Chemical commerce fuels cancer cluster worry

Before leaving for Indianapolis to visit her husband, who was in the hospital being treated for multiple myeloma, an incurable bone marrow cancer, Bonnie Atkinson (not her real name), a resident of the Painted Hills subdivision outside Martinsville, stood outside her house chatting with a neighbor. Suddenly a professional lawn care service truck appeared, and the driver sprayed herbicides on several lawns in the neighborhood, as had happened before. Although it's difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether her husband's cancer and the many other cases of cancer in Atkinson's neighborhood are linked to her neighbors' habit of treating their lawns with herbicides, she knew for sure that herbicides used on lawns are deadly to more than weeds, the target organisms, as Rachel Carson pointed out in her 1962 book, Silent Spring. Atkinson also knew that because of pesticide drift, herbicides move to areas other than were they're sprayed.

About 90 million pounds of herbicides are applied to U.S. lawns every year, according the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Of the 17 most frequently used herbicides, three are known carcinogens, three are possible carcinogens, and one is a probable carcinogen, according to Beyond Pesticides, a nonprofit working to end dependence of toxic pesticides. Various herbicides are linked with cancers, endocrine disruption, reproductive problems, neurotoxicity, kidney/liver damage, birth defects and sensitization/irritation.

Children are especially sensitive to pesticide exposure because they absorb more pesticides relative to their body weight than adults and have developing organ systems that are more vulnerable and less able to detoxify toxic chemicals than adults' systems.

Lawn chemicals harm pets, too: according to Environmental Research, using a pesticide to achieve a lush lawn is likely to cause malignant lymphoma in dogs.

Take the herbicide 2,4-D (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid), for example. It is the only one of the top 13 herbicides listed by Beyond Pesticides that causes all the ill effects herbicides are known to cause (http://www.beyondpesticides.org/lawn/factsheets/30health.pdf). It's one of the top 13 most heavily used herbicides in the home and garden, according to Beyond Pesticides. Lawn care companies apply it in the late spring and early summer for http://psep.cce.cornell.edu/issues/lawnissues.aspx">broad leaf weed control and in the fall for weed treatment.

The Natural Resources Defense Council reports that 2,4-D, which is applied outdoors but is commonly tracked into houses on shoes or pet paws, can remain in carpets for as long as a year. 2,4-D has been widely detected in drinking water.

2,4-D was a chief ingredient in the defoliant Agent Orange, which the U.S. used to destroy ecosystems in North Vietnam during the Vietnam war. It left a legacy of cancer and birth defects among the Vietnamese exposed to it, and it left a similar legacy in exposed American troops and their offspring.

2,4-D is contaminated with a class of synthetic chemicals called dioxins, the most potent chemical carcinogens known. Dioxins cause cancer, birth defects, reproductive effects, liver damage and a skin disease called chloracne. Dioxins are neurotoxins and endocrine (hormone) disruptors and are on the Environmental Working Group's "Dirty Dozen" list of the worst hormone disruptors.

2,4-D is especially associated with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, cancer of the lymph system, according to Beyond Pesticides, an organization that advocates abandoning the use of pesticides. 2,4-D is absorbed through the skin. Anyone who applies the herbicide or is in contact with lawns or surface water where 2,4-D was applied is at risk of exposure to it.

Just how many Indiana homeowners employ lawn care services to spray herbicides on their property is impossible to know. The Hoosier Environmental Council has no information on the subject. According to the Office of the Indiana State Chemist, no agency has information on how many Indiana households use lawn care services because homeowners aren't required to report the use of a professional lawn care operator. However, the office reported that Indiana has 1,242 licensed turf-management businesses.

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Chemical commerce fuels cancer cluster worry