On a lazy weekend afternoon, couples, families with kids
and dogs sprawl amongst the trees in a grassy park in
west Toronto. It's a familiar sight yet something seems
out of place — thick patches of dandelion and clover
seem to have sprung up everywhere. It's a far cry from
the uninterrupted green of summers before the pesticide
ban went into effect. But back then, getting rid of the
dandelions meant dousing the soil with the popular herbicide
2,4-D, now linked to a host of health problems including
reproductive disorders and childhood leukemia, according
to studies examined by Ontario's College of Family Physicians
(OCFP) in a 2004 literature review.
Not everyone's happy about the
ban now that the weeds are back with a vengeance. "I
don't know if you've been in Toronto lately, but the
parks look like crap," says Debra Conlon, publicist
for CropLife, the pesticide industry's lobbying arm.
But it seems that crap is in the
eye of the beholder. According to Dr Monica Campbell,
PhD, manager of Toronto Public Health's Environmental
Protection Office, an informal 2001 literature review
conducted by the city raised red flags about the safety
of common lawn and garden pesticides. These concerns
were reinforced by the OCFP's 2004 review.
PERVASIVE
PROBLEM
Both reviews showed links between common pesticides
and health issues including reproductive problems, neurological
disorders and various cancers. The OCFP's conclusions
were clear: "Given the wide range of commonly used home
and garden products associated with health effects,
our message to patients should focus on reduction of
exposure to all pesticides," the report says.
In response to these findings,
city council passed a bylaw prohibiting the use of pesticides
for cosmetic purposes in 2003. After a court challenge
and an appeal by the pesticide industry, the bylaw was
upheld in the Court of Appeals this May. Personal use
by homeowners will be phased out starting this September,
after which unauthorized pesticide use will be punishable
by fines of over $200.
Ms Conlon is unimpressed by both
the OCFP's literature review and the ban. "The literature
review doesn't take into account the role that Health
Canada plays in regulating pesticides," she says. "It's
not a case of putting in an application and getting
your product registered. It takes skids of data, which
take years to produce, and then they'll register it
if it causes no unacceptable risk to human health and
the environment."
MISUSE
IN MUNICIPALITIES
But for Dr Campbell, neither Health Canada's registration
process nor provincial regulations address issues that
come up on a municipal level. "In Toronto, there was
no protective legislation to restrict pesticide use
by the general population. That's a concern, because
we've observed a lot of inadvertent overuse of pesticides."
Gideon Forman, the executive
director of the Canadian Association of Physicians for
the Environment, also disagrees that Health Canada's
regulatory process provides sufficient protection. "When
pesticide manufacturers apply for registration," he
says, "they pay the Pest Management Regulatory Agency
[PMRA] a registration fee — so the government regulatory
body is funded in part by the industry. Government agencies
become more and more dependent on industry dollars,
so there's an obvious conflict of interest." He also
questions their research. "It comes down to the age-old
question of whom you trust. We trust the OCFP's literature
review more than we do the PMRA industry-financed studies."
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