Every day millions of lawns across America are treated with lawn fertilizers and pesticides.
It's not unusual.
We have gradually come to believe that spreading poisons on our lawns is the natural state of affairs if we desire a beautiful lawn.
And if you don't take care or your lawn yourself, but instead have your lawn cared for by a lawn care service, you're probably no better off.
The typical lawn care company, in effort to make their work easier, is probably using more of these synthetic materials and pesticides than you would.
For many homeowners, the lawn represents the largest surface area of their home.
But what do we know about these chemicals? Are these fertilizers and pesticides dangerous? What are all of the chemicals that we so casually smother it with doing to our bodies and the bodies of our children and family? Rick Relyea, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh seems to think that pesticides may be doing more harm to our bodies than we realize.
He teaches toxicology, aquatic ecology, toxicology, and evolution with particular emphasis on how the levels of pesticides in aquatic communities affect it's inhabitants.
As part of his research, he recently exposed gray-tree frog and leopard frog tadpoles to small amounts of pesticides, many of which are used everyday by consumers.
The results of the study were frightening, to say the least.
The exposure of these pesticides to the amphibians directly led to the mortality rate of the tadpoles skyrocketing to over 90 percent.
For many years, the worldwide population of amphibians has been on a steady decline.
Many scientist believe that the main culprit in the decline is the careless overuse of agricultural pesticides.
It's long been suspected that many of these pesticides cause genetic mutations and malformations in the amphibian population.
Professor Relyea has been doing empirical research for over nine years in an effort to document and more fully understand the relationship between pesticide exposure and the worldwide decline in amphibians.
Why is this so important to humans? The reason is similar to how the canary in the coal mine is an early warning system for lethal gases that can be detected by human smell.
Put simply, amphibians are an environmental indicator species.
What this means is that because of their sensitivity to pollutants, they are typically the first to be affected by pollution changes in the environment.
It means that, in effect, amphibians are acting as humanity's early warning system - sounding the alarm that all is not well with the environment.
Because if pesticides are impacting these creatures it's probably safe to assume that on some level pesticides are affecting us as well.
Maybe for the sake of our own health, as well as the health of the planet, it's time to forsake some of the chemical pesticides that we use and begin to explore the benefits of organic lawn care.
It is possible to have a healthy and beautiful lawn without poisoning your environment.