South Bruce Peninsular - No more pesticides and herbicides for cosmetic reasons! - Comments

Cosmetic?

Dodge — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 02:33:12 -0400

I saw it alright. Trouble is it is not a definable legal term. If someone really wanted to spray they could find a few purpose reasons that don't involve the word cosmetic.

For this reason by accident or design those who call for a cosmetic ban often get a total ban by the time the bylaw is written in language that leaves no loopholes.

Roundup is not usually thought of as a cosmetic herbicide. But it appears here right after the thread is started under the cosmetic call to action.

Killex or 2,4-D is the herbicide that selectively kills broadleaf plants and is widely used to give lawns that golf green look. This is the one considered the cosmetic. So perhaps using it to kill weeds would be okay but using it to make your lawn beautiful would not. Not everyone would have the same definition for "cosmetic use", but it sounds good.

Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug.

25 words

sabrinus — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 14:31:20 -0400

OK, so I don't bother coming here (SB Peninsular) for a number of months because a certain person repeatedly, for whatever reason(s), chose to completely misread my postings on several issues. That person seems to no longer be posting. Whatever. Seems now I can't even post 25 words without someone misreading them.

What I would not have expected from you, Dodge, was a post/lecture like this. If you knew who I was, you would know the LAST thing I need from you, or anyone else for that matter, is a sermon on environmental awareness.

My goodness, I wrote a mere 25 words, including the subject line. The rest was copied and pasted from the latest Wiarton Echo. Yet you, amazingly, manage to twist my 25 word contribution into something completely different in your mind.

Ruftic GETS IT. I am fairly confident that pretty much everyone else on this board GETS THE GIST of the post.

Dodge, do you see the word COSMETIC? Cosmetic, as in UNNECESSARY. Here's a hint - you can find the word in the SUBJECT LINE and it's the second last word of the bottom paragraph.

Do I have an agenda? What the??? IF anything, it is YOU who seems to have an agenda, not I.

So here we go again...

L8r, SBP

sabrinus

Pesticides

Ruftic — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 12:29:44 -0400

Ruftic: I think the "key" word here is cosmetic!

Roundup

Dodge — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 17:43:00 -0400

Sabrinus....I have a lot of respect for you. You have all the good intentions of a stalwart environmentalist and perhaps less recognition of the evenhandedness that the use of herbicides by humans has to be tempered with. Everything that man does on this earth leaves a footprint and we need to live our lives in a way that minimizes that footprint. We cannot eliminate it altogether for life would not exist in that case. We would freeze or starve or go blind from reading by candlelight.

Understand that something well over 50 million pounds of roundup are used in the North American continent each year and most of it typically on farm and commercial land applications. For example last year I observed a person spraying all the fence lines with roundup at a local farm on Spring Creek Road. Every plant was killed at the fence. Now this application alone would far outstrip the cumulative residential applications at Sauble for the whole year. Compared to ag applications the residential loading does not even move the needle.

How does this relate to your post? There are strict rules for ag applications and they include not applying near a watercourse, not applying when rainfall is expected and other usual application guidelines. It has long been known that roundup has toxicity to some organisms including earthworms which are more likely to be in the application zone. There is a footprint. When compared to the loss of wetland habitat due to farm drainage and development the use of roundup would appear to have much less of an impact on species diversity and population size if you look at some areas of rural Ontario. Ever wondered how many tadpoles you would kill by elimination of a whole swamp?

Yet there are those who would use isolated examples of specific research in a manner intended to result in a general ban on every pesticide and herbicide. The way this is done typically gains popular support but when total bans are considered they run afoul of accepted residential, agricultural and commercial methodology. The end result is that neither side is happy.

I rarely use roundup it is too toxic for me to handle. I believe there are very few residential applications for it.

Roundup remains one of the most effective kill strategies for poison ivy. 2,4-D requires repeated applications even though it is less toxic and requires repeated exposure to the spray. There are other so called green methods if you have time to experiment.

If this committee is to set effective policy it cannot be done with a resident population inflamed by one line posts giving links to a research summary without giving effective comment about the reasons for giving us the link. We well know roundup is toxic in a number of ways. Yet the world is not ready for $20/liter corn oil. The world is not ready to grow corn without roundup although it's use can be minimized. We know roundup is most effective if it stays on the spray site. Cost of material goes a long way to ensuring that it is applied properly. If it gets to a pond then something is really wrong. That is why tadpoles seem an odd way to make a point.

There are two entities out there. The users and the banners. The answer lies in regulation and research into better herbicides. I have stated that roundup is widely used in some cases very close to Sauble residental areas. Agriculture and subdivisions both exist here.

So be specific are you calling for a complete ban on herbicides and on pesticides or are you asking for the municipality to have a reasonable expectation that they are being used properly? Do you have an agenda?

What happens when insecticides get in our ponds & streams...

sabrinus — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:26:52 -0400

Roundup kills aquatic vertebrates

How about them fertilizers too?

garym — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 01:01:14 -0400

Both the cosmetic and the commercial over-use above and beyond the call of plant nutrition, washes off the topsoil and out into the Great Unknown, or at least, it was unknown up until now. Do you think it could be worth a committee report or two especially now that we've found the soil-enhancers to be the prime smoking gun for the plague of deformed frogs sweeping the hinterlands, and maybe even the ironic source of the West Nile threat?

From the University of Colorado researchers:

"... increased levels of nitrogen and phosphorus cause sharp hikes in the abundance and reproduction of a snail species that hosts microscopic parasites known as trematodes... The nutrients stimulate algae growth, increasing snail populations and the number of infectious parasites released by snails into ponds and lakes. The parasites subsequently form cysts in the developing limbs of tadpoles causing missing limbs, extra limbs and other severe malformations

'This is the first study to show that nutrient enrichment drives the abundance of these parasites, increasing levels of amphibian infection and subsequent malformations ... The research has implications for both worldwide amphibian declines and for a wide array of diseases potentially linked to nutrient pollution, including cholera, malaria, West Nile virus and diseases affecting coral reefs.'"
[ Nutrient pollution drives frog deformities by ramping up infections, says CU-Boulder study ]

garym: ict evangelist - musician - whatever

No more pesticides and herbicides for cosmetic reasons!

sabrinus — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 13:37:17 -0400

From Wiarton Echo
Wednesday September 26, 2007

The Town of South Bruce Peninsula has formed a Pesticide/Herbicide Committee to recommend to council whether it should consider placing restrictions and regulating the usage of pesticides in the Town of South Bruce Peninsula. The committee consists of councillors Yvonne Harron, Wray Lamont, Dan Kerr and residents Dr. John Carter, Randy Brough and staff liaison Julie Kanmacher. The committee has met to discuss issues such as the cosmetic use of pesticides, pesticide use near water sources, the needs of golf courses, pure ground source water resources, and the concerns of residents using, sand points and shallow wells for their drinking water.