Clean drinking water is of fundamental importance to each member of our community. Any risk of contamination by toxic materials, such as the polyaromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals, carcinogens, hormone disrupting chemicals, and other biocides contained in commercial pesticide formulations, must be dealt with quickly to avoid further serious risk to the population. The application of landscape pesticides should be temporarily suspended until the location of thousands of drinking water wells in HRM are accurately determined and protected by adequate buffer zones prohibiting any pesticide use within them. The Pesticide Bylaw Advisory Committee appears to be unlikely to deal with this problem effectively or in a time frame appropriate to its urgency. Present data and mapping coordinates on HRM wells are incomplete, but an estimated 19,000 wells exist in the western half of HRM alone, according to RG Hydro-Environmental Limited.
Additional wells lie in the eastern half.
Wellhead Protection Programs are being implemented widely in many parts of North America, as municipal governments take stock of liability risks, as well as their responsibility to the public. Less is being done in HRM, at present, to insure that wells are not contaminated by landscape pesticide applications than is being done to prevent contamination due to road salting or E. coli bacteria from septic systems. If wells are found to be present, the permit is rejected. 347-353 link pesticide exposures to increased irritability and aggression. Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children.