07/04/09 - When First Warden Kim Gaffett presented the Town Council with a policy governing pesticide use on town properties in May, she did not advocate a ban on pesticides. Instead, she successfully persuaded the council to adopt a comprehensive strategy to control pests and weeds. But since then, local officials and gardeners have traded a war of words over the merits of keeping pesticides off town-maintained land.

“The word ‘ban’ keeps coming up,” Gaffett said, “but the town instituted a policy … to use the least invasive and least toxic methods first. … If someone feels the need to integrate other methods, they can go to the town manager and have it reviewed by the Conservation Commission.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Integrated Pest Management Plan offers guidelines “to manage pest damage by the most economical means, and with the least possible hazard to people, property and the environment.” It is not an outright ban on the use of chemicals to control either insect pests or weed pests, but seeks to discourage their use when unnecessary.

But some say the policy comes with costs. Town Recreation Director Rob Closter warned the council it would be more expensive and less effective to maintain Heinz Field using solely organic methods. He argued that pesticides applied to the field do not pose a danger to people.

In the ensuing weeks, residents traded claims and counter-claims, enough to compel the council, in a 3-1 vote last week, to put the issue back on the table.

Much of the debate has focused on the safety of a chemical known as 2,4-D, which is commonly used in pesticides.

Local gardener Fred Nelson sent the Town Council a letter that supports the use of 2,4-D on the town’s athletic fields. Nelson, a retired extension agent with the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension Service, said the chemical has a 63-year legacy of safety.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also sees little danger. Its website states that research on 2,4-D has not linked it to cancer in humans when the chemical is used as recommended. The federal agency found “that there is a reasonable certainty of no harm to the general population and any subgroup from the use of 2,4-D.” However, it concluded that if 2,4-D seeps into drinking water, it could cause damage to the nervous system, liver and kidneys.

And although 2,4-D was an ingredient in the herbicide Agent Orange sprayed over Vietnam during the Vietnam conflict, some argue it was another agent in the herbicide, 2,4, 5-T, that actually made people ill.

Such statements have not stopped Conservation Commission Chairman Ned Phillips from encouraging the Town Council to discourage or ban the use of pesticides. The idea germinated at his commission, and he has passionately argued it before the council and in public letters. [See related letter on Page 23.]

Phillips has drawn support from the Nature Conservancy that, in a move unusual for the nonprofit group, took a public position urging the Town Council to ban pesticide use. [See related letter on Page 23.]

Environmental scientist Nancy Alderman said many of the dangers of pesticides are hidden because of how the government tests the chemicals or because people apply the wrong amounts of them.

“The big problem is the government tests [pesticides] one at a time for their safety,” she said. “[Often] the product we see has three. We have no idea how they work together … whether they are more dangerous together.”

Alderman is president of Environment and Human Health, Inc., a nonprofit organization that describes itself as “dedicated to protecting human health from environmental harms through research, education and the promotion of sound public policy.”

Alderman also expressed concerns that pesticides, insecticides, herbicides and fungicides are particularly harmful to children because they weigh less than adults, and they are closer to the ground and therefore closer to the chemicals.

“Young children’s systems are less capable of detoxifying harmful compounds,” Alderman said.