How Do We Know If a Spray Is “Safe?”

September 17th, 2019

   I came across a home gardening book recently (“Garden Enemies” by Cynthia Westcott) that was popular and well respected in the 1950s for helping gardeners figure out what to do about damage to their plants.

“Safe” or not?

   Over and over again, it suggested DDT as a routine solution to the assorted caterpillars and other bugs crawling in gardens.

   We now cringe at how widely DDT once was used since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned it in 1972 over health and environmental concerns… after millions of people applied millions of pounds of it.

   For one thing, it makes me wonder what we’re spraying today that will be found to be unacceptably toxic tomorrow.

   For another, it makes it hard to answer the question I get a lot, which is, “Is this spray safe to use?”

   I’ve come to the conclusion that “safe” is a relative term. Different people have drastically different ideas on what’s “safe” and what’s not, and the line between “safe” and “unsafe” that even regulators draw is a moving target as new research comes in.

   Witness the current dilemma over the herbicide Roundup.

   Some people use it without whims and point to studies showing that it’s “safe,” while others point to recent lawsuits as evidence that Roundup is a cancer-causer that ought to be banned.

   Things don’t get easier when you go researching evidence to make your decision.

   You’ll usually run across results all over the board, depending on who did the research, how they set it up, and what all was tested over how long.

   Proving that anything causes cancer isn’t easy in general since so many factors can go into that pervasive disease.

   I’m not a scientist, but I don’t know how you’d ever prove for certain that any product is “safe.”

   Add to that each person’s own tolerance level and opinions on safety and that explains why you have some people who actually go looking for the most toxic pesticide or herbicide they can find (under the opinion that most toxic also means most effective) and others who curl into a fetal position at the mention of the word “chemical.”

   For what it’s worth, my opinion is to lean toward the hands-off approach.

   On one hand, I don’t think using approved chemicals as directed spells instant doom, and I don’t condemn people who decide to go that route.

   On the other hand, I suspect that at least some of the chemicals we’re using today are having cumulative and hard-to-measure negative effects on us and the environment, including harming pollinators, interfering with soil microbial activity, adding trace pollutants to water, and inching into our food supply.

   Regulators try to decide at what point we should be concerned about each chemical. That’s what leads to rejections of proposed new products and the banning of ones we’ve used in the past. (Not everybody agrees with those decisions, by the way.)

   Besides that 1950s book that was so keen on DDT, my “safe-side” leaning got nailed down a few years ago when I was at a turfgrass conference

   A chemical-company rep was telling a group of lawn-care professionals about his company’s newest product. He said the old one – the one he admitted as proclaiming to be “safe” the year before – had been banned for safety reasons. He then went on to say the new product was “really safe.”

   Since I’m not terribly confident that we’re able (or willing) to unearth even all of the serious threats, I’ve decided to use as little of any spray as possible. That includes so-called “organic” products that sometimes can be more harmful and toxic than some synthetic chemicals.

Just because a product is “organic” doesn’t mean it’s “safe.”

   “Organic” doesn’t equal “safe,” just as “chemical” doesn’t equal “unsafe.”

   In that 1950s book, the author described DDT as “the first organic insecticide to sweep the country.”

   I try to steer my way around bug and disease trouble by doing good cultural things, such as improving the soil with compost, keeping plants as healthy as possible with adequate water and nutrition, and picking trouble-free varieties in the first place.

   I try to avoid herbicides by hand-picking weeds, planting densely, mulching, and weed-whacking creeping weeds – limiting sprays to spot-treating when those strategies don’t work or aren’t practical for my aging back.

   When it comes to people’s questions about whether a spray is “safe,” I’m sorry to say I can’t give a simple “yes” or “no” answer.