Useful reference books re: creating beautiful gardens and healthier pesticide-free neighbourhoods

UPdate Spring 1999

The Natural Insect Control (NIC) Catalogue.  
Tel:  (905) 382-2904, 
Fax:  (905) 382-4418,
RR#2, Stevensville, ON  L0S 1S0

      Comprehensive listing of all manner of environmentally friendly gardening supplies!  Scores of pest-specific biological controls offered, birdhouses, nontoxic wood preservatives, books, pheromone traps, sticky baits, garden chimes.  This great catalogue contains everything you need to make your garden a beautiful, nontoxic paradise!  And they answer questions!  E-Mail:  nic@niagara.com  Website:  http://www.natural-insect-control.com
 

Our Children’s Toxic Legacy:  How Science and Law Fail To Protect Us From Pesticides, by John Wargo.  
Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 1996.  2nd Edition.  
(Available at Frog Hollow Books in Halifax)

     This is an important book that both the public and policy makers should read.  The second edition contains new guidelines and suggestions designed to teach individuals and municipalities how to protect themselves against unwanted pesticide exposures, especially in the absence of effective regulation by higher levels of government in Canada and U.S. Professor Wargo served as a consultant on pesticide issues to the White House, Great Britain, and the World Health Organization.  Good documentation of the special vulnerability of children.
 

Pest Management at the Crossroads, by Charles M. Benbrook, Ph.D., 1996 Consumers Union, Yonkers, N.Y., ISBN 0-89043-900-1.  
(Order by tel:  (301) 617-7815; fax:  (301) 206-9789; approx. $36 US)

     This wonderful reference offers information on all aspects of integrated pest management, and new ideas on ways to improve the failed regulatory policies for pesticides.  The book contains loads of illustrations and scores of website addresses containing encyclopedic resources on nontoxic biological controls, entomology, taxonomy, fruit product, naturally resistant plant cultivars, urban integrated pest management, technical information on individual pesticides, poisoning symptoms and much, much more.
 

Our Stolen Future:  How We Are Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival - A Scientific Detective Story, by Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski and John Peterson Myers, 1996, Dutton Book, NYC, NY.

     “This landmark work redefines the debate about the dangers of toxic chemicals, especially hormone disruptors.  Entire species could be jeopardized, including people,” John H. Adams, Executive Director, National Resources Defense Council.
 

Silent Spring, by Rachel L. Carson, 1962, Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Library of Congress Catalogue Number:  60-5148

· The classic wake-up call to the environmental and biological damage being caused by pesticides.  It is still an important and appropriate statement on the need to reduce the sea of toxins we live in.
 

Pesticide Bylaws:  why we need them; how to get them, by Merryl Hammond, Ph.D., Consultancy for Alternative Education, Montreal, 1995, 156 pp.  
(The Co-ordinator, Citizens for Alternatives to Pesticides, 20 Sunny Acres, Baie d’Urfe, Que, H9X 3B6.  Tel:  (514) 457-4347, Fax:  (514) 457-4840.  $20, $5 S&H.  Really good value.)

     A basic manual for anyone seriously interested in reducing urban pesticide use in Canada.  Invaluable and well researched.