Friday, October 6, 2000
Friday, October 6, 2000 |
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Scientists study Peachtree City's lawn care practices By JOHN MUNFORD The lawn care habits of Peachtree City residents are being studied by a group of scientists from the University of Georgia on behalf of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The three-year study, which began in March, has been funded by the EPA in the form of a $893,849 grant. The scientists will also analyze the stormwater runoff from yards in residential neighborhoods for pesticides and nutrients typically used to enhance lawns, said Kevin Armbrust, a UGA professor who's an environmental chemist and toxicologist and a Peachtree City resident himself. Water and sediment samples will be taken from small streams in town on a monthly basis and also when there are periods of heavy rainfall, Armbrust said, adding that the local Adopt-A-Stream program will help perform samples as well. The results from those tests should indicate if the pesticides and nutrients are having an impact on aquatic life, Armbrust added. "We want to look at the biological effects on the organisms that live in these streams," he said. Even a small release of pesticides and nutrients could lead to a severe impact on aquatic organisms such as mussels and algae, Armburst said. The samples will be tested for pesticides that have been broken down naturally, since those by-products can sometimes be more detrimental that the original formula of the pesticide, Armbrust added. The biological inquiry is only the beginning of the study's scope. Peachtree City homeowners will be interviewed to determine how they take care of their lawns, Armbrust said. The group hopes to break down those habits into socioeconomic factors in other words comparing results from neighborhoods with high home values to homes with lower home values, Armbrust said. That will help the social scientists determine if there is a difference of lawn care practices between the socioeconomic extremes, Armbrust said. He suspects that residents with more expensive homes might use professional lawn application services, while other residents might tend to take the do-it-yourself approach. "We want to try to determine why people make the lawn care choices they do and why they want their lawns to be green," Armbrust said. All told, the study group includes a chemical toxicologist, a nutrient chemist, a social anthropologist, a social economist, an entomologist, an extreme ecologist and an aquatic ecologist, Armbrust said. Since Peachtree City is a planned community, it was the best location in metro Atlanta to perform a study like this, Armbrust said. The study is important for the EPA, which is beginning to look into home lawn treatments as possible sources of contamination, Armbrust added. "The EPA is starting to look more closely at this," Armburst said. "There's not a lot of data out there for this purpose. Though other studies have been done, this will be the most comprehensive work on it."
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