Applicators lawn care

Moreover, Althusser argues, such systems of ideas must be material, not just synapses in the brain, since they are embodied, institutionalized, repeated, and lived. You have to act them out. Social agents have ideas (e.g., lawn aesthetics) but these are also actions (e.g., chemical application) and part of a practice (e.g., lawn care). These practices, Althusser adds, in his somewhat off-putting mechanical terminology, are defined by the material ideological apparatus, a whole system of ideas through which the elements of the economy (labor, chemicals, surpluses, etc.) are represented back to individuals as a necessity and a sensible, immediate, daily way of life (home, community, and nature). 

Professional applicators, especially those companies or franchises of any size, rely on their own independent distribution and formulator companies. One such firm, Lesco, distributes lawn care products to apphcators, golf course managers, and other professionals. Their products reach 130,000 such companies and clients worldwide, using innovative distribution networks, including not only traditional service centers but mobile sales and service units. 

These lawsuits and settlements have been joined by more recent allegations of unfair and deceptive trade practices and violations of other codes. Applicators have been found in violation of do-not-call phone advertising restrictions, for example. TruGreen Chemlawn also recently settled with the State of Pennsylvania over allegations that the company added unnecessary surcharges for lawn care services, jacking up prices surreptitiously over time. ... 

The association of inputs with housing values (which accrue to the homeowner as well as the neighborhood more generally), suggests some obvious instrumental motivations not only for chemical application but for the positive association between such practices and community values. As most realtors will tell you, lawn upkeep is a relatively inexpensive investment for maintaining property values. In follow-up discussions, some lawn owners explicitly told us that their lawn care inputs were investments in their homes. Indeed, people with higher incomes and expensive homes have much more capital-in the form of an existing manicured lawn-to protect with chemical applications. Despite any expectation of social reward for environmentally protective behavior, homeowners are actually rewarded for environmentally detrimental behavior. 

This kind of behavior raises as many questions as it answers. How are such risks and benefits reconciled in real life What does such a community feel like to live in Are such obligations seen as a joy or a burden Does participation in the lawn community provide satisfaction or pressure What room for maneuvering or the lack of participation is there Do people trust the information they receive regarding lawn care, either from chemical applicators or from the packages they purchase What are we like, those of us with deep personal and community investments in our lawn Impersonal national surveys can only get us so far in answering these kinds of questions. 

Surveys of professional lawn chemical applicators were conducted during the summer and fall of 2004. Subjects recruited included participants in Ohio State University s OARDC (Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center)-sponsored turf care professional educational seminars (Northeast Ohio Lawn Care Seminars). Approximately 300 professionals attended these events (held at the Wooster campus of Ohio State) to inform practitioners of best management practices, new technology, and health and safety issues. Participants included those who own and work in the lawn care industry in Ohio, spanning companies from small, one-person owner operated firms to large franchised national outfits. Professionals attend these seminars for purposes of certification participation in the survey was optional. 

Write an advertisement that explains why Company A s lawn care product (fertilizer or weed killer) works better than the competition s because of the smaller sized granules. Include applicable diagrams. 

Visit a garden supply store to see what chemicals are being sold for use around the home. Look up the chemicals in the Merck Index and other suitable sources to see what they are and what their toxici-ties are. Include Scott s four-step lawn care program in the survey. If possible compare the levels of application to those recommended by your local agricultural extension agent for use on farm crops. 

Zahm, S.H., Mortality study of pesticide applicators and other employees of a lawn care service company, J Occup Environ Med, 39, 1055-1067, 1997. 

Everyone in the United States has been exposed to low levels of chlordane. A more relevant question is whether or not you may have been exposed to high levels of chlordane. Before its ban in 1988, you might have been exposed to high levels of chlordane if you worked in the manufacture, formulation, or application of chlordane. Therefore, farmers and lawn-care workers may have been exposed to chlordane before 1978, and pest control workers may have been exposed to chlordane before 1988 by skin contact and breathing dust and vapor. A national survey conducted from 1980 to 1983 estimated that 3,732 workers were potentially exposed to chlordane in the United States. This number of potentially exposed workers should have decreased after chlordane s use was banned in the United States. However, the ban on chlordane did not eliminate it from your environment, and some of your opportunities for exposure to chlordane continue. 

Within recent years the commercial lawn care industry has developed into a major business employing thousands of applicators who treat millions of residential and industrial lawns with pesticides. The rapid development of the custom-type lawn care reflects the demand for such a service. 

Estimates are that 5,000 employees of lawn care companies created SZ of Che 80 million lawns in Che USA in 1980. Pesticides most used include preemergent grass weed, broadleaf weed and insect control pesticides. Applicators applying these pesticides are exposed for periods of six to eight weeks. Heasurements made Co determine exposure showed long term exposure resulted in very low levels of pesticide inhalation. Also, pesticide concentrations reaching the... 

---