Organic Land Care–Movement to Ban Herbicide Use in Schools & Parks

The spraying of herbicides in parks, athletic fields, schools, sidewalks, public spaces, & HOAs is an environmental and public health nightmare. Glyphosate, the most common herbicide in the world, has been deemed a “probable human carcinogen” by the World Health Organization and added to California’s Prop. 65 List of chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects & reproductive harm. It would be wise to look into other ways of managing parks, schools, & public spaces without using these chemicals. Fortunately, there is a solution–organic land care. You’ve trusted Mamavation to bring you topics like best & worst pest control products, best & worst organic mattresses, & best & worst cookware, now join us as we bring you the ins and outs of organic land care and how it can help your family.

If You Eat Organic, Pay Attention To This

A couple of years ago, my family participated in a study on glyphosate and how much was inside normal everyday Americans. I collected urine samples from everyone in the family and sent them to a University to be analyzed.  Several months later I got the results of how much glyphosate we were being exposed to.

That’s when this puzzling situation started.

Most of the family had results similar to what “organic eaters” would expect to have except for my middle son. His numbers were so high, they were concerning. Most of the family was around 1 part per billion, but his results were 7.6 parts per billion.

These results didn’t make sense to me so they started me down the path of trying to figure out how they were possible. It was tricky to figure this out because my children were young enough that they were doing everything the same including eating the same meals, going to the same school, and having the same extracurricular activities. We also don’t purchase synthetic herbicides so nothing was sprayed on our property. And when I questioned the neighbors on their recent herbicide use, none of them had sprayed Roundup in a very long time.

How the heck did ONE CHILD get an exposure level that high?

So I started looking into the calendar and noticed that he had a playdate with a friend at a local park a couple of days prior. BINGO. That’s what was different. My son may have been exposed to glyphosate at a local public park.

That’s when the realization sunk in–I can be doing all this work to protect my children at home and ONE INVISIBLE EXPOSURE can ruin it all. 

That exposure must have been so high that it canceled out any preventative measures we took at home to keep him safe from glyphosate by eating organic food. So this year, I sent a Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA) to the parks district asking about pesticide use in my city. They sent me back pesticide use reports to say that Roundup ProMax, an herbicide containing glyphosate, was sprayed at least 162 times in parks within my city that same year.

This is a BIG problem, but there are emerging solutions I want to share with you.

That solution is organic land care and I hope you can join me in making it a reality in public spaces and supporting legislation in California that aims to put it into practice to protect ALL our children.

Organic Land Care: Treating Grass Like an Organic Farm Has Tons of Benefits

Organic land care is something, if adopted, would be of benefit to your family. It’s the idea that public spaces with landscaping, athletic fields, parks & schools can be just as safe from toxic herbicides as an organic farm. Organic land care focuses on bringing life back to the soil by creating a thriving microbial environment underneath our feet. The benefits for this style of turf management are great including:

• Healthier community–avoiding herbicide use around pregnant women, children & autoimmune compromised
• Saves water–soil rich in microbes hold water more efficiently
• Captures carbon–rich microbes in the soil help grow long root shoots, giving the grass the ability to capture carbon
• Shields city from liability–Protects cities, counties, & schools from future liability after glyphosate was added to Prop. 65 list of carcinogens
• Protects workers–thousands of lawsuits have been filed across the US stating that glyphosate caused cancer
• Builds public trust–gives cities, parks & schools something to focus efforts on
• Cost savings–has the ability to save money in the long-term as chemical inputs lessen
• Protects the environment–only uses chemical inputs approved by OMRI organic certification, which do not pollute rivers & streams

Herbicides like glyphosate & 2,4-d are hormone-disrupting chemicals with the ability to impact the health of pregnant women, children, & people with comprised immune systems. This form of turf management brings with it the protection of residents and the environment.

How Organic Land Care is Different Than How Turf Management & Landscaping is Done Today

The model of organic land care is similar to organic farming. Whereas conventional farmers can use up to 900 different chemicals that are mostly toxic persistent pesticides to manage pests and weeds, organic farmers use several other methods before considering organic chemical pesticides.

Organic land care looks for symptoms of imbalance of the soil and uses a series of preventative steps to bring balance back into the ecosystem.

These techniques promote ecological balance, but are an entirely new systems approach to natural lawn and turf management. Most of the differences I’ve found I’ve put below:

• More mowing, hand weeding & patrolling property
• Testing and analyzing soil samples to determine the nutritional needs of soil microbes
• Use of cover cropping, planting buffers and hedgerows
• Use of humic based fertilizers that are naturally based
• Using more preventative measures like building up soil health to a more alkaline state to repel weeds instead of using herbicides. (Yes, the soil likes to be more alkaline naturally and synthetic chemicals make it more acidic. Weeds don’t like alkaline soil.)
• Keep pests and diseases away by using OMRI certified products & other preventative measures
• Sharpening of motor equipment
• More aeration to bring oxygen to the soil
• Use of compost & compost tea
• Avoiding overseeding & overwatering
• Use fertilizer injectors at night for natural pest control (All OMRI certified products)
• Encourages use of wildlife to control pest population like hawk poles & owl boxes
• Use of animals like goats for large scale weeding efforts
• Use of OMRI certified herbicides as last resort. (Note: There are organic herbicides you can use. They are used more in the first 1-2 years before the soil has the chance to change. Once it changes, you should not be relying on them very much because they should not be as prevalent.)

