Dow AgroSciences has sued the Canadian Government under the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement, looking to get Quebec’s pesticide ban thrown out.

Their main arguement seems to be this study done by Health Canada in 2008, which states that “2,4-D meets Canada’s strict health and safety standards, and as such can continue to be sold and used in Canada”.

In the lawsuit Dow is seeking damages “without limitation” covering loss of sales, profits, goodwill, investment and other costs related to the products.

Recently I came across a research paper prepared by the Interfaculty Environmental Science Department (IVAM) of the University of Amsterdam. They completed two studies, in 2002 and 2005, comparing various methods of weed control and their impacts in the environment. They considered a large number of factors including human health, eutrophication of water and soil, global warming, ozone effects, acidification of soil or water, effects on biodiversity, among a number of other factors.

The systems they tested for controlling weeds were conventional chemical control, mechanical control by using steel brushes, burning weeds using a flamethrower, a type of hot water applicator, and Ultra-Low Volume spraying. The results were consistent between the two studies: ULV spraying has the least overall negative effect on the environment.

It is largely due to this study that Mankar systems are so widely used in the Netherlands - indeed there is only one other system (which is between 5-10 times as costly) that meets the strict criteria the government has set out for weed control.

You can read the full studies on the University of Amsterdam site here, however the studies were only published in the Dutch language. If you have an interest please let me know and I will translate the relevant sections for you.

There has certainly been a lot of talk this summer about the proposed pesticide ban - a number of people I have spoken to are very concerned about the possible ramifications of the ban.

To get a good look at both sides of the argument, I suggest you simply follow this link to some Google search results. There you should be able to see a variety of viewpoints - including those of the National Post, Landscape Ontario, and even David Suzuki.

Before forming an opinion on the issue I recommend taking a look at the actual proposal:

Here is the proposed list of banned pesticides in Ontario, from the Ministry of the Environment website. Also of interest is the Notice of Proposal, which you can find by visiting this page and entering the registry number 010-2248.

Two German newspapers (’Nadel Journal’ and ‘Taspo’) recently published a study showing the results of various herbicide mixtures applied using the Mankar 110 GP. You can read more about this, including the results of the study, here on the Mankar.eu website.