You wouldn't have known this but I look at soil and groundwater data on contaminated sites all day for a living, so I'm very aware of those issues. I have an advanced degree in environmental chemistry. You are certainly right that things do leach into the groundwater. And, sometimes they don't. Most hazardous waste sites have much larger releases than what someone would put on their lawn, and often directly to the subsurface from tanks and pipelines. Whole different scale. Even so, it's surprising at some of these sites how little you find in the grounwater compared to the soil. I'm just saying that the risk from proper application on the average lawn is not that high, and it varies quite a bit according to conditions - soil type, application rate, rainfall, characteristics of the chemical itself. Just because water moves through soil does not mean it carries all chemicals with it at the same rate. If it did, all groundwater would be a festering tea of salts and organic matter and there would be no topsoil. Soil is actually a great filter. I am not an advocate of using a lot of chemicals. I avoid it as much as possible and I think most people use too many. I just think there are so many reasons to cut back on toxic chemicals that we don't need to overstate any one of them to make the point. Just my humble opinion.

The plants are moving poison all throughout the plant. Personally I would pull up all the plants and throw them away off my property. of course this simply spreads the poison all over the world. Stop using poisons and pesticides. Learn to go Organic. Why do you use poisons. Do you want to die early of cancer. Do you want to kill your wife and children. You can not kill life on earth without killing yourself. If you poison your garden then you poison your self and your family. What is there about Organic you do not understand. There is an Organic forum here on garden web. Who wants to eat poisoned tomatoes that will give them cancer later in life. You, your wife, your children ??? Not me that is for sure. I have been growing for over 40 years without a drop of any poison. My garden grows like crazy. big huge no watering no fertilizing all natural huge crops no bug problems no chemical fertilizers.

We purposely moved to our neighbourhood because it has a "high street". That's two blocks away. It's changed over the last 8 years...now we have an antique mall, two funky galleries, some hair salons, loads of restraunts, many bars, a great coffee shop, THREE tatoo parlors, two banks, fire department, public library (these were very important to me), and a few more blocks away several fast food joints (which I do not use). There are also some very dubious corner stores and gas stations, which frequently have people hanging out and drinking or selling drugs or fronting prostitution. 1 mile down the main road in either direction are two different outdoor malls. They clearly cater to different types of clientle. One has a Super Giant Foods, Dollar General, Citi Fashions, Fashion Cents and a strange jumbled beauty supply store and a furniture rental center. The other has a Kroger, Lowes, Linens & Things, Target, Best Buy, Ross and several other small locally owned resteraunts and stores that are sort of funky and fun. Even closer to us is a small development with an upscale hair salon, a gym, pizza, coffee, dance studio...this is a fantastic place for our community and most of the people who work there live in the immediate community. Has this raised the value of our home? Not really. It hasn't raised the value (we bought at $75,000 and it's worth $265,000 and not fully renovated yet...that increase in 8 years!!)...the value has been steadily increasing due to our 3 minute drive to downtown location. It's also just one of the most desirable neighbourhoods in the city to buy into, although not so easy now with the price increases. Frankly, our neighbourhood is weird. We have two familys with drug dealers, one with a gang memeber on our street. There is constantly men sitting around ALL DAY LONG drinking, the mothers of their children coming and screaming for money, their older children running drugs...(I know it sounds like something the police can handle, but they have bigger fish to fry around here). The next street over has none of this nonsense and is beautiful, quiet, friendly. We knew what it was like when we moved here. Why did we move here? Because the afformentioned high street was an indication of the culture that this area also holds. It's the neighbourhood of artists, artizans, indepenant thinkers, street poets, wacky gardeners, musicians, teachers who think outside the box...people who thrive on the strange juxdiposition of our community. That is why the value of our homes has increased. Demand. GGG

Water a few days before to encourage the weed to grow. Then apply the chemical. 2-4,d kills plants by using synthetic auxins. Without getting into too much detail, natural auxins are what tell the plant when (and where, e.g. Roots, top growth, etc.) to grow. Basicically, the synthetic auxins tell the weed to start growing everywhere all at once.... roots, shoots, top growth, etc.. all start growing without regulation and --- because 2,4D is LOADED with synthetic auxins, the growth is in overdrive. At first, the weed might start to grow & spread like crazy, and you start looking at the warranty on the bottle. But the unregulated growth is the demise of the plant. It grows itself to death. You will see the plant twist and grow in odd shapes, as it's using all of its energy to grow. The it runs out of energy and dies. The trick is to make sure you water a few days before hand so it's already in growth mode, and then water it about 2-3 days later so it will keep growing. It won't work if the plant isn't growing.