Lethal lawns? - how weed and insect killers affect children's health

Vegetarian Times, June, 1995 by Mark Harris

PARENTS WHO SPRAY their lawns with weed and insect killers may be putting their children at risk for cancer, says a study in the February Anerican journal of Public Health.

According to the study, children whose yards were treated with weed and insect killers were four times more likely to develop cancer of the soft tissues than children with untreated lawns. This finding is part of a broader study on the link between childhood cancer and exposure to electromagnetic fields, undertaken by Jack Leiss, Ph.D., while at the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health. In collecting data, Leiss interviewed parents of 252 children who had been diagnosed with cancer between 1976 and 1983. Among other questions, parents were asked whether, during that period, their homes had been exterminated for insects to the extent that they had to temporarily vacate the premises; whether their yards had ever been treated with herbicides or insecticides; and whether they had ever hung pest strips inside the home.

The study found a "strong but imprecise association" between yard treatment and soft tissue cancer for children exposed at any time from birth to two years of age. A "relatively strong" connection between pest strips and leukemias was also noted in children whose mothers had been exposed in the last trimester of pregnancy; these children had three times the risk of developing leukemias. Associations between other exposures and cancers proved inconclusive. Broad conclusions to be drawn from the study, according to the report, are that "some types of home pesticide use may be associated with some types of childhood cancer," and that more research is needed.

Should parents ditch the pest strips and call off the exterminator and lawn service? Not necessarily. "Our study does not provide a good enough basis for determining behavior," says Leiss, now head of survey operations at the State Center for Health and Environmental Statistics in Raleigh, N.C. "There are too many limitations to the study for that." For one, the study did not measure exposure to specific chemicals used by exterminators and in pest strips; also, the kinds of questions posed to parents were too general to support scientific conclusions. The next step, says Leiss, is to design a study that addresses those limitations and focuses solely on home pesticide use and childhood cancers. To date, no study has done so. Leiss encourages parents concerned about the issue to contact public policy officials to allocate funding for better, more extensive research into the subject.

But for Caroline Cox, editor of The journal of Pesticide Reform at the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides in Eugene, Ore., the issue is much more straightforward. "You could always do a better study, one that's bigger or more definitive," she says. "But the point is that there are plenty of safe, non-chemical alternatives to pesticides out there. Why not just use them and then not have to worry about whether you're poisoning your kids?"