Avoid Pesticides In Your Home and Garden

Most residents think farmers are responsible for pesticide problems, but in the Bay area, residents apply more pesticides than farmers.  Your home and garden is in a watershed, the land area that drains water into our creeks and bay.  The pesticides you use affect the health of your watershed and can harm sensitive aquatic lives that make the creeks and the Bay their homes.

Rain carries pesticides from your home, garden, and yard straight into storm drains that drain directly untreated into our creeks and the Bay.  Pesticides can also reach creeks and the Bay if you pour them down your sink because wastewater treatment plants can’t remove them all from wastewater.

Over 1,000 commonly used household products including bug sprays, snail bait and weed killers contain the active ingredients chlorphyrifos and diazinon. These chemicals are used to kill a wide variety of insect pests including ants, fleas, cockroaches, aphids, spiders, and wasps. You may have bought some of these pesticides over the counter in your neighborhood nursery or hardware store, but, believe it or not, these chemicals are related to nerve gas. They work by damaging the nervous systems of exposed organisms, which includes children, pets, birds, and honeybees. Due to the potential health risks to the nervous system of children, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is phasing out the sale of these chemicals for residential home and garden use.

How You Can Help Reduce Pesticide Use

  • Attract feathered friends. A single swallow can easily devour large quantities of flying insects in just one afternoon feast. Consider adding a birdbath, birdhouse or feeder to your garden.
  • Purchase beneficial insects for your garden from your local nursery or garden store.
  • Prevent pests from entering your home by trimming plants and trees so they don’t touch your house.
  • Remove diseased plants, tree prunings, fallen fruit and leaves from around your house.
  • Select non-toxic or less toxic alternatives to pesticides.
  • If you must use pesticides, reduce the amount you are applying. Use only as much as needed by following the label instructions and don’t use them when rain is predicted or prior to watering your lawn or garden.
  • Never dispose of unwanted pesticides in the trash, storm drain or sink. Call the Santa Clara County Household Hazardous Waste program at (408) 299-7300 for drop off information.

By protecting the watershed, creeks and the Bay, you are protecting the environment for yourself, your children and future generations. For more information about less toxic pest control and other ways to protect your watershed, call 1(866) WATERSHED or visit www.mywatershedwatch.org to request your free Watershed Watch Kit.