Patsy Hirsch and her husband moved to an Elgin subdivision nearly three decades ago, drawn by a backyard thicket of oak, hickory and cherry trees so dense the canopy blotted out the sun.
During her free time, Hirsch replaced much of their lawn with native plants and grew vegetables in a sunny spot on the side of the house. She studied to become a master gardener, cultivating a network of fellow enthusiasts devoted to sustainable growing methods.
At first glance it appears Hirsch’s property is an idyllic refuge on the edge of suburbia. But her training didn’t prepare her for an onslaught of weedkillers drifting from nearby farms and neighboring yards — a scourge spreading throughout Illinois as chemical companies revive volatile herbicides from generations past.
Trees are slowly dying after being hit for years by weedkillers. Their once-robust canopy has thinned. Many of the leaves are cupped or deformed. So are the Hirsch family’s flowers and vegetables.
“Once you learn how to identify herbicide damage, you can’t unsee it,” the retired nurse said during a recent tour. “Nobody is doing anything to stop it from happening, though.”
Scientists and volunteers are finding trees, flowers and other plants afflicted by herbicide drift everywhere they look in Illinois, including in nature preserves, state parks, orchards, school yards and town squares.
At least one weedkiller was detected in more than 90% of the plant tissue samples collected from a variety of settings during the past six years by the nonprofit Prairie Rivers Network, according to an upcoming report.
A separate study by the Illinois Natural History Survey found a similar pattern on state-owned land set aside for recreation, wildlife habitat and prairie restoration.
Scores of mature trees have been killed or injured by drifting weedkillers, the researchers reported.
Oak trees, some of which have been alive since before the Civil War, suffered the most extensive damage. One is the state champion post oak, which has a canopy more than 100 feet wide near Nashville in southern Illinois and boasts a trunk more than 18 feet in diameter.
“It’s got to be at least 200 years old,” said Marty Kemper, a retired state biologist who lives nearby. “It obviously has to have some great genes to have stuck around this long. But like other post oaks it’s not going to escape the same fate if this chronic, pervasive injury continues.”
Complaints about herbicide drift skyrocketed during the past decade after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved more extensive use of 2,4-D and dicamba— chemicals from the 1940s and 1960s brought back to help farmers kill weeds that evolved to survive being doused with other herbicides.
Both weedkillers are prone to drifting away from fields during application and up to weeks later. Plants miles away can be harmed.
“This is chemical trespassing,” said Kim Erndt-Pitcher, director of ecological health at the Prairie Rivers Network and, with Kemper, co-author of the group’s new report. “It’s a violation of other people’s property.”
The weedkillers also are potentially endangering human health.
In March, researchers reported they found traces of 2,4-D, one of the ingredients in compounds used to defoliate forests during the Vietnam War, in the urine of every one of the 150 pregnant women studied in Indiana. Seven out of 10 showed signs of dicamba exposure.
A 2020 study by the National Institutes of Health concluded pesticide applicators who sprayed dicamba are more likely to develop certain cancers than those who don’t. Other research has documented how 2,4-D is among a number of pesticides that interfere with hormones regulating growth, fertility and reproduction.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the United Nations, considers 2,4-D a possible human carcinogen.
Chemical companies — and the EPA — say dicamba and 2,4-D aren’t harmful to people at the concentrations farmers are advised to spray.
“We are confident that XtendiMax herbicide, when used according to the label, can be used safely and successfully on-target,” a spokesman for Bayer, one of the leading manufacturers of dicamba, said in an email referring to one of its trademarks for the weedkiller.
BASF, another top dicamba producer, said it remains “committed to working with the EPA and other stakeholders to identify workable, durable weed-control solutions for dicamba-tolerant crops.”
A trade group for 2,4-D makers echoed those comments.
“There is a large body of peer-reviewed research to support the fact that when used according to label directions,” the weedkiller “is safe for humans, animals and the environment,” said Lindsay Thompson, a spokeswoman for the 2,4-D Task Force.
How America got to this point requires a look back to at least the mid-1990s when the EPA allowed St. Louis-based Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, to introduce genetically modified corn and soybean seeds resistant to its best-selling weedkiller, glyphosate, commonly known as Roundup.
At the time Monsanto advertised that Roundup was as safe as table salt. If farmers could spray the chemical on crops altered to resist it, the company proclaimed, they could dramatically reduce the use of herbicides while improving yields.
Multiple juries have since awarded billions of dollars to people who blamed their cancers on glyphosate. As part of a long-running study, government researchers reported last year that farmers and others exposed to the weedkiller had markers in their urine associated with the development of cancer and other diseases.
