It has been an honor and pleasure to work with the AOZ Staff these last 11 years, but alas, time has come to hang up the scissors and put the paste back in the cupboard.
Physical and other health issues have made it necessary to pull the plug on the Agent Orange Zone.
Many thanks to Paul, Nancy, Mokie, Wayne, and everyone who contributed to AOZ.
Best wishes and keep the peace.
Shortly after Lydia Chambers had her first child, in 1995, her family moved to a new home in Ohio. “It was this neighborhood with perfect lawns,” recalls Chambers, now 60. In her previous home, when a swath of dandelions appeared shortly after she and her husband moved in, she spent two weeks pulling them out by hand.
In their Ohio home, however, she had no time to take care of
the yard. So she hired a service to come and treat it. At the time, she didn’t
realize that the chemicals the service used might be dangerous. “Even though I
kind of sensed it . . . I didn’t know,” she says.
In her professional life as a hydrogeologist, Chambers was
beginning to learn about how long-term, low-dose exposures to dangerous
chemicals could lead to cancer and other chronic diseases. This made her
increasingly suspicious of the pesticides her landscaping company applied. By
2005, her family had moved to New Jersey and her elementary school-aged kids
were playing in the yard constantly. As she did more research, she learned a
particularly disturbing fact: One common weed killer,
2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), was also an ingredient in Agent
Orange, a chemical used during the Vietnam War.
“I guess if anything flipped a switch, it was that,” she
says. Chambers and her husband finally committed to taking care of their yard
with no synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers—even if that meant it
sprouted a few weeds. “I was proud that I had a few weeds in my grass,” she
says. “It was a symbol I was doing the right thing.”
