Jack Burns Lives!

No Princes Here

It’s May in the Mississippi Delta, a good month for watching your garden plants really start to reach for the sun. May is highly tolerable, not too hot with pleasant sixty-five degree mornings and cool nights. Midday delivers a strong hint summer is near. At noon, the brilliant, clear blue sky of spring gives way to haze, the humidity climbs and the thermostat inches closer to ninety degrees. You realize it’s ’bout time to find your favorite rope and hit the waterin’ hole.

June is bearable, but July, August and September make you long for the cooling temperatures of fall. The juncos have fled and so have most of the chickadees. Each year, thanks to climate change, they arrive later and leave sooner.

In most parts of the world, you can tell what time of year it is by paying keen attention to sounds and to smells. This is especially true in the deep South. I can sit in my garden, close my eyes, tell you exactly what time of year it is by my eyes and my ears. No Christian calendar needed. Avian songs are particularly distinctive in early spring. Baby robin’s and other species are quickly detectable by their hunger calls in late March and early April. I hear dragonflies zip across the patio and over the roof toward the safety of the Eastern pine and Juniper on the north side of the house. By these sounds, I know it’s spring.

In May, I can faintly hear honeybees in the clover, and by June, they become quite noticeable as hundreds descend upon the blooming chives. I’m told, however, that honeybees are dying in massive numbers and no one knows exactly why. Fungus? Parasites? Global warming? Pesticides?

In my own community, I believe chemicals are a likely culprit. My neighbors routinely use a plethora of poison to kill clover and other so-called weeds, several of which are primary pollination sources for honeybees. I’ve also read where cellphones may be involved. This is all so phenomenally stupid because we don’t need either. No one needs to use pesticides on their lawn. No one needs a cellphone. But humans apparently need honeybees, a non-native, North American pollinator we now depend upon for our food supply.

And there are of course the cicadas, whose evening song is one of the most recognizable sounds of summer in the deep South, and lightning bugs, also known as fireflies and glow worms. I can remember many a steamy summer night seated on my great-grandfather’s wrap around, redwood porch, listening to the cicadas. It seemed as if there were thousands, and there probably were. At dusk, the lightning bugs would appear, and I’d run through the yard catching as many as I could with an empty jar, a deluxe model with holes in the top so the bugs could breathe….

That was in the sixties, and it seems like yesterday. I can still imagine grandpa sitting on the glider in his white cotton shirt and seersucker trousers, clutching a glass of iced, sweet tea served in a mayonnaise jar. He wore a white panama hat and wire rimmed glasses, and was a Delta cotton man. A real Southern gentleman.

The other unmistakable sounds of summer are that of our amphibian friends, L. catesbeianus, and in much higher numbers, B. bufo. Otherwise known as Bullfrogs and toads. Common toad to be precise. Not an attractive animal and sometimes unjustly associated with witchcraft and the spreading of warts. Important, however, because they keep invertebrate populations in check and are an important overall indicator of ecosystem health.

I used to hear them nearly every evening, especially after a rain, but not any longer. I don’t see ‘em. Don’t hear ‘em. And the reason I don’t is because they aren’t here.

There are approximately 230 species of amphibians, including about 140 species of salamanders and 90 species of frogs and toads, that occur in the continental United States. Scientists estimate that the number of endemic species that have suffered losses has increased from 33 species in 1980 to 52 species in 1994. We know their numbers are decreasing world wide, and we know that pesticides are a huge part of the problem.

In the United States, Homeowners use up to 10 times more chemical pesticides per acre on their lawns than farmers use on crops, and they spend more per acre, on average, to maintain their lawns than farmers spend per agricultural acre. (Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Division of Contaminants).

Amphibians are especially susceptible to these contaminants, because they breathe and absorb water, at least in part, through their skin. Exposure to contaminants during development can lead to malformations and grotesque physical deformities. Amphibian species in Minnesota are found to have astonishingly high rates of physical deformities, and at least three species of amphibians have apparently vanished from their former range in Yosemite National Park.

Overall, the causes are multiple, including climate change, pesticides, loss of habitat and disease. In my bioregion, I suspect chemical use is at the top of list. Where does it come from?

Let’s start with Trugreen.

Trugreen returns shareholder value by providing a wide range of chemicals to homeowners and businesses that want “perfect” turf. What perfect really means is a monoculture of non-native grasses. Putting greens. Something you never see occur naturally. Yards, athletic fields, golf courses and public parks are soaked with more than 70 million pounds of their products all year long. It’s the largest professional lawn care provider in the nation and annually generating more than $1.3 billion in income.

Via their website, Trugreen claims:

-It has “taken active leadership role in both developing and supporting sound environmental practices and regulatory policies.”

There are no examples cited.

-To have established their own “set of environmental stewardship principles.”

The principles are not posted.

-Their “scientists, in consultation with a board-certified toxicologist, evaluate products using a “weight of the evidence analysis” to consider risks to our employees, children and pets and the environment.”

There isn’t any detailed information on this process, but I can assume the analysis is one of “risk vs. reward,” where the findings of one or two highly paid staff “scientists” would be more heavily weighted than research that leads to increased costs. A Ph.D. chemist that lives in my neighborhood informs me that’s pretty much how it works.

