Victory:
US Youth Soccer Ends ChemLawn Sponsorship!
In 2003
and 2004, TruGreen/ ChemLawn was the “official
lawn care provider”
of US Youth Soccer (USYS), a national organization
with over 3 million youth soccer players.
TruGreen/ChemLawn
was using this corporate sponsorship to market
directly to children a product that is potentially
hazardous to their health and safety. |
|
Glossy mailers addressed to children encourage them
to ask their parents to sign up for ChemLawn
services, repeatedly promising that a portion
of the sale will be donated to US Youth Soccer.
The pesticides commonly used by TruGreen/ChemLawn
can be extremely hazardous to children, pets
and the environment. More
information, below.
Thanks to hundreds of letters from parents and
other advocates for children's health and safety
all across the country, US Youth Soccer
ended their TruGreen/ ChemLawn sponsorship on
January 1 of this year!
Many thanks and congratulations to US Youth Soccer
for making the right choice, and to all our action
alert subscribers who wrote in to express your
concern for the health and safety of young soccer
players all over the country! You're making
a difference for children's environmental health
here in North Carolina and across the country.
Keep up the good work! |
Background
Information
Children are more vulnerable
than adults to health damage from exposure to environmental
toxins like pesticides. Small children take in more air,
food and water relative to their size than adults do,
resulting in greater exposure to contaminants. Children's
bodies are also especially sensitive because they are
still growing and many of their bodily systems are not
yet fully developed. Recent evidence shows that children
who are exposed to herbicides in the first year of life
have a ten-fold increased risk of developing early persistent
asthma (1). A group of Canadian physicians recently completed
an extremely thorough review of pesticide hazards to
humans. They concluded that physicians should recommend
that all their patients, and especially children, avoid
all exposure to pesticides in all their forms (2).
To learn more, download Toxic
Free NC’s fact sheet, “Kids and Pesticides” from this
page.
Lawn care companies commonly
use a blend of these three herbicides in their bi-annual
lawn treatments:
It is unknown how this combination
of chemicals may affect humans or the environment differently
than each of the chemicals would alone.
In 1996, Congress passed the
Food Quality Protection Act, which in part required EPA
to review all registered pesticides to assess their potential
danger(s) to children and other vulnerable populations.
To date, neither mecoprop nor dicamba has been evaluated
under this more stringent review. MCPA is still undergoing
evaluation (6).
Learn about safer alternatives
to toxic pesticides for maintaining a healthy, green
lawn at our website.
Keep an eye out for the next edition of Toxic Free News,
due out next week, which will include tips for natural
fall lawn care.
References:
1. Sanborn
et al, 2004. “Pesticides
Literature Review.” Ontario College of Family
Physicians.
2. Sanborn
et al, 2004. Op cit.
3. Lists of
IARC Evaluations, International
Agency for Research on Cancer. Viewed on August
10, 2003.
4. Schreinemachers,
DM. 2003. “Birth Malformations and Other Adverse
Perinatal Outcomes in Four U.S. Wheat - Producing States.” Environmental
Health Perspectives 111:1259-1264.
5. Toxics
Release Inventory and Community Right to Know,
U.S. EPA. Viewed on October 19, 2004.
6. US
EPA Pesticide Reregistration Status. Viewed on
October 19, 2004.
