"Pam - gardengal" wrote in message
news:e6m1c.171919$uV3.729831@attbi_s51...

"Hound Dog" wrote in message
...

I lived in a farming area much of my life. After seeing the tons and
tons
of
chemicals farmers used on their crops every year, I fail to understand
the
fuss about home owners using a few pounds of fertilizers and weed
killers
on
their lawns two or three times a year.

Hound Dog

A "few pounds of fertilizers and weed killers"? You seriously
underestimate
the problem. In my area alone, the EPA estimates 1.1 MILLION pounds of
fertilizers and pesticides are dumped on our lawns annually. And that is
only the urban areas of a 8 county cummulative watershed in an extremely
environmentally conscious section of the country. Multiply that a few
hundred or a thousand times to address other urban areas across the
country
and the total rapidly escalates into the billions of pounds. That is not
chump change to the pesticide manfacturers nor is it an insiginificant
impact on our watersheds. .

Unfortunately, a wide segment of the population shares your uninformed
view
and the attitude of "what can it hurt if I use lawn chemicals, correctly
or
incorrectly - I'm just one person" prevails. Let's look at the
statistics -
and they're not even very current. In 1997, 4.6 BILLION pounds of
pesticides
(not including fertilizers) were consumed in the US. Of this, about 2/3's
was utilized by the agricultural sector, the remainder by residential
homeowners. That's 1.5 billion pounds attributed to Joe Blow and his
neighbors and the data is six years old - I'd estimate the total is well
above 2 billion by now. Hardly an insignificant amount. This IS a problem


pam - gardengal

Wow! And they accuse Bush of "FUZZY MATH"