Today is Earth Day and it looks like the McGuinty government is giving Ontario residents a present. Their election promise to ban the use of cosmetic pesticides (including herbicides, insecticides & fungicides) on private lawns, gardens and fruit trees is coming to fruition. However, this ban doesn't include farmers, golf courses or managed forests.
A recent study in the journal BioMedCentral (BMC) Neurology states that insecticides and herbicides significantly increase the risk of Parkinson's, especially in families with no history of the disease. These studies are interesting as far as finding contributing factors to disease development, but as far as health is concerned, I don't think we need studies to tell us that these chemicals are bad for us. Now of course your lawns and gardens may not look as pretty and you will have to do a lot more manual labour to pull out all the weeds, but the extra gardening will help you stay active and prevent further contamination of the earth and our water supplies.
As a side note to those of you who love to golf: golf courses are one of the most actively sprayed places, so strictly from a health perspective, one has to balance the relaxation and health benefits of going golfing w/ the toxins you may be inhaling.
Happy Earth Day everyone!
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