-They “will not approve products containing known or probable human carcinogens as defined by the U.S. EPA, the National Toxicology Program,or the International Agency for Research in Cancer.” And, “the pest products, when applied to the lawn, contain less than 0.5% active ingredient and are considered practically non-toxic at these dilutions.”

This last claim is of particular interest. Notice it says nothing whatsoever about non-humans. TruGreen’s standard customer receipt lists 32 pesticides available for use through its residential lawn care program. An analysis of these pesticides by Toxics Action Center based on information from the manufacturer’s Material Safety Data Sheets reveals:

17 of 32 (53%) of TruGreen ChemLawn’s products include ingredients that are possible carcinogens, as defined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

All 32 of TruGreen ChemLawn’s products include ingredients that pose threats to the environment including water supplies, aquatic organisms, and non-targeted insects.

9 of 32 (28%) of TruGreen ChemLawn’s products include ingredients that are known or suspected reproductive toxins (7/32 known, 22%).

11 of 32 (34%) of TruGreen ChemLawn’s products include ingredients that are known or suspected endocrine disruptors (4/32 known, 12.5%).

13 of 32 (41%) of TruGreen ChemLawn’s products include ingredients that are banned or restricted in other countries.

“According to the EPA, 95% of the pesticides used on residential lawns are possible or probable carcinogens. In 1989, the National Cancer Institute reported children develop leukemia six times more often when pesticides are used around their homes. The American Journal of Epidemiology found that more children with brain tumors and other cancers had been exposed to insecticides than children without. Studies by the National Cancer Society and other medical researchers have discovered a definite link between fatal non-Hodgkins Lymphoma (NHL) and exposure to triazine herbicides (like Atrazine), phenoxyacetic herbicides (2,4-D), organophosphate insecticides (Diazinon), fungicides, and fumigants; all of which have uses as lawn chemicalsMost lawn application products 2,4-D, Captan, Diazinon, Dursban, Dacthal, Dicamba, and Mecocrop. Each was registered without full safety screening. 2,4-D is an artificial hormone that has become a synonym for “dangerous pesticide”, but dermal absorption of mecoprop is far more dangerous, and dicamba is much more persistent in the environment – a mixture of these three is usually used, not 2,4-D alone. Diazinon has been banned for use on golf courses and sod farms due to massive waterfowl deaths but is still widely used on lawns and gardens. It is an organophosphate which disables the nervous system by blocking enzymes essential for nerve impulse transmission.” (Source: www.chem-tox.com)

I’ve written Trugreen and asked a few questions, since their claims of good stewardship and sound science appear purposely deceitful. In fact, if the published data is correct, Trugreen is violating a number of Federal laws. To date, I haven’t received a response.

To be fair, I can’t just point a finger at Trugreen. Trugreen gets a lot of my attention because of its size and because their headquarters is six miles from my house. But there are others, including the widely distributed herbicide Roundup. Pitt assistant professor of biology Rick Relyea found that Roundup, the second most commonly applied herbicide in the United States, is “extremely lethal” to amphibians. Relyea published his findings in a research paper titled “The Impact of Insecticides and Herbicides on the Biodiversity and Productivity of Aquatic Communities,” published in the journal Ecological Applications.

Relyea found that Roundup caused a 70 percent decline in amphibian biodiversity and an 86 percent decline in the total mass of tadpoles. Leopard frog tadpoles and gray tree frog tadpoles were completely eliminated and wood frog tadpoles and toad tadpoles were nearly eliminated. So, it’s not just a herbicide. It’s a broad spectrum biocide.

As a child in the sixties, I don’t remember people using lawn chemicals and companies like Trugreen. I do remember our human powered rotary blade push mower, and I enjoy the one I now use. If it was up to me, I’d never cut the lawn, but my community has a grass height ordinance, so I keep the clover trimmed back to the legal limit. Well, not all of it. I keep one large area in the back “cut free” to attract pollinators and provide cover for animals.

I do remember frogs and toads and their delightful evening songs, and I do not think their decline and the increased use in lawn chemicals is a coincidence. The science indicates a direct link.

Action? The only thing that can be done is to spread the word and hope people will stop buying poison from criminal organizations. Lawsuits? There are hundreds in court today, many of which involve childhood cancers. They’ll still be there, long after the stockholders have cashed out and spent their wad.

The beat goes on. Trugreen generates billions in annual profit, the amphibians keep dying and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, also headquartered in Memphis, stays at capacity. But perhaps help is on the way.

Once the economy crashes, and I hope it does, people won’t be able to spend money on lawn services. In a post Peak Oil world, humans may be more concerned with eating and staying warm. And eating may not be as simple as just bebopping down to the grocer and getting whatever you want when you want it. With fewer honeybees and $100 per barrel oil, those Florida oranges may not be so readily obtainable. Neither will out of season corn, thanks to myopic venture capitalists and farmers that transformed food producing acreage into acreage for transportation fuel. Humans might just have to eat what can be grown locally and organically. That, or not eat.

It all suits me just fine.

You can’t consistently fuck things up and expect to get away with it. Eventually, the game ends.

You gotta ante up and pay the bill.

So, the chances are good amphibians will recover. Perhaps not all species can, but I’ll hope for the best. More frogs. Fewer humans? Sounds reasonable.

Balance restored.