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While tending to the garden, Mia Farrow's young son, as recently reported in this newspaper, reflected to his mother: "It's so difficult to be a decent human being. It's like you have to weed every single day."

What little Satchel Farrow couldn't have known (he was about 5 at the time) is that how we get that weeding done is what is now being measured on the morality meter.

In Canada, despite the publicized environmental and health downside of spraying chemicals to create postcard-perfect lawns, our gardens are none too green. According to a 2006 Statistics Canada survey, three in 10 Canadians are still applying pesticides to their lawn or garden, down a paltry 2 per cent since 1994. Of these, more than half said the products were applied as part of a regular maintenance schedule.

So why aren't more of us concerned with the semantics of "how does your garden grow?"

Dr. Murray Isman, dean and professor of entomology and toxicology at the University of British Columbia's faculty of land and food systems, believes the answer is simple.

"I would say that the average gardener in Canada doesn't buy the concept (rightly, in my opinion) that over-the-counter pesticides pose an appreciable risk to their health," Dr. Isman writes in an email. "Pesticides are products of convenience - they spare us from manual labour."

For those who are willing to break a subterranean sweat for their corner of Eden, he warns: "Many plant diseases are nearly impossible to manage without fungicides."

He says "enlightened gardeners understand that all insects and plants have their place in the ecosystem, and we can live with some level of these organisms that become pests, but only when their numbers are not high enough to damage the plants we cherish. ...

"While everyone agrees that we should use only the softest pesticides and use them as judiciously as possible ... outright bans don't make the most sense."

Gideon Forman, executive director for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), couldn't disagree more. CAPE has been working with local groups to ban pesticides at the municipal level. Although pesticides are still readily available, residents in municipalities that have banned use, such as Halifax, Montreal and Toronto, can be fined as much as $255 if a neighbour spies and tells.

"For 45 years, we've known about the effects of pesticides on our health. And in 2004, the Ontario College of Family Physicians looked at hundreds of studies from around the world and found frightening links between pesticide exposure and cancer, birth defects and neurological problems, including Parkinson's disease," he says.

He points to the David Suzuki Foundation's pesticide report published last year. "It turns out there are 60 pesticides and herbicides that are banned in other wealthy nations, and they are still quite legal in Canada. 2,4-D? Banned in Denmark, Norway and Sweden - perfectly legal in Canada."

But he is optimistic.

"We poll every community we go into. There is great public support. Now all we need is to help the politicians see what the public wants."

Heidi Sopinka, a seasoned world traveller, now agrees to stay put until the afterlife in order to neutralize her carbon footprint.

By the numbers

71

Percentage of Ontarians who support a province-wide pesticide prohibition similar to the one in Quebec, according to a poll last month by Oracle Poll Research.

34

Millions of kilograms of pesticides used annually across Canada. According to the National Research Council, expenditures on pesticides doubled between 1980 and 1990 and have increased eightfold since 1970.

Source: Sierra Club Canada

hsopinka@globeandmail.com