Poison Is Bad

You know what sucks? Looking ten weeks pregnant when you are zero weeks pregnant. I have a fetching bloat going, courtesy of the Pill. It has nothing to do with the ten cheeseburgers and entire bag of SpudPuppies I consumed over the weekend. I swear. Anyway, I am about seven pounds heavier than usual, and I'm fairly certain it's mostly salt water, and it's definitely all in my belly. At least it's not the fault of the injectables.

However: I'm thinking the rip-roaring 'rhoids were. At least, they've miraculously disappeared, what with my estrogen dropping to normal levels. But whoo boy, for a few days there, I was SO NOT going to wear a thong. Even now the thought makes me cringe.

I am willing to entertain the suggestion, though, that those fabled 'rhoids of yore were sucked back up into my ass, along with some loose change, during the Festival of Fear and Fury held yesterday inside my body. See, it was a beautiful sunny Sunday. We have this little dog, and she's always on a leash since we don't have a yard, but she can really tear it up on a field, so we sometimes go out to the local high school athletic fields and race her like a tiny horse.

When we got to the field, we noticed an odd fertilizer-y smell, but since the school is in the middle of a Tyvek Acres development, we figured some dude was probably doing up his lawn, and proceeded to run around the fields with the tiny beast. After about 20 minutes, we decided to take off; as we approached the parking lot, we noticed a tiny sign. It was a sheet of paper tacked to a knee-high piece of four-by-four, and it said, in runny, blurry letters: Pesticide Application Today. Keep Off Grass. XXXOOO, TruGreen Chemlawn. And some more stuff after that. But by then my field of vision had gone all red Jell-o, and I was filled with both terror and fury.

Let me interrupt the narrative for a moment to say: I have always loathed Chemlawn. When I was a kid, I used to sneer at the trucks around the neighborhood, and rail against neighbors who figured an Astroturf-grade lawn was worth the noticeable demise of frogs in the creek behind my house. I have been known to flip off present-day citizens who proudly fly those little white flags. Evil shit, pesticides. Evil, evil shit.

Anyway, we sped home, I jumped in the shower with the dog and soaped her up three times; then I washed her face with a washcloth three times. Then I washed myself, my husband took a shower, and I washed the clothes we'd been wearing. Scrubbed the shoes with detergent. Meanwhile, my husband called the vet, called the animal division of Poison Control. The guy at Poison Control said that since it was a school field, and they were fighting crabgrass, they'd probably used one of the less toxic poisons, and skin irritation was the main thing to watch for. Along with excessive licking, chewing, and drooling.

So the dog is fine, no neurotoxin exposure that we can tell, no skin problems. But what about the kids and pets whose yards abut the school fields? There are no fences there. Of course their parents probably pay the same company to spray the same shit on those very yards.

Why wasn't there better notice? We looked all around those fields, easily a square mile, and the only notification was that tiny crappy sign. We saw the baseball team practicing on another part of the field. Why the fuck would a SCHOOL think that crabgrass control was worth poisoning its students, the water supply (this is about 200 yards from a stocked fishing pond)? Are the parents notified? Do they even give a shit? We used to live in that town, and every apartment complex and Pressboard Creek development sprouted the "Pesticide Treated Area" flags in the spring.

We are so fortunate to live in graduate student housing, where the lawn care consists only of mowing and we have an organic garden patch. I forget that most of the rest of this asshole country thinks that dumping Round-Up into our collective water supply is just peachy.

You know what I wish? I wish the cancer and endocrine disruption and nerve damage caused so frequently by common pesticides could be confined to those who make and sell those chemicals. I want every executive at TruGreen to wake up each morning to a nice tall glass of atrazine on the rocks, and if it's so goddamn safe, how about a sippy cup of bifenthrin for the kids? No? Well then why is okay to do that to me and my children? Oh, wait, I don't have children. Because I have an endocrine disorder. Hm, I wonder if that has anything to do with the horrible endocrine disrupters you poured into my water supply? Gosh, you don't think widespread infertility has anything to do with your chemicals, do you?

Chemlawn's evil isn't confined to spraying deadly poisons; they work their bad mojo on an administrative level, defying pesticide bans, fighting them in court, marketing their product to children's sports organizations, providing no training to their employees who may not understand the dangers involved.

Last summer I saw a Chemlawn truck near my house. Not realizing that the university uses the company for mowing sometimes, I went up to the men working and asked if they were using any chemicals on the grass. I had to ask them in Spanish; none of the men there spoke much English. One of the men responded, "Yes, we have some chemicals. Do you want some?" He was seriously going to lend me a cup of Round-Up if I wanted it. I explained that I wanted to make sure no chemicals were being used; they assured me that they never sprayed our neighborhood. But the whole exchange made me wonder how much information these guys had about the pesticides they did use -- were they instructed to use masks? Did they know how dangerous this shit was? I don't have a lot of faith in the company when it comes to worker safety.

From a human rights standpoint, from an environmental standpoint, from a personal health standpoint, these companies that make and sell these pesticides and herbicides are reprehensible. I feel so powerless against them; they're so big, so rich, and so entrenched in their connection to those in power in this country. They are poisoning our bodies, our breastmilk, our water, our land; they're systematically killing off all the amphibian populations. All because of unsightly crabgrass and some motherfucking caterpillars.

