The president of an industry science non-profit is urging anyone worried about pesticide use in city parks to contact the authorities: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
"The EPA gets a bad rep for being too political, but their pesticides group is one of the best in the world,” Hank Campbell, president of the American Council on Science and Health, told the Chicago City Wire.
Campbell was referring to the recent decision by the Chicago Park District to limit the use of pesticides at its roughly 600 city parks. He said unfortunately for everyone involved, pesticides scare people, when the truth is, modern versions are coated seeds that are much better for people and insects than the old spray versions.
“There aren’t going to be any threats for humans,” Campbell said. "People have been trained to be chemophobes; 'chemical' is now a bad word."
For the eighth straight year, the park district has worked with Midwest Pesticide Action Center to minimize the use of pesticides that they claim are harming insects and humans.
Campbell argued that limiting the use of the new pesticides is unnecessary. He said the EPA has done studies on the effect of pesticides on bees -- one the beneficial creatures that have been harmed by older pesticides --and has yet to find any long-term harm.
“They are solving a problem we don’t have,” Campbell said. “If the citizens are really concerned, they can ban them, but it should be an informed decision.”
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