The pesticide industry suggested a ban was not necessary in Ontario, citing as "evidence" the claim that "no U.S. state has a ban in place." While the pesticide industry has worked overtime to prevent states from enacting bans, it has not been very successful: State laws restrict the sites of pesticide applications, such as banning pesticides from schools and playgrounds, and local communities have enacted similar regulations requiring notice before pesticide use at homes. The success of pesticide bans is due to citizens working at the local levels of government, starting with partial bans whose scope is later expanded, and moving up the ladder of government to the state level.
The new Ontario pesticide ban was triggered by the realization of the risk pesticides present to our environment, the public's health, and our children's health. This law would ban 80 chemicals and 300 products which "pose a potential health risk." According to their government, the new ban is about "the right of kids to play in the grass ... without compromising their health."
For now, the war over home dandelions is over, but a new war may spring up because the law provides exceptions for golf courses, farms and forests. Laws banning cosmetic pesticide use are a great first step, but the double standard between home lawns and farms/golf courses needs to be remedied unless one believes that it is not safe to walk or roll on the pesticide-treated lawns, but it is safe to eat the food grown on farms using pesticides.
Obtaining a ban on even the cosmetic pesticides was not an easy task. For years, environmental groups and families pursued the ban, but were dismissed as "cranks" by the pesticide industry. However, these "cranks" won. Activists working at the grass roots level were provided access to local government officials and the press in a manner not provided when advocating at the national level, and this access stymied and ultimately defeated the pesticide industry:
As the anti-pesticide movement grew and media attention increased, the pesticide industry was ill-prepared to deal with the public’s rejection of lawn and garden pesticides. The initial reaction was to underestimate the movement and dismiss activists as cranks who stood little chance of success.
Industry lobbyists did not understand the mechanism of a grassroots movement that was fighting in town after town, with each victory communicated throughout the network and heralded in local and national press. It was a battle for public opinion, and the opinions that mattered were those of City Council members in towns scattered across the country, not Cabinet Ministers and senior government bureaucrats. Ordinary people had better access to their Council members, who in many cases were their neighbors or acquaintances, and they were using it.
Now, around 140 communities in Canada have a ban on pesticides, and some impose progressively stricter standards each year.
The US pesticide industry was not pleased when anti-pesticide "cranks" popped up nationwide. In 2001, the small town of Fairfax defied the state and the pesticide industry with the first local ordinance that prohibited the use of pesticides on lawns without first notifying neighbors:
The pesticide industry also fired a warning shot at the Fairfax Town Council, but its steely politicians have not backed down. They insist on telling the town's 7,200 residents how and when to spray their weeds and aphids.
Using products like Roundup or Weed-B-Gone to clean up the garden or lawn may seem innocuous, but a new Fairfax law forbids property owners from spraying herbicides and pesticides unless they first notify their neighbors. The Fairfax law, approved unanimously by its town council, is part of a grassroots movement to raise public awareness of the potential hazards of pesticides. Supporters of the ordinance, the first of its kind in California, say it will help protect residents from being harmed by chemical sprays that can drift downwind, linger in the soil and migrate via surface-water runoff.
State officials were quite perturbed that a local community would "attempt to usurp their authority to regulate pesticides" even though the ordinance simply requires notice:
The Fairfax law requires property owners planning to apply pesticides to notify neighbors within a 150-foot radius at least 48 hours ahead of time - by posting signs indicating that chemical spraying will occur.
It applies to landscaping chemicals and pesticides including fungicides, herbicides, insecticides, defoliants and rodenticides - except small quantities of sprays used against "stinging and biting insects, including venomous spiders, bees, wasps and hornets." It also doesn't govern the use of insect or rodent bait, boric acid, horticultural soap and oils, granular pesticide or the direct injection of pesticides into a plant.
Under the law, repeat violators may be cited for a misdemeanor offense. No citations have been issued, but two pesticide operators have received verbal warnings from Fairfax police officers.