Oh yeah, and money. Don't forget about the money.

If you use these chemicals -- glyphosate, atrazine, bifenthrin, and on and on -- I beg you, please stop. Right now. Dispose of your chemicals properly, too; they're hazardous waste, so don't just throw them in the garbage. If you know someone who uses this stuff, help disseminate information about the hazards of pesticide and herbicide use. There are safe, effective ways to address just about every problem. Kid goes to school? Make sure the school doesn't spray. Work to make sure your town doesn't spray its parks. Mine does, and I'm off to write some letters now.

Made it to the end? Well, thanks for reading. This shit is just way too evil -- and that is not a word I use lightly -- for me to be funny.

Comments

[Monique]

I have pets, and we are as paranoid as they get doing anything to the lawn. But living in base housing we get written up for having dirt in the gutters, so needless to say, they are slightly crazy about perfection.

I recently got a lawyer, so its been fun having the power to pick up the phone and call her. So, standing at the school, during my race home to shower, I would have been on the phone requesting letters be sent to the morons at Chemlawn and the school and everyone else :) Don't know what good it would have done, but I would have had them sent.

[Christina]

Stupid poison spreading freaks. I'm glad your dog-shaped baby is okay!

[Mollie]

Have you SEEN the COLOR of that chemical sludge they hose the grass down with? It's a color that don't exist in nature, that's for damned sure. Eeeek.

"Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees, please!" RIght ON, Joni! That's my Canadian soul sister!!

Unfortunately, some freaks here even spray chems on their sod. But I think it's a trifle rarer here. At least I've got to hope so.

[OliviaDrab]

Oops, here comes another notch in my worry belt! Damn chemical spreaders. I love companies who never worry about their own consequences.

I am glad your doggie is safe.

[Michele]

Having two small dogs that eat everything in sight, I too worry over chemically treated lawns, etc. We have a bad ant problem in Texas, and treating these bastards organically is a hassle, but for our dogs, there is no other way. My mother-in-law thinks I should lock my dogs up on the side of my lawn, which would not be an easy task, and then poison the shit out of the ants with diazanon (sp?) and let the fun begin. Hello, you know the diazanon is not going to stay in the area we put it! And all of my neighbors have small children or dogs, I would be putting them at risk along with the ants.
You tell it like it is, Jo, tell it like it is! Down with Chemlawn! Down withe Chemlawn!

[Jo]

Oh man. I'm so happy to find sympathizers here. That's just one of the issues I get all frothed up about, and type for forty-five minutes. Maybe I should consider shelling out for the Extended Post feature...

At least in Canada, many more laws govern the use of these chemicals, and some municipalities have enacted outright bans against them (that Chemlawn promptly violated).

Now I totally want a lawyer.

Man, Michele, ants are really bad. I sympathize. And thank you immeasurably for skipping the diazinon; it's a nerve gas. Scary.

[runnerwoman]

For the last 3 weeks the Chemlawn salespeople have been crusing my neighborhood, leaving literature and cornering unsuspecting homeowners. One of them finally got to my husband as he was out working on his bike. I don't think he liked my husband's response to his offer of service - "Why would I pay you to poison my lawn and pollute the environment?"

He's just lucky he didn't make his offer to me, and I don't think his schedule allowed for a 35 minute lecture on the breast cancer clusters that occur in neighborhoods where there is widespread use of chemical lawn applications.

[Summer]

I just spent about 20 happy minutes yanking dandelions out of my yard. No poison, good exercise, and an excellent way to get out agressions.

My husband once had a summer job working for Mosquito Control in the rural country where we went to college. His job was to drive around, look in every pond and creek and ditch and puddle of water, see if there were any mosquito larvae, and then dump a fuckload of poison into the water. The chemical they used was called "Golden Bear", which sounds charming, and it had the effect of keeping the mosquitos in a larval state. Vince found it terrifying, wouldn't touch the stuff, and never used any. He'd lie on his survey sheets, and say he'd used it when he hadn't. Eventually, his supervisors started to catch on that he was never refilling his poison tanks, so he quit before he could get fired.

What's wrong with a little crabgrass? It's green, you can mow it, it covers the dirt, why not let it be?

[chris]

We don't use any. It always surprises me when anyone uses them, especially people with kids and pets. Of course, our yard looks like crap, but we don't care. I kind of like the sneers our neighbors give us. Of course, that probably doesn't have anything to do with our yard.

[OliviaDrab]

Ya know.. now that it is mentioned, my dad used to treat our lawn with diazanon when we lived in Texas. Holy crap. Now I am freaking out.

[Emma Jane]

Rock on!

See "Organic Lawn Care for the Cheap and Lazy," too:

http://www.richsoil.com/lawn/

[Jo]

Honestly, I think no matter what got used in your particular yard, this stuff diffuses through the environment so pretty much everybody's been exposed to pretty much everything. I mean, our parents were doused by DDT planes in their childhoods. Wait, that's sounding way grimmer than I intended it to -- what I mean is, exposure is usually diffuse and probably we're all just fine. You in particular, OD, are just fine.

Anyway, I'm so pleased to see that lots of people don't like pesticides; around here, it's easy to forget that there are plenty of reasonable folks. Ahhhh. Soothing. Thank you.