SandraDumas
02-06-2008, 04:21 PM
We live in a townhome community in South Florida. And for those of you who dont' know it, Florida was practically uninhabitable before the widespread use of pesticides, herbicides, and air conditioning.
Basically in my neck of the woods everything but the nature reserves is absolutely rife with chemicals.
In my townhome community, I have been noticing more use of these chemicals since we got a new management company. Many of the elderly here are happy...the management company is "doing more" to make the community "look good." But in my mind it's a bit scary.
First is the pest guy. He comes to the neighborhood once a month and sprays permethrine all over our garden areas around the house. (He actually only hits every home every four months or so I think). I asked him if it's dangerous and he said it's not (of course) because it takes two hours to turn into a powder. Once its in powder form it's not skin soluable and won't travel through the skin cells into the bloodstream. he was cool and said he'll skip my house if I want, and I said we'll talk next time I see him.
Then I see the lawn guys take out a huge container of some kind of chemical and start spraying it all over my gardens (which by teh way is where my little ones play!~) I asked if he spoke English and he did. He said it was for weeds. I told him I'd pick the weeds myself and tried to explain my concern about the kids. He was also cool and just did the grass instead of my garden. But still...my kids do play in the grass!!
Then there's the rat poison...they're putting rat poison traps all over and they put one right in the garden where my kids play and didn't alerty anyone about them. I called and got it moved to another area so it won't be near my kids.
What would you do in this situation? My little girl is always digging in the dirt...all the dirt everywhere. But now I'm so concerend about our dirt pile and the dirt all over the neighborhood. SHould I just stop allowing her to touch and play with the dirt, and explain there are chemicals in there?
I feel like if I start to be concerned about this, I could go crazy. At the same time if my dd comes down with some kind of nerve disorder or cancer, and I knew all the time she was rubbing her whole body in chemicals, won't it sort of be my fault?
Where is the line between watching over our kids carefully and going nutty with obsession about this sort of thing>?
Basically in my neck of the woods everything but the nature reserves is absolutely rife with chemicals.
In my townhome community, I have been noticing more use of these chemicals since we got a new management company. Many of the elderly here are happy...the management company is "doing more" to make the community "look good." But in my mind it's a bit scary.
First is the pest guy. He comes to the neighborhood once a month and sprays permethrine all over our garden areas around the house. (He actually only hits every home every four months or so I think). I asked him if it's dangerous and he said it's not (of course) because it takes two hours to turn into a powder. Once its in powder form it's not skin soluable and won't travel through the skin cells into the bloodstream. he was cool and said he'll skip my house if I want, and I said we'll talk next time I see him.
Then I see the lawn guys take out a huge container of some kind of chemical and start spraying it all over my gardens (which by teh way is where my little ones play!~) I asked if he spoke English and he did. He said it was for weeds. I told him I'd pick the weeds myself and tried to explain my concern about the kids. He was also cool and just did the grass instead of my garden. But still...my kids do play in the grass!!
Then there's the rat poison...they're putting rat poison traps all over and they put one right in the garden where my kids play and didn't alerty anyone about them. I called and got it moved to another area so it won't be near my kids.
What would you do in this situation? My little girl is always digging in the dirt...all the dirt everywhere. But now I'm so concerend about our dirt pile and the dirt all over the neighborhood. SHould I just stop allowing her to touch and play with the dirt, and explain there are chemicals in there?
I feel like if I start to be concerned about this, I could go crazy. At the same time if my dd comes down with some kind of nerve disorder or cancer, and I knew all the time she was rubbing her whole body in chemicals, won't it sort of be my fault?
Where is the line between watching over our kids carefully and going nutty with obsession about this sort of thing>?