About 1.8 million kg of an arsenic-containing pesticide, monosodium methanearsonate (MSMA), banned in India and Indonesia, is applied every year to golf courses and cotton fields in the US to control weeds.

2.2 million kg = 4 million pounds

2005 statistic still quoted in August, 2007

Some other staggering golf course maintenance resource numbers from an April 2004 article by World Watch Magazine of the Worldwatch Institute

2.5 billion gallons – Amount of water it would take, per day, to support 4.7 billion people at the UN daily minimum, or the amount of water used, per day, to irrigate the world’s golf courses

23 – Number of golf courses in Japan before World War II
3,030 – Number in operation or soon to open in 2004

8.2 kg – Average amount of pesticides used per acre, per year, on golf courses (18.0 lbs), compared to just 2.7 kg (1.2 kg) used in the same time and space for agriculture (667% difference)

6,500 cubic metres (6.5 million litres) – Amount of water used by 60,000 villagers in Thailand, on average, per day, or one golf course in Thailand, on average, per day

150,000 acres – Current area of the wetlands of the Colorado River Delta, which now receives just 0.1 percent of the river water that once flowed through it, or the area that could be covered to a depth of 2 feet with water drawn from the Colorado River by the city of Las Vegas, which uses much of that allotment to water its more than 60 golf courses

- Environmental Science and Technology and Worldwatch Institute

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