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Yard Duty Ah, summer. Warm days, cool nights, the smell of freshly cut grass. But. “In urban areas, lawn mowing may contribute to ... emissions and impact air quality,” says a report in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Cut and drying grass emits methanol, hexanal, acetaldehyde, acetone and butatone, say the Boulder, Colo., researchers. “It can be expected that the resulting emissions have a significant impact on the chemistry of the atmosphere,” they say. In apparently unrelated news two days later, a researcher at Southern Illinois University announced that newly developed growth regulators make grass get thicker, rather than taller, and may virtually eliminate the need for mowing. Not so fast, says a spokesman for Scotts, a lawn care product company. He thinks consumers may not like lawns that don’t need constant attention. “A lot of them enjoy taking care of the lawn, how it smells after they mow it, how it looks after they mow it,” he said. (AP, 2)
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