Tuesday, May 13, 2008
"The course had been heavily sprayed and there was weed killer in a lake," Casper said. "When I got to the course for the third round I couldn't hit a wedge shot 30 yards -- I didn't have the strength. My eyes were bloodshot, my complexion was very ruddy and my right hand was swollen from taking balls from the caddie. My doctor diagnosed acute pesticide poisoning."
And in 1994, researchers at the Department of Preventative Medicine and Health at the University of Iowa presented to the GCSAA the results of a study of 686 of its members who died since 1970. The news was not good. Golf course superintendents contracted non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, brain cancer and prostate cancer at more than twice the national average, and large-intestinal cancer at almost that. While noting that other occupations continually exposed to pesticides -- like farmers -- had similar medical problems, the report didn't take into account matters such as heredity and smoking and thus could not necessarily "establish any cause-and-effect relationship from the data."
However, exposure to too much "2,4-D," the most widely used herbicide in the world, can cause nervous system, kidney and liver damage, according to the EPA. Studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and Epidemiology magazines indicated a correspondence between spraying 2,4-D and an increased occurrence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma among Kansas and Nebraska farm populations regularly exposed to the chemical, a correspondence that 2,4-D's manufacturers, citing their own studies, deny wholeheartedly.
Pesticides are poisons -- ones that can never be legally labeled "safe" in this country, because they never can be guaranteed as such. Some pesticides on the market are carcinogenic, or cancer-causing, while others have been linked to reproductive problems, nervous system disorders and birth defects. Their limited use is permitted when their proposed benefits -- like, say, protecting crops from fungi or insects so as provide food for society -- theoretically outweigh their potential harms. But when the pesticides are used just to keep a golf course emerald green, their application becomes questionable.
Ironically, a greenskeeper's itchy trigger finger on the pesticide gun once led to the golf industry leading the way in environmental regulations -- albeit involuntarily. In 1988, after a rash of dead-bird incidents on golf courses -- including more than 700 dead Atlantic Brant geese on a course in Long Island -- the pesticide diazinon was banned from use on U.S. links altogether, though that of course didn't come without industry protest. "The ban on diazinon was unnecessary and an overreaction to a few incidents," whined the manufacturer, Ciba-Geigy.
It wasn't until late 2000 that the EPA banned its use everywhere in the U.S. altogether.
Golf superintendents (or "head greenskeepers," for Caddyshack fans) argue that they're much more careful now. The Pebble Beach Company has been particularly vigilant in working to combat the pitch canker disease that threatens the Monterey Pine, raising funds from a golf tournament to aid the cause. "Honestly speaking, in many years past there probably were times on this golf course where the maintenance wasn't in compliance with the environment," acknowledges Pebble Beach Golf Links superintendent Tom Huesgen. But, he argues, golf course executives have been educated significantly in the past decade.
Still, Pebble Beach Company officials refuse to tell me the amounts of pesticides they use. "We don't have a volumetric amount," Huesgen insists, though he has the exact numbers at his fingertips for less controversial fertilizers. (He is much more forthcoming when asked if Pebble Beach uses methyl bromide. "No," he says. "Definitely not. Absolutely not.")
That reluctance to fully disclose is common industry-wide. In the early 1990s, New York state's liberal activist attorney general, Robert Abrams, tried to find out more about the use of pesticides on golf courses on Long Island, but only 52 out of 107 courses responded to his office's inquiry. The resulting report, "Toxic Fairways" was nonetheless devastating, concluding that groundskeepers were using too many pesticides too often and should altogether cease using the pesticides containing known or probable carcinogens.
Neal Lewis, executive director of a Long Island environmental group called Neighborhood Network, took Abrams' numbers and multiplied them out, concluding that across the nation golf courses use 65 million pounds of dry bulk pesticides and 2.9 million pounds of liquid pesticides a year, a staggering amount. Lewis wants golf courses to embrace "organic golf" without pesticides. "The original game of golf goes back several hundred years, and certainly it did not rely on the use of toxic chemicals back then," he says.
His opponents, like agronomist Matt Nelson of the USGA, counter that reliable alternatives to pesticides are as of now a pipe dream. Golf is a multibillion-dollar big business, Nelson recently wrote in Golf Course News. "Golfers aren't likely to flock to golf courses with extended periods of widespread dead grass and playing conditions reminiscent of the early 1900s." Right now, there's no sign that will happen. As Lewis points out, new state laws in New York requiring pesticide users -- even just common home owners -- to give their neighbors 48 hours notice before application, and to put up a warning marker 24 hours before spraying, exempt one key industry: golf courses.
Get Salon in your mailbox!
