I am hoping to sell my condo. I live in a homeowner’s association that still uses many toxic landscaping products. These chemicals, while legal, present varying degrees of risk (including cancer) to people and pets, as well as damage to the watershed in our town. Several residents have worked over the past two years, without success, to change the association’s landscaping practices. What is my obligation to disclose these harmful products to prospective buyers, especially those with young children and pets? With anything inside the walls, real estate agents advise disclosing as much as possible, but what about significant human-created risks outside the walls? — Name Withheld

From the Ethicist:

It sounds as if you’ve been part of an effort to persuade your condo association to stop using pesticides, herbicides and other chemical treatments that have become commonplace in landscape maintenance. Pesticides that are sold legally are authorized as safe for use if they are applied according to the manufacturer’s instructions and in compliance with the law, which may include a requirement to post warning signs for a defined period after application. (Specific information about pesticides can be found on the E.P.A.’s website.) You and some fellow residents have come to a different conclusion about their safety — fair enough. Your concern for how such substances could affect others and the environment is admirable.

Still, unless your condo association has made a public commitment to chemical-free landscaping, buyers will assume the use of conventional lawn-care methods, the sort of thing you’d find in any big-box-store garden aisle. If the association is violating regulations — say, by failing to post required signage — you can push for compliance or notify the relevant authorities. But the association’s practices aren’t hidden. And when it comes to selling your unit, your responsibility doesn’t extend to reshaping a buyer’s worldview.

By the same logic, a grocer isn’t obliged to tell customers about the various pesticides used on conventional produce. Critics of these chemicals are easy to find — and their objections are readily available to anyone skeptical of regulatory assurances. But the use of such sprays is the default setting. We’ve collectively settled on certain norms: what’s permitted, what’s typical. Those who dissent should make their case for reform, but disclosure is usually reserved for departures from what is recognized and approved — from what a reasonable person would anticipate. You’re free to voice your concerns. You’re not required to.

A Bonus Question

My husband and I separated a few years ago but are only now beginning the divorce process. For the past three years, he has lived in our jointly owned, mortgage-free co-op apartment, paying only the $1,000 monthly maintenance fee. Before he moved in, we rented it out and earned about $1,200 per month in income, after expenses — income that stopped once he took exclusive occupancy.

He pays $1,000 a month in child support, which covers about half the cost of our children’s food, activities and essentials, but none of my housing expenses, even though the children live with me full time. I’ve started to wonder whether he should have been paying me something for using the apartment alone, given that I no longer receive any benefit from it. When I brought it up, he seemed surprised and pointed out that he already pays child support, as if that addressed the matter. I see child support and the apartment as separate issues; he appeared to treat them as one.