re: honest question…why do so many of you soak your yard with chemicals?

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I have to assume that some amount of the chemicals runs off into creeks/river/bays. How bad they are, if at all, I don't know. I don't trust Bayer, et al to fully tell us the long-term affects or if they even know or if they'd rather not even know.

I know if I use as little chemical as possible, then that much less of potentially harmful stuff ends up in creeks and rivers where our kids and their kids will hopefully play.

We all enjoy plenty of food at relatively cheap prices in large part because of farmers utilizing chemicals. I assume the farmers are using it as judicially as possible for reasons of cost and label requirements. Just a necessary evil.
Now joe-blow homeowner mixing talstar at 10x the recommended rate and spraying everything down in his yard because he saw a mosquito might not be doing the environment any favors.

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Not scientific, but it's a known fact that aquatic species are indicator species of gauging pollution levels. Tadpoles, for example.

Our neighborhood lake is 4.5 acres with a drainage basin of 92 acres. About 50% of that drainage basin is manicured bermuda with all kinds of chemicals. And those homes date back to the 90's.

25+ years of runoff into this pond, and it is teeming with life. Millions of tadpoles every spring, millions of frogs too. Turtles. Snakes. Blue Herons. Kingfishers. Huge fish. Small fish. Too many fish to be honest, for the pond's size.

None of that runoff has done anything to hurt the creatures in that lake. In fact, perhaps a little fertilizer runoff is a good thing for plankton, the foundation of the food chain.