Major retailers to pull pesticides

After yesterday’s announcement that Ontario will ban the use of cosmetic pesticides on residential lawns and gardens, several Canadian retailers are making the move toward offering greener gardening supplies.

Home Depot says it will voluntarily stop selling traditional pesticides and herbicides by the end of the year and will replace these products with less environmentally harmful alternatives.

Canadian Tire also said yesterday it would pull pest control products from its Ontario stores by the end of the summer, a step it has already taken in Quebec, and intends to phase out sales elsewhere in the country where they are not banned.

Loblaw Cos. Ltd. food chain was the retail pioneer in removing pesticide products from its garden centres - doing so in 2003.

The Ontario College of Family Physicians issued an influential study in 2004 linking pesticides to such illnesses as leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, while more recently, other research has associated pesticide exposure with Parkinson’s disease.

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