Lawrence doesn’t have a casino, but Terry Shistar is convinced there’s a lot of high-stakes gambling going on.

But these gamblers aren’t attracted to the green felt of a blackjack or roulette table. The green, lush grass of a suburban lawn is the game of chance they play. For some, Shistar warns, it may end up killing them.

Shistar is among those who believe the research that suggests lawns treated with pesticides and chemicals can increase a person’s risk of developing cancer, birth defects and fertility problems, among other ailments.

“I’m not saying everyone is going to kill themselves by what they are doing to their lawns. But the thing is they really don’t know what is going to happen to them or how this may affect them. It really is like rolling the dice.”

Shistar, an adjunct assistant professor of environmental studies at Kansas University, also is on the national board of directors for Beyond Pesticides, a pesticide watchdog group.

Shistar said it was a gamble that made less sense than a sucker bet at a casino.

“There is just no way to say that the benefits of not having weeds in your lawn or not having grubs eating your roots is a benefit so great that it is worth taking the risk,” Shistar said.

Ann Lorenzo, who lives on West 30th Street, plays with her 15-month-old daughter, Liliana, in their yard, where Lorenzo uses herbicides, then waits a couple of days before letting her daughter play on the lawn.

A group of residents, including Shistar, has urged city commissioners to stop using pesticides in all the city parks. Commissioners stopped short of that, but earlier this month declared that downtown’s Buford M. Watson Jr. Park would be managed pesticide-free as a test case.

Overblown concerns

If pesticide use really is a gamble, then Frank Male has been a high-roller for more than two decades. Male, a co-owner of Lawrence Landscape, has made a good part of his living from chemically treating lawns.

“They (pesticides) are pretty darn safe if you use them right,” Male said. “That’s the key, like with most things. A little common sense goes a long way. If you just read the labels or have a licensed applicator do it for you, that should really allay your fears.”

Male said he was comfortable, in part, because he knew plenty of people who have been around the chemicals most of their lives and haven’t suffered serious health effects.

“I’ve been around this industry basically 20 years, and it isn’t like you go to a conference and you hear ‘Joe just died of cancer and John’s got it,'” Male said. “It isn’t like that at all. If it was, you couldn’t find anybody to do this job.”

According to 2004 statistics from the National Gardening Assn., consumers spent $36.8 billion on lawn and garden products and services. That’s $449 per lawn, per year.

Poor process

Male said consumers should take comfort in knowing that the pesticide industry was heavily regulated. Every pesticide is required to be approved by the Environmental Protection Agency before it can be sold to consumers.

But Shistar and others said that logic was a false security blanket. She said the process that the EPA used to approve pesticides was a poor one because officials don’t conduct their own laboratory tests and rely on data provided by tests paid for by the chemical companies.

Richard Heckler, his wife, Beth Anne Mansur, and their daughter, Clarate, 8, pick weeds from their front yard on Prospect Avenue. The family members - for health and environmental reasons - prefer to maintain their yard without using chemicals.

“The testing company’s client isn’t the EPA, and it darn sure isn’t us,” Shistar said.

Others, though, defend the system as one that appropriately places the cost of testing on the chemical companies instead of the taxpayers. They say the EPA is extremely thorough in testing new pesticides, often taking multiple years before a product reaches stores.

“I’m always kind of surprised by those type of statements about the EPA,” said Carrie Riordan, director of information and public policy for the Lawrence-based Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. “The people who work at the EPA are scientists. They have Ph.d’s. Nobody is pulling the wool over the eyes of the EPA.”

All natural

According to Greg McDonald, managing partner of Lawrence’s Sunrise Garden Center, the number of people who come to the store interested in all-natural lawn care is still relatively low. He said that likely was because many people had a low tolerance for weeds. McDonald said it was difficult to maintain the traditional suburban lawn without the use of some chemicals.

“People who want an all-organic lawn generally aren’t worried about a few more weeds,” McDonald said. “But there are a lot of people who still really love that suburban lawn look.”

As for the cost of going pesticide-free, McDonald said it could be considerably cheaper if homeowners were tolerant of more weeds. But if homeowners still want to battle weeds without pesticides, it can be quite a bit more expensive, he said.

For example, corn gluten can be used as a way to battle weeds, but it is twice as expensive as traditional pre-emergents that control weeds – and often need to be applied three times more often to be effective.

“I’ll show a person the organic way to solve a problem and the synthetic way to solve a problem, and usually they’ll choose the synthetic way because it is cheaper,” McDonald said.

In the lawns of Lawrence, there’s a mix of attitudes about the pesticide issue. Ann Lorenzo said her family used pesticides and other chemicals to help keep their lawn and flower beds along West 30th Street green and lush. Lorenzo said in a world where time wasn’t a factor, she wouldn’t use the chemicals. But she’s the mother of a 15-month-old daughter, and that’s not the world she lives in. So instead, she uses chemicals, but also caution.

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“I don’t like them, but I do use them,” Lorenzo said. “I try to keep her (daughter Liliana) out of the yard for a few days after we have used them. It is just tough to keep your yard looking nice without them.”

Richard Heckler and his wife, Beth Anne Mansur, have been maintaining their yard in the Brook Creek neighborhood without pesticides or chemicals for more than a decade.

Heckler said that he had seen enough evidence to convince him many of the pesticides were carcinogens and weren’t worth the risk to his health. Plus, he said he realized that there wasn’t any good reason for him to succumb to “social pressures” to have a weed-free blanket of perfectly manicured fescue in his lawn.

“If you think of all the time, money and natural resources we spend on grass, it is tremendous,” said Heckler, who operates a lawn-mowing business that also gives advice on maintaining lawns without chemicals.

Heckler said his philosophy was “if it’s green, I can mow it,” which means he allows clover and other ground covers that look significantly different to grow.

But if people want the look of a weed-free, traditional, fescue suburban lawn, Heckler said there were ways to do it without chemicals. He admits that often involved more manual labor, but said that didn’t necessarily have to be a chore.

“Blanketing the yard with chemicals is the easy way to do things,” Heckler said. “But if you want to have a weed-free lawn, why not just break out a keg and have a weed-pulling party? That might not be too bad.”

Many people who were randomly asked about the issue while out in their yards this week, though, were like Jeff Armstrong: confused and curious more than anything else.

Armstrong said he didn’t have a real good idea what chemicals were used on his lawn because he had a lawn care company keep his grass green. But even if he did know which chemicals were being used, he probably wouldn’t be able to determine if they were safe or not.

“It’s a good question, but I don’t know the answer to it,” Armstrong said. “I would like to know more about the cause and effect of these things. But I suspect it is probably a question surrounded by big business and big politics. That may make it difficult to ever really know.”