By Francesca Lyman SPECIAL TO MSNBC
July 5 —Bug and weed killers can strike more than their intended targets, so it’s wise to keep them away from children. Yet many school districts use these chemicals. Some states that have surveyed their school districts, including New York and Wisconsin, have found use of these agents in 80 to 90 percent of cases. However, pressed by parents, a growing number of school districts and localities are switching from chemical pest control to less toxic methods.
WHEN 14-YEAR-OLD Emily Schultz went into remission from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, her parents let her return to her school in their northern Indiana town. But her first day back, her mother, Kathy, was horrified to discover that the school once again sprayed lawns and grounds with the toxic phenoxy pesticide 2,4-D, a chemical that some studies have linked to this form of cancer. As a teacher within the school system, Kathy had watched firsthand as custodial staff and pest control people went up and down the halls during school hours, routinely spraying indoors for insects and outdoors for weeds. Kathy wanted to work with the school to stop the spraying or at least be notified when sprayings were scheduled so she could remove her child from school. School administrators were understanding of the family’s plight and met with Kathy to discuss the chemicals they had been using.
“We weren’t going to sue the school,” says Emily’s father, Jerry Schultz, a pastor of a Lutheran church, “because we couldn’t prove that those chemicals were the cause of her disease, though we were pretty sure they were a powerful factor.” Emily had attended the school for eight years and was chronically exposed, he says. “After all, they were treating school properties every month, whether they needed it or not, and spraying during school hours.”
What you can do
•Ask your school district if a pest management policy is in place. If so, find out if it limits or bans the use of pesticides and includes notification of pesticide applications. If not, consider campaigning for a policy based on Integrated Pest Management.
• Create a coalition with other parents.
• Do your homework. Find out what the pest problems
are in your school and how they are treated. Research the health impact of the pesticides used. Seek least-toxic solutions to these pest problems and determine approximate costs.
• Determine what you want in a policy, such as a complete ban on pesticides or a policy which allows for one-time spraying on a case-by-case basis. If you feel the school district may be averse to an IPM program, suggest a test project.
• Meet with school staff. Present your information without being confrontational.
• Develop policy and action programs. Get them in writing.
• Suggest hiring an IPM coordinator to ensure that the policy is followed, and create an oversight committee consisting of parents, school staff and members of the community.
Adapted from Mothers and Others for a LIvable Planet.
Despite her mother’s best efforts, a few months later, in August 1994, Emily tragically suffered a relapse of the cancer and died. Only then, said Jerry, did Kathy have time to work with the school to help reduce chemical exposure for other youngsters, such as their own two remaining children. Kathy worked for years to get the school to adopt an alternative pest control program based on minimizing pesticides. She even led a fly-swatting detail in classrooms to eliminate the need for insecticides. But the school, run by a school board heavily represented by farmers, says Jerry, was hard-pressed to question these conventional agricultural chemicals and “viewed those against them as anti-chemical fanatics.” In the end, the Schultzes moved away, to Amery, Wis., to find a school system tolerant of change.
GROWING LEGION OF PARENTS
These days, people like the Schultzes aren’t isolated pariahs but part of growing legion of parents calling for school districts to cut down or even eliminate their use of hazardous chemicals for ridding schools of weeds and unwanted bugs. School districts in several cities, including San Francisco and Philadelphia, and some six states have enacted legislation encouraging pest control practices that minimize pesticides, among them New York, Massachusetts and Wisconsin. “Many of us in Wisconsin prefer that pesticides not be used in and around our children’s schools,” wrote a coalition of that state’s environment groups recently. “We also prefer that pests not harm our children.”
Is your child exposed?
To strike a balance between using potentially harmful chemicals and eliminating pests, their solution is the increasingly popular tool of Integrated Pest Management (IPM). IPM, which they define as “an ongoing process of evaluating and treating site-specific pest problems,” comes down to a variety of preventive, commonsensical steps to controlling pests, from good sanitation to vigilant maintenance. It starts with identifying the pest and its movements — and eliminating its point of entry or source of food.
LESS-TOXIC APPROACHES
“Instead of reaching for a can of Termin-X,” says Richard Best, director of capital projects for the Bainbridge School District, in Bainbridge Island, Wash., “we first educate ourselves on the wasps and where they’re coming in. Then we plug up their entries and, if we still need to, grab a can of non-toxic Mint Oil, which usually helps them decide to relocate.” IPM, originally developed to help farmers reduce their dependence on chemicals to control insects, weeds and plant diseases, while saving money and reducing pollution, is being applied in many school settings.
“We have found ways to do things that are far more benign to the environment and to people in the school environment,” says Best. “At the same time, we’ve saved money and the time we might have spent facing staff discontent and health problems.”
Instead of toxic chemicals to combat carpenter ants, Best applies their natural enemies, nematodes. For cockroaches, he uses “a cocktail of boric acid and Karo syrup,” which he says “dries them up from the inside out.” Instead of preventing grass or vines from climbing up a fence by spraying weedkillers, for example, the district occasionally clips it or burns it off, he says. “We actually watch the grass grow,” he adds. “It’s nice.”
While some IPM practitioners count pesticides in their arsenal, they generally use them as weapons of last resort. However, the pest control industry, not surprisingly, prefers to define IPM with pesticides having a key part. Allen James, director of Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment, a nonprofit industry trade group representing chemical manufacturers, formulators and distributors, cautions that eliminating chemicals altogether “puts students, teachers and properties at risk” by exposing them to such threats as “allergic reactions and asthma due to weeds, spider bites and poison ivy.”
However, a growing number of school districts are finding success going completely pesticide-free, using a kit of non-toxic tactics from enzymes to borax. They argue that such strategies are more effective than conventional pesticide-reliant ones and “served us well before the advent of chemicals,” says Bob McClintock, assistant superintendent for business at the Northmont City school district near Dayton, Ohio. For one, says McClintock, spraying didn’t “get to the root causes of the problem,” and so the pests would always return. Secondly, the pests would become resistant, and rebound even more strongly, he says. “Not only does it work, but it has many intangibles as well,” he says. Parents, staff, and children are happier, adds McClintock, because they feel the school is looking out for their health. And in the long-run, he argues, it makes fiscal sense: “Schools are liable for everything, so anything we could do to remove a potential problem is in our best interest, too.”
Francesca Lyman is an environmental and travel journalist and editor of the American Museum of Natural History book, “Inside the Dzanga-Sangha Rain Forest” (Workman, 1998).
Original story: http://www.msnbc.com/news/427679.asp