Lawns fertilizers

Everything we put down the drain or flush (down the commode) ends up in our watersheds which can affect the health of terrestrial and aquatic wildlife, plants, the atmosphere, and the water quality in our area. Residential and commercial use of chemicals constitutes a very large, nonpoint source of environmental contamination. A typical source of environmental contaminants are products used for household use such as cleaning agents, surfactants, pesticides, fertilizers, lawn and garden treatments, paints, sealants, and even discarded or flushed medicines. It is imperative that those seeking a healthy lifestyle and reduction in pollutant exposure choose with care the products they use to clean and maintain their homes, yards, and pets. 

Plate eolleetors were set at two heights above the ground, whieh may give an indieation of air eoneentration gradients. The two Broadbalk plots reeeived nitrogen fertilizers in the spring of eaeh year the lawn and parkland were unfertilized. 

Ammonia is used to make fertilizers for lawns and gardens by reacting nitrogen gas with hydrogen gas. 

One of our dogs was very allergic to the [lawn chemical] treatment. In the spring when they would start to fertilize, his paws would just get raw and bleed. We would have to take him to the vet two or three times a week and they would do these whirlpool treatments and finally we realized it was the lawn chemicals. So, for a couple of days after we had the grass done we would put these little booties on the dog. Otherwise it would really hurt him, and he would just bite and chew at his paws and they would bleed all over the place. We felt so badly for him. 

Barring these, lawn people have a number of specific obligations that allow them surprisingly little discretion. Mowing, watering, fertilizing, and applying... 

Most certainly the greatest culprit in excess nutrients is agriculture. Nevertheless, urban areas contribute a grossly disproportionate share of these chemicals (Table 4.5), creating acute local stream problems. Lawn fertilization contributes to this effect, though to a degree not yet fully determined. 

And indeed, working from the assumption than more is better, consumer overuse of fertilizers has been observed across the United States. A survey of lawn care around Washington, D.C., and Baltimore in 1998, for example, concluded that hundreds of thousands of homeowners across the area apply... 

In this sense, pesticide and fertilizer use can undermine the goals of lawn care itself, impoverishing the soil and plant health required to maintain turf. This effect, known as the chemical treadmill, emerged vrith the dawn of the green revolution in agriculture in the 1960s. The term was coined to capture the frustrating cycle where increased use of inputs leads to increased demand of the... 

These high-profile conflicts reemphasize a question raised in Chapter 1. If in some places the public is struggling to ban chemical applications that the industry is fighting to maintain, is it demand or rather supply that drives the behaviors of lawn people, especially their application of insecticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, throughout the United States and Canada More fundamentally, are the risks outlined in Chapter 4 essential to this economy, or incidental to it, an unfortunate market inefficiency that wiU soon be fixed through more and better competition Can the industry produce alternatives How does it communicate and manage risk ... 

This leads to a business model in which the main goal of the applicator is to look busy to the consumer and to appear to be providing services regularly and effectively. As a result, when asked whether either professionals or homeovm-ers overuse chemicals, many applicators feel that the industiy as a whole tends to use too many inputs of fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticide. An even greater proportion of operators feel that homeowners, when left to their own devices, tend to over-apply as well. Notably, of course, few lawn service providers perceives that their own firm over-applies chemical inputs. (Figure 5.2). 

Hummel, Norman W. (1996). Lawn fertilization., Cornell Cooperative Extension. 

Iskander, F. Y. (1994). Measurements of 27 elements in garden and lawn fertilizers using instrumental neutron-activation. Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry-Articles 180(1) 25-28. 

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