The state Dept. of Pesticide Regulation warned Fairfax to rescind its ordinance or face a lawsuit. Two weeks later, the Dept. blinked, offering to provide an agricultural commissioner to work with Fairfax with a statewide grant program "designed to encourage the use of nontoxic alternatives to pesticides." Fairfax held steady.
Fairfax is not alone in California. The Healthy Schools Act of 2000 requires parental notification of pesticide use at schools. In 2001, the town of Belvedere was persuaded by health advocates to stop spraying pesticides in its public parks. Nonprofit groups have successfully lobbied some school districts to ban the spraying of some pesticides.
The anti-pesticide movement spread. "Sebastopol is considering the passage of an ordinance similar to the Fairfax law. State regulators have warned Sebastopol officials not to go forward."
The Fairfax law was modeled on a New York state law enacted in 2000. There are 21 states which have some form of notice law governing pesticide use on lawns.
In 2002, anti-pesticide measures, triggered by local communities regulating pesticides, failed in Congress.
The U.S. Senate in June 2001 approved a measure, added as an amendment to last year’s education bill, that would have required schools to notify parents about what pesticides are being sprayed in public schools and when such spraying occurs. The amendment—removed from the final bill by a single vote during House-Senate conference committee negotiations—also would have banned the use of pesticides where children congregate.
A similar measure, tacked onto the Senate version of this year’s [2002] farm bill, was also defeated in negotiations with the House.
Undaunted, environmental advocates have succeeded at the state level:
Across the country, 31 states have adopted pesticide laws with provisions mirroring one or more of the provisions of the Senate bills. Four states—Maryland, Masaschusetts, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—have adopted legislation mirroring all of the Senate bills’ provisions.
Source: Dueling Pesticide Ads
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The success of the grassroots movement freaked out the US pesticide industry, which decided to ensure that anti-pesticide laws did not take root in the US by running pro-pesticide ads with a masculine lush lawn meme:
"The gloves are off," declares an industry ad running in trade magazines under a picture of masculine-looking leather gardening gloves lying atop a lush green lawn.
The pesticide industry wanted the ads to promote the "health and lifestyle benefits of thick, green lawns." The environmental group, Beyond Pesticides, responded with its own copycat ad, featuring "a pair of feminine-looking gardening gloves decorated with daisies over the headline, 'Get a Grip'."
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Apparently, the very masculine leather gloves did not quell the grassroots. So, the industry convinced 30 states to pass preemption laws to prohibit cities and towns from enacting laws which impose more stringent pesticide regulations than state law. This strategy was designed to limit the need for fighting anti-pesticide laws to the state and federal level and thereby eliminate the need to address the many local communities which kept pushing forward on measures regulating pesticide use. However, local communities are working to overturn the preemption laws. Moreover, the preemption strategy did not stop all local regulation.
A few cities have total bans:
Across the state, many agencies have tried to reduce or ban herbicide use. Arcata (Humboldt County) and Oakland are among only a few with a total ban. More than 400 school districts and dozens of cities and park districts nationwide have policies so restrictive that herbicides and pesticides are used in minimal amounts.
Some states, like Connecticut, have enacted laws that regulate the location of pesticide applications by banning pesticides from areas where children play, such as the grounds of elementary schools. The Connecticut legislation was introduced by a senator whose dog had died from liver cancer caused by pesticides. Local towns then have moved forward to increase the scope of the ban.
School districts have not backed off. This site has a map of the US which covers around 33 state laws and more than 400 school districts which have laws or policies regulating the use or management of pesticide applications. A click onto any state will yield results telling you what communities have pesticide regulations covering issues such as restricted spray zones around school properties, no spray buffer zones around schools, posting notification signs for outdoor spraying, written notification to inform parents before the application of pesticides, and restrictions on the type of pesticides used and the timing of applications.
School districts in Alaska, California, Colorado, New York, Oregon and Washington have banned the use of pesticides. Massachusetts "bans the use in schools or daycares of pesticides that are considered known, likely, or probable carcinogens, inert ingredients with toxicological concerns, or any products used for purely aesthetic reasons. The law also limits use of pesticides indoors." Other states and communities are banning particular pesticides and/or products.
