Somebody more knowledgeable than me will respond eventually, but if you scroll down to the thread titled herbicide drift you can see a pic of damage done by contaminated compost. It would scare me. I would take the dogs inside till smell is gone.

2 4 D will damage the garden if it drifts. I find this so aggravating. Should be sprayed when there is NO wind.

Any time that someone sprays a herbicide, the potential exists that harm can be done if the herbicide drifts onto someone else's property and lands on plants at a high enough concentration to hurt them. Some plants are more sensitive to herbicides than others. Tomato plants are very sensitive. My tomato plants have been hit twice this year, and it is just one of the hazards of living in rural areas where lots of people use herbicides fairly regularly.

Just because he used it, that doesn't automatically mean you'll have drift. There are lots of variables at play, including temperatures, because some compounds volatilize at higher temperatures. You can get drift as particles that travel through the air and land on your plants or as the vapors that volatilize in high temperatures. It is vexing to be on the receiving end of herbicide damage from a herbicide sprayed by someone else.

For the record, the applicator who sprayed the herbicide bears a legal and moral responsibility for damage caused by drift from their actions. Proving cause and effect can be difficult if the spray comes from far enough away that you do not know who sprayed it. In your case, since you know who sprayed it, at least you know who to go speak with if your plants start showing symptoms.

I just want to correct some information on the photo I said was hay compost.
IT was actually hay I used for mulch, and it was 2 yrs old that was stored in a barn. I had completely forgot about spraying grazon +2,4 D on the pasture.

That's right, it was 2 yr old hay that killed about 100 tomato plants plus green beans and pepper plants. It is some wicked stuff.

Robert, I agree it is wicked. Every time we are in Tractor Supply and I walk past a bottle of Grazon, it sends a chill up my spine.

When some friends of ours gave us a couple hundred bales of hay leftover from the last cutting of either 2009 or 2010, I let it sit and partially decompose for 2 years before using it. They don't spray, and we asked them several times to make sure they hadn't sprayed and forgotten, but I still was worried that maybe the people next door to them had sprayed with Grazon or something similar. Finally, when I saw broadleaf weeds sprouting beneath the hay bales and growing up through them, and the weeds survived and didn't die, I felt the hay was safe to use.

I won't hardly bring in hay or manure from outside our own property any more because the risk of herbicide carryover is so high nowadays. Ever since the herbicide was traced back to Purina horse chow, I've put our chicken manure (since we use purchased feed) on a compost pile that never gets used. I just throw stuff there and let it decompose and fill in that eroded area. I noticed the other day that we have Laura Bush petunias and four o'clocks growing there where I throw the chicken manure, so I guess it isn't contaminated....so far.

Long gone are the days when neighbors who are ranchers asked if we wanted horse manure or cow manure for the garden and we happily said yes. Now we just say "no thanks".