Title: US residents push city to stop using toxic chemicals in local parks
[connectstoughton.com by Bill Livick 08 April 2013] -- Three local Wisconsin women are spearheading an effort to persuade city officials to abandon a plan to use herbicides in Stoughton parks and athletic fields beginning this spring. After learning of the plan about two weeks ago, Sylvia Lawrence, Gennifer Weaver and Sara Downie – all mothers with young children – contacted friends in the city who share their concerns. They established a grassroots group opposed to using chemicals to control broadleaf plants such as dandelions and clover. They also offered to help maintain park lawns and playing fields and have encouraged the city to adopt alternatives to chemical applications. The three and about two-dozen supporters calling themselves Naturally Stoughton-Cultivating Sustainable Solutions attended a Public Works Committee meeting last Monday to question the new policy. They hope the city can find organic solutions to what some people are considering a significant weed problem. [Photo by Bill Livick: From left, city residents Gennifer Weaver, Sylvia Lawrence with baby Felix, Hannah Lawrence, Eve Downie, Sara Downie and Drew Downie gather at Veterans Park, in which the women hope city officials will not use chemicals to control weeds.] ${imageDescription} Comment
Seeking a solution
After hearing complaints last year that weeds have gotten out of control in community parks, the Common Council included about $6,000 in the 2013 city budget to purchase and apply an herbicide and also begin fertilizing. Manthe checked with consultants and had identified an herbicide called Triplet SF, whose active ingredients include the chemicals 2, 4-D, mecoprop and dicamba.
Proponents of using pesticides (a broad category of chemicals that includes herbicides) say Stoughton parks and playing fields have become overrun with weeds and see them as a threat to athletes. They also think the visual effect sends a negative message to visitors about the city. A chemical application, they say, is the only way to get the problem under control.
Naturally Stoughton counters that the real threat – one that could potentially affect more people – is posed by putting toxins into areas where people may be exposed. They argue that environmental exposure to toxic chemicals is contributing to a disturbing escalation of serious diseases, particularly in children. Organizers have asked officials to delay applying chemicals until city staff have had a chance to check with other communities and turf experts about possible alternatives. For example, one strategy that’s used in Madison and elsewhere is known as an “integrated pest management program,” an environmentally sensitive approach to controlling weeds that relies on a combination of common-sense practices.
“All we are asking for is more time, because it sounds like they don’t have an integrated pest management program,” Weaver told the Hub. “Really it doesn’t sound like they have a plan at all. It’s like, they have a weed problem that could be ‘a potential hazard,’ and they’re going to fix that by spraying herbicides without considering the alternatives.” Weaver added that while Manthe has discussed recommendations with chemical companies, he hasn’t consulted any companies about alternative methods.
Mayor Donna Olson said she heard lots of opposition to herbicides at last week’s meeting, but she’s also heard from “as many if not more” people who complain that the city’s parks are looking bad compared to those in other municipalities. “It’s important to remember that while that room was full of people who didn’t want any type of treatment of our parks, there were that many if not more people who have contacted us in the last year saying our parks are terrible for sports,” she said. She asked Manthe to continue looking into the matter and find out what other cities are doing. “With the response from our community with their concerns, we’ll take another look at it and try to find a compromise,” Olson said.
Opposition to toxins
Lawrence, the mother of two kids including an infant, lives next to Veterans Park on the Yahara River. She’s an organic gardener and also raises chickens in her backyard. She thought she’d seen pesticide warning flags at the park last year and “was under the impression” the city didn’t use chemicals for weed control. And so a few weeks ago she called the parks department to inquire. “That is how I learned of the plan to spray all parks and athletic fields,” she wrote in an email to the Hub.
She began researching pesticide use and the potential risks and also began discussing the issue with Weaver and other friends. She also contacted Ald. Tricia Suess (Dist. 3), who supports Naturally Stoughton’s efforts to persuade the city to find alternatives. “Since I am an organic gardener, I had basic knowledge of health concerns regarding pesticide exposure,” Lawrence wrote. “I have researched the chemicals and their potential effects and find the threat to my family’s health unacceptable.”
Her friends Weaver and Downie are both registered nurses who work for University of Wisconsin Hospitals. They also both have two children and share Lawrence’s concern about using pesticides to control innocuous plants like dandelions, which Weaver has harvested from local parks and used in salads. “I use dandelion greens regularly,” she said. “I use lots of wild foods. The funny thing that people don’t realize is they sell dandelion greens in health food stores. Instead, we’re trained to spray chemicals on them.”
Weaver said when Lawrence told her of the city’s intention to begin using herbicides in parks, she was “horrified” because she lives near East Side Park. “Having young children who play in the parks, I’m concerned about them getting direct exposure and contamination from the chemicals that are sprayed there, or because I live across the street from the park, I’m worried about what they call spray drift,” she said.
Like Lawrence, Weaver is an organic gardener and raises backyard chickens. She’s also concerned about the ramifications for the animals.
Risk vs. benefit
Downie has been educating herself about pesticide use for a decade. She began to study the issue when her teenage son was 3 and his in-home daycare provider was going to spray her yard. “I thought, ‘Why would you do that when you have little children at your house?’” she recalls. “I talked to the woman about it, and she really wasn’t aware that there was any health risk at all. So that started me thinking that a lot of people just must not realize this. And so I started researching then. I’ve been involved with a healthy lawn team in Madison and I’ve given talks on the subject, including nontoxic household cleaning.”
As nurses, Downie and Weaver have seen the increase of illness and disease and are convinced that toxins in the environment are contributing to the problems. They note that the Environmental Protection Agency has admitted as much, even though it has approved the use of something like 80,000 chemicals based on a risk/benefit ratio. “What they are saying is that the risk is small, so it is outweighed by the benefit,” Downie explained. “Doctors and scientists who disagree are asserting that the risks are still there and that there are many studies that associate herbicides with long-term serious health problems and environmental pollution.” She said the EPA relies heavily on the chemical industry’s own studies and typically tests each ingredient in isolation, which ignores the synergistic effects that chemicals can have when combined in a real-world environment.
Doug Soldat, a UW-Madison turf grass and urban soil specialist, said there are definite health concerns associated with pesticides and herbicides, but they are the only effective way he knows of eradicating weeds such as crabgrass once they’re established. He pointed out that there are whole political jurisdictions, including Canadian provinces such as Ontario, that prohibit the use of such chemicals entirely.
After last weeks’ council meeting, Ald. Greg Jenson (Dist. 3) said he supports the local activists and has always opposed herbicide applications in parks.
