18 can cause neurotoxicity and peripheral nervous system damage and
11 are endocrine disrupters.

Using these pesticides puts children and pets at risk because they are especially susceptible to the dangers. Young children are also six times more likely to develop leukemia in a household using pesticides. Pets are at great risk because they can directly ingest lawn and garden chemicals; they explore the environment and then groom themselves by licking and ingesting these toxic poisons.

Educate yourself about the benefits of organic, pesticide free gardens and lawns. Learn how to create a model yard by switching to vegetable compost, mulches, and other methods that are sustainable, ecologically suitable, and not dependent upon animal exploitation.

You might find these websites helpful:

For supplies and further information consult Marie Cargill.