Are Fertilizers, Herbicides and Pesticides Safe for Your Lawn?

According to the EPA, American homeowners dump 90 million pounds of herbicides, fertilizers and pesticides on their lawns each year in the eternal quest for lush, green turf.

That’s a barrage of chemicals interacting with soil, waterways, wildlife, pets and you.

How dangerous are lawn fertilizers?

Homeowners shopping for lawn care products are lulled into a false sense of safety every spring. These chemicals, some of which are quite poisonous, are sold at home centers, grocery stores, convenience stores, nursery centers, just about any store you visit in spring and fall. We’re led to believe that if they posed a danger to our health, if they were potentially toxic, there would be a skull and crossbones and a huge warning on the label. Unfortunately, any warnings about the dangers of these chemicals are buried in very fine print on the bag.

Let’s take one of the most popular lawn fertilizers as an example: Scotts Turf Builder Lawn Fertilizer. Here’s an excerpt from the registered info on the Household Products database on the National Institutes Of Health website (an official branch of the U.S. government).

How dangerous are lawn pesticides?

Wow. That’s just one fertilizer – now let’s look at a popular herbicide used for weed control: Vigoro Ultra Turf Weed And Feed: The active ingredient in this and many herbicides is a nasty ingredient known as “2,4-D”, whose chemical name is 2,4-Dichlorophenyloxy acetic acid, one of the key ingredients in Agent Orange. Once again, on the NIH website (Human Health Effects From Hazardous Substances databank), you’ll find reports of fatigue, anorexia, weakness, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, grand mal convulsions, lethargy progressing to coma, progressive decline in blood pressure… should I go on?

What you’re pouring on your lawn every year are CHEMICALS, with a big “C”. You risk not only your own health, but the health of the children, pets, and wildlife that play on your lawn.

How to get a green lawn without chemicals

“But I want a green lawn!”, you protest. Hey that’s cool, so do I! Green lawns existed long before these chemicals became popular post WW2. Here are suggestions on how to keep your lawn green without chemicals:

• Aerate your lawn once or twice a year depending on the condition of your soil. It’s easy to do and punches holes in your lawn which allow air and water to get at the roots of your grass. The plugs you remove are left on top to break down and fertilize. This also helps to loosen thatch.
• Mow your lawn when it’s three inches tall and not before. The blades of the grass produce photosynthesis which keeps the plants healthy and encourages vigorous root growth. Mowing it shorter than that can stress your turf. Longer roots mean better drought resistance.
• Let grass clippings lay on your lawn. They break down slowly and add Nitrogen, which is what the chemical fertilizers add. Use a mulching blade on your mower to grind clippings as fine as possible.
• Not every weed is bad and not every bug is a pest. Clover is actually helpful to your lawn as it fixes nitrogen in the soil. Insects are not necessarily pests – there is a complicated natural balance going on in your lawn and killing one insect may invite a horde of more problematic pests. Insects are a source of food for other insects, birds and mammals.
• Use corn gluten meal on your lawn instead of fertilizer. Corn gluten, a by-product of corn processing,  suppresses crabgrass and dandelion seeds when added in the early Spring, and it also feeds your lawn.

Supporters of non-organic chemical agriculture will say that the U.S. government has determined “safe and acceptable” exposure levels for all of the chemicals in fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. The government guidelines say that exposure to these chemicals when applied according to the package directions do not pose risk.

But they haven’t calculated multiple exposures to the things we encounter every day: the combination of herbicides, pesticides, and food chain residues, which is called bioaccumulation.

These “safe and acceptable” level issues have been fiercely debated by scientists worldwide. The only “safe” exposure is no exposure at all.

More Resources:

• Scientific American: How Fertilizers Harm Earth More Than Help Your Lawn
• Environment And Human Health, INC