Even Gov. Schwarzenegger approved a law to stop the use of experimental pesticides in schools in order to protect students and teachers from the "harmful materials found in pesticides" which present "physical and mental health risks."
Another popular measure adopted by 20 states is laws "requiring signs or some sort of public notification when pesticides are applied to lawns."
Communities in dozens of states have adopted integrated pest management policies limiting the type of pesticides which can be applied on government property and implementing alternative measures to pest control that focus on the root causes for pests:
Pesticide opponents say there’s a good alternative. Known as "Integrated Pest Management" (IPM), it deals with problems the old-fashioned way; ridding lawns of weeds by mowing or pulling them up; and controlling vermin by keeping food areas clean, removing trash, repairing holes and caulking crevices. If such prevention doesn’t work, pests are eliminated with traps, predatory insects or innocuous chemical compounds, such as boric acid powder. If all else fails and a problem is severe enough, pesticides can be used with strict controls.
Even its most fervent advocates admit that IPM requires a great deal of work. But in schools where it has been used properly, it seems to be effective. For instance, since the Monroe County Community School Corporation, in Bloomington, Indiana, implemented an IPM program in the early 1990s, pest-control costs have decreased by 35 percent, and use of pesticides by 90 percent. And the University of California Berkeley, which has the oldest IPM program in the country, has cut its use of pesticides by more than 90 percent while improving the control of bugs.
Citizens are not just lobbying local lawmakers but also filing lawsuits to stop massive pesticide spraying programs. Recently, California wanted to aerial spray over 12 counties that are home to 7 million people to kill the light brown apple moth which can be harmful to the state's $32 billion dollar farming industry. State and federal farming officials claimed it was an "emergency" which allowed them to ignore "normal review procedures." However, 600 people in two counties reported respiratory problems and headaches after aerial spraying last year. Thus, this year a lawsuit stopped the aerial pesticide spraying until a full environmental study is conducted.
When forced to prove the factual basis for the claimed emergency, the government lost in court:
Santa Cruz Superior Court Judge Paul Burdick said the state did not prove the invasive light brown apple moth poses an immediate threat to life or property. As a result, Burdick said, he rescinded an emergency exemption that had allowed spraying before the review was done.
The problem was that apparently the state claimed an emergency exemption based on the potential loss of money or an economic emergency. However, the rules allowing emergency exemptions from environmental rules are limited to emergencies of loss of life or property and do not include economic damage.
Last month our Governor decided to postpone spraying so that toxicology testing can be done to determine the affects on eyes, inhalation, respiratory and skin. His decision was reportedly not influenced by the coincidental timing of citizens winning in court.
Source: Mourning Dove (public domain)
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Even the EPA is ready to ban certain pesticides that have been used intentionally to kill birds:
A short time after a Lincoln County farmer sprayed the insecticide carbofuran on his 95-acre sunflower field on the Colorado plains in 2006, birds started turning up dead.
Mourning doves. Horned larks. Western meadowlarks. Red-winged blackbirds. Grackles.
All dead.
Nearly 2,200 birds were killed by what the Justice Department said was an intentional misapplication of the toxic chemical.
An EPA environmental risk assessment concluded that "more than 85 percent of the most vulnerable bird species would die after foraging in treated alfalfa fields."
This is the first time in 20 years that the EPA is trying to ban a pesticide "after determining that even legal uses are likely to kill birds." Not just any EPA, but Bush's EPA. However, the EPA will have to fight Bush, the pesticide company and "congressional champions in agricultural states."
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We face many environmental issues that affect our health, life and our planet. Our air, water, soil and food is contaminated; people are dying and becoming ill from pollutants; global warming is here and will only get worse; the need for alternative energy; wildlife dying and facing extinction, like our beautiful polar bears; shrinking potable water supplies; and the list goes on and on. Addressing these issues can seem like a daunting task where hope is diminished by brick walls constructed and maintained by both the megamedia and Congress. BUT, as Senator Obama says, yes, we can make a difference if we don't give up now.
