Since our yard has more creeping charlie than all the kudzu in Georgia, we’ve been seriously thinking about having our lawn treated. The problem is those little green and white signs that warn “This Lawn Has Been Chemically Treated—Keep Children and Pets Off for 24 Hours.” Leery of both the chemical industry and a massive crabgrass infestation, I called the toll-free number of a major lawn-care company to ask what hazard the signs address.
“We’ve added a green dye to the treatment because some customers requested a way to recognize when their lawn had been treated,” the customer representative said. “And you don’t want to get that stuff on your kids and pets.”
“I thought it was because some of the chemicals you spray in there could be dangerous to kids,” I replied.
“Well, no. It’s so they don’t get any of that green dye on them,” she answered in Ari Fleischer style—consistent, if not entirely convincing. When I asked if she could tell me, just for kicks, exactly what chemicals my kids and pets would be playing in, she forwarded me to a local office. When the local fellow picked up, I recounted the green dye story.
“No, no, no, that’s not right,” he answered, clearly annoyed with his national coworker. “Our treatments have a fertilizer and a weed-control substance, and it’s the weed-control products that can be dangerous to kids,” he said. How dangerous—has anyone ever gotten sick? “No, we’ve never had any problem with it,” he assured me. “A kid would have to eat three times their weight to cause any harm.”
Of course, a child eating three times their weight in anything would not be healthy, but I let that slide. Instead, I made a few phone calls to the Minnesota Department of Health, where I talked with Chuck Stroebel at the Health Risk Assessment Unit in the Environmental Health Division.
He emailed me a bushel of pesticide fact sheets (broadly, pesticides include herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides). When we met at his St. Paul office a week later, I asked him what he thinks when he sees the green and white warning signs posted on a lawn.
“I think it’s just smart to minimize unnecessary pesticide exposure,” Stroebel explained. “Kids are at more risk because of their size and their hand-to-mouth activity, and pets because they tend to roll or lie in the grass.”
Looking through the pesticide safety data, I was surprised to see how well pesticides have been studied, both for acute and chronic toxicity and carcinogenic effects.
“Yeah, there’s fairly stringent regulation in pesticides in comparison to many other chemicals, because pesticides are designed to repel or kill a plant or pest. So there’s an immediate recognition that these could be dangerous.”
Naturally, it’s easy to scrutinize some toxins because of their intended use. If they are designed to kill things, we want to make sure they’re killing the right things, and experts are all over it, like flies on…well, you know. But consider PCBs. They weren’t designed to retard or kill anything, and yet we’ve found them to be harmful. “Very harmful, exactly,” he agreed.
For pesticides used in professional lawn treatments, here is the worst-case scenario: If you let the kids come out three hours later and have, say, a greased cat contest, some of the kids could develop minor skin and eye irritation.
“I think that’s accurate,” Stroebel nodded, “and you could track it into the house for a more prolonged exposure.”
So pesticide risk is a function of exposure. In other words, getting a weak solution on your feet is logarithmically safer than eating a handful of granules out in the garage. It seems like it might be safer to have a professional come out, rather than to do it myself and have the leftovers hanging around.
“Yes, and if you call a professional service, you’ve got someone who is applying the pesticide that’s a trained, licensed applicator, versus a homeowner who may be incorrectly diluting a product or putting it in the wrong area.”
Before leaving his office, I felt it my public duty to brief Stroebel on my earlier conversation, and the terrifying green dye that threatens lawn-tromping kids statewide. He did not stick up for other “experts” in this field. “It’s real hit or miss, depending on who you get,” he laughed.—Craig Bowron
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