Westchester County was second among New York’s counties in the amount of pesticides used in 2004, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. The worst is, Westchester’s pesticide usage also tops the list for use based on purely aesthetic reasons said Patti Wood, executive director of Grassroots Environmental Education and a leader in the organic lawn-care field.

“These are poisons,” she says. “They really don’t belong in nature. We have all been victims of very, very good marketing campaigns.”

Environmental Advocates and the New York Public Interest Research Group analyzed Westchester’s use of pesticides in a report and found that 22 percent of the pesticides as measured by gallons and 47 percent as measured by pounds were classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as probable, likely or possible carcinogens. One of the most commonly used, chlorpyrifos, the active ingredient in Dursban was banned by the EPA fro virtually all non-agricultural used because of its high neurotoxicity, particularly for children, it said. Some related herbicides, one of them a component of Agent Orange, have been linked to Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other cancers.

Westchester has been working to restrain the use of the chemicals. The county government decided to phase them out on county-owned property except fro emergencies, and recently will sponsor its sixth pesticide-free day. To persuade residents to follow its lead, the county is also working with Grassroots Environmental Education to train landscapers in the use of organic lawn care. Residents getting rid of household chemicals at Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park in Yorktown recently, received a flier listing landscapers who have gone through the training, some 60 companies or 200 landscapers.

In the future, some want New York State not only to toughen its laws but also to allow municipalities to ban dangerous chemicals similar to the ban Canada has imposed. The Montreal suburb of Hudson became the first in the county to ban pesticides on lawns in 1991 and a decade later, the country’s Supreme Court ruled that it was within its rights.