Conventional means of turf and landscape management deplete the soil of natural bacteria & nutrients which make them more dependent on chemicals. But once these chemicals are removed and the soil is fed with organic compost, compost tea, and other organic materials, less chemical application is needed. The entire process takes between 1-3 years depending on how much chemical residue was left behind in the soil and how often the property is used.

Soil is Alive & Captures Carbon When It’s Happy

Soil is alive & captures carbon when it’s happy. To keep the soil happy is to keep the living creatures happy. The living things inside the soil outnumber humans. It’s the ever-present eco-system desiring to be in alignment but deterred by chemicals. These living organisms are needed to maintain healthy soils around urban and suburban areas.

Depending on what part of the United States you find yourself in there will be a range of what is found inside the soil under your feet. The amount of clay, silt, and sand ranges from region to region. And an increase in developments have brought with it engineered dirt.  But there’s a symphony of creatures under the soil that are teeny tiny varying from region to region and they assist the Earth in capturing carbon and making things green & lush.

Here are some of the living things you’ll find under your feet that you want to keep alive inside the soil:

• Bacteria–beneficial organisms in terms of water dynamics, nutrient cycling, and disease suppression for soil that help decompose organic matter & help bring nutrients up into the roots of the plant
• Fungi–beneficial organisms receiving food from the plant and improves nutrient and moisture transfer to the plant root
• Protozoa–bacterial feeders making nutrients available to the plants and build soil structure
• Nematodes–helps make nutrients available to plants & feeds on bacteria, fungi, plants, insects, and other nematodes.
• Microathropods–stimulates prey and distributes the biomass and helps make nutrients available to plants

These microbes beneath the soil allow the plants to produce it’s own food and at a faster and more consistent rate than what can be given by artificial “plant food.” That means, when grass fields convert to organic and the soil changes back into a living environment, they are producing their own fertilizers to sustain themselves throughout the year underneath the ground. No more need for nitrates in fertilizer when the living organisms produce it themselves in a way that does not disrupt the environment. These lifeforms give everyday grass the ability to carbon capture.

Herbicides Are a Public Health Nuisance–This is What Your Children May Be Exposed To.

Pesticides are linked to health conditions like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, Parkinson’s disease, infertility, birth defects, cancers, childhood cancers, among other health issues.

They are commonly found in parks, schools, and public spaces and are both toxic to humans and the environment, especially pregnant women and children in trace amounts. These chemicals are commonly applied several times per year and can be very persistent, meaning they don’t go away. In fact, I found lots of these chemicals inside the report submitted to me by my own city parks district. Here are some of those chemicals that likely are left behind some residue from spraying in public spaces:

• Glyphosate
• 2,4-D
• Dicamba
• Permethrin (Astro)
• Bifenthrin (Allectus, Talstar)
• Cyfluthrin (Tempo)
• Cypermethrin (Demon)
• Thiamethoxam (Meridian)
• Imidacloprid (Merit, Lallet)
• Dinotefuran (Zylam)
• Dlothianidin (Arena, Aloft)
• Organophosphate (OP) (e.g., acephate [Orthene]
• Chlorpyrifos [Dursban]
• Trichlorfon [Dylox]
• Carbamate insecticides carbaryl [Sevin]
• Methiocarb [Mesurol]

In addition to using toxic herbicides, synthetic turf management also has heavy use of fossil fuels, releases greenhouse gasses, disturbs the soil ecosystem, has high salt content, upsets the balance of microbes and leaches contaminants back into the environment. Why are we doing this when they are other options?

Researchers Conclude Organic Land Care Costs The Same As Conventional, Or Maybe Less, And Is More Beneficial To The Soil

Grassroots Environmental Education released a report comparing the costs of maintaining a typical high school football field both with a chemical-intensive program and with an organic land management program over a five year period. This report was prepared for members of the New York State legislature who later voted in favor and passed an organic land care program statewide. The report concludes that the annual cost of maintaining a field using natural products and techniques can be as much as 25% lower than the cost of conventional programs using chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

What they found was the cost of an organic land care & natural turf management program is incrementally higher in the first two years, but then decreases significantly as soil biology improves and water requirements diminish. Total expenditures over five years show a cost savings of more than 7% using natural turf management, and once established, annual cost savings of greater than 25% can be realized.

Harvard Yard Soil Restoration study compared chemical-intensive programs to organic land management programs and found significant benefits to organic land management. The organic land management program areas had great progress:

• developed healthier and longer root systems,
• improved moisture retention,
• required less irrigation and
• improved available nitrogen in the soil to a healthy range because of beneficial fungi, bacteria, and beneficial predators.
• required about 50% less water

Harvard was so impressed, they are continuing the program!

California City Irvine Started a Trend By Banning Herbicides

The City of Irvine became the very first city in California to ban the use of synthetic pesticides on city property. The Council adopted an organic land care policy that limits the use of synthetic pesticides, which includes 570 acres of parks, 70,000 trees, 800 acres of right-of-way, and nearly 1.5 million square feet of facilities. Today they have been under organic land care for four years!

Since then, a restriction of herbicides has swept through the globe. We pulled the cities & counties from California as an example: