In an effort to make our yards more pollinator friendly and environmentally safe, we hear many buzz words thrown around. One confusion that can be heard is having a toxic or toxin free yard. What does that even mean? How do we go about doing this? This blog and the links below will help you to achieve this. First, we must start with identifying what those two words mean.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/toxin, it describes toxin as “a poisonous substance that is a specific product of the metabolic activities of a living organism and is usually very unstable, notably toxic when introduced into the tissues, and typically capable of inducing antibody formation.” In other words, a chemical substance that is produced by natural means and can be harmful depending on what it touches. As we can see, they use the word “toxic” in the definition of toxin. Let’s now explore what that word means.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary on their website has a few different meanings for this. The biggest take-away from all those meanings is that it is used to describe any substance that is harmful. It is usually used to describe substances that are poisonous. The substances that are toxic are called Toxicants. The Environmental and Toxicology Studies Journal on their website states, “Toxicants are the man-made harmful substances such as insecticides and many other industrial chemicals which are released to the environment by human activities.” With that in mind, we won’t be able to have toxin free yards as that happens naturally. We even create toxins just by living. One of the goals as land stewards should be trying to minimize or be free of the toxicants that humans create that we introduce into our own yards.
What is a Toxic Free yard? To find out what you can do to make your yard toxic free, check out the articles/webpages below for the towns of Pittsford and Irondequoit that talk about what you can do to make it possible.
Town of Pittsford https://townofpittsford.org/toxicfree#toxicfree
Town of Irondequoit https://www.irondequoit.gov/320/Toxin-Free-Challenge