Meanwhile, overuse of Roundup spawned weeds capable of ignoring the chemical and growing as big as baseball bats.
Monsanto/Bayer, BASF, Dow Chemical and other manufacturers responded with new genetically modified crops that can resist dicamba and 2,4-D as well as Roundup.
Dow, which later spun off its crop sciences subsidiary into a company called Corteva, applied for patents for corn and soybeans it claimed could survive weedkillers from up to 17 different chemical families, a 2015 Chicago Tribune investigation found.
The unintended results are showing up throughout Illinois, a major producer of corn and soybeans.
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Time and time again, crops grown primarily for biofuels, processed foods and animal feed are sprayed with weedkillers that infringe upon the livelihoods of other farmers with little, if any, clout in Washington, D.C., and state capitals.
Four years ago Annie and Dennis Holtz bought 10 acres of land outside Herscher in Kankakee County. They made plans to grow native flowers, fruits, vegetables and medicinal herbs, a big change from their previous experiences planting community gardens and working for small organic farmers. The state later gave them a license to grow hemp.
One of the main ideas in their business plan was to offer weekly flower subscriptions at farmers markets that could provide cash upfront to support other parts of their fledgling operation.
But their land is surrounded by corn and soybean fields. Weedkillers applied to those croplands drifted and decimated the Holtz’s flowers two years in a row.
“We go out there and bust our asses for two months and all it takes is one farmer in an air-conditioned tractor spraying for a half hour to wipe out everything we’ve planted,” Dennis said during a recent interview.
Like Hirsch, the Elgin homeowner, Holtz and his wife filed complaints with the Illinois Department of Agriculture. Hirsch at least got confirmation her trees, flowers and vegetables are contaminated with herbicides. The Holtzes said they still haven’t received a response.
Pesticide applicators can be fined only if state inspectors find they have violated spraying guidelines.
Abbie Frank shared a similar story.
She runs an early childhood center near downstate Urbana in a renovated machine shed handed down by her grandfather. Near the end of his life, he restored the family’s 120-acre farm to native prairie and donated it to the state for a nature preserve. Frank’s Bluestem Hall Nature School attracts young parents interested in instilling in their children an appreciation for the plants, animals and insects around them.
Without warning, Frank said, the telltale smell of weedkillers wafts onto school grounds, forcing teachers to corral children back inside. School staff repeatedly witness chemical spraying on days when the EPA’s temperature and wind guidelines advise it shouldn’t occur, she said.
“We are trying to cultivate joy and respect for the natural world in a way that will last these children a lifetime,” Frank said. “Yet we are in the graveyard of ecology all around us.”
In an email response to questions, the department noted a recently amended state law prohibits the spraying of certain pesticides within 500 feet of schools.
Dicamba and 2,4-D aren’t on the list.
Future reliance on dicamba is up for grabs. A federal court in February rejected the EPA’s nod to expand usage of the weedkiller, the latest in a series of court decisions condemning the agency’s reviews of dicamba.
Soon after President Joe Biden took office in 2021, the newly appointed head of the EPA’s chemical safety office apologized to career staff for the Trump administration’s decision three years earlier to extend the agency’s dicamba registrations, which the agency’s inspector general found had discounted critical studies of health risks.
Yet the Biden EPA allowed farmers to use dicamba stocks already on the market this year. In a statement, the agency said budget cuts prevent it from meeting congressionally mandated deadlines to determine if dicamba-based weedkillers can be sold in future years.
The statement did not respond to questions about how the EPA will address scathing dicamba-related rulings by federal judges but said the agency considers herbicide drift when reviewing applications from chemical companies.
Agricultural groups are clamoring for direction before farmers order seeds for the next growing season. More than 50 million acres of dicamba-resistant soybeans and cotton have been planted in recent years.
“We need to find new, effective tools,” said Kyle Kunkler, director of government affairs at the American Soybean Association. “At the same time we need to make sure we are sustainably stewarding the tools we already have so they can be useful for years to come.”
Environmental activists contend the answer is returning to the mostly chemical-free agricultural practices of the past, including rotating the types of plants grown from year to year in a particular field and planting cover crops to choke out weeds after harvest. Selective interventions with tillage also work.
These methods already are used by organic farmers and some conventional ones as well.
“The way Big Ag operates today just isn’t sustainable,” said Bill Freese, science policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit group that has repeatedly petitioned and sued to reverse EPA decisions.
“Making these herbicide-resistant crops has been a cash cow for chemical companies without any regard for the long-term welfare of farmers, creating deep divisions in rural America,” Freese said. “As a weed scientist once told me, what’s happening now is unlike anything we’ve seen in the modern era of agriculture.”