I tried to post this much earlier today but the server was out and I was lucky to be able to cut and paste it elsewhere so I could post it here. In between I wanted to watch the women's tennis final from Wimbledon, which I did.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tjg911
i was hoping carolyn's links would indicate daconil's toxicity vs safety. i would use it if i felt that it was safe to use. i just hate spraying something on my food that is going to render it the equivalent of store bought produce produced in a heavy chemical environment or that will harm the micro organisms in the soil.
is there anything indicating that this is really safe to use but not produced by the company that makes it! i would not use rotogen as it is on the extreme end of safe organic. bt i feel is safe, can i feel that way about daconil?
i truly don't want to lose my tomatoes but i am torn about using something like this having never used anything not organic.
tom
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Tom, I didn't give any specific links b'c they were all on a previous computer and the hard drive wasn't switched and I have no i ntention whatsoever for spending the hours on the net that I once did in reading and saving those links.
You've now seen the MSDS, and while I've seen them before I forgot to look at the link just provided but down at the bottom it should still cite the company that makes Chlorothalonil and sells it to various companies with various brands so they can make their own formulations whether for golf courses, tree farms, home gardens or commercial busineeses and you can also go to EXTOXNET and pull up the Daconil/chlorothalonil page yourself if you want to read it.
I'll say again, that more is known about chlorothalonil than almost ANY other fungicide since it's been used for the last 25-30 years and is the most widely used fungicide in the world.
Before I switched to growing organically when I moved here in 1999 I let Charlie my famer friend who prepared my field where I grew tomatoes, to spray with Daconil ( actually Bravo, same thing) each year specifically for the fungal foliage diseases. Late Blight was not a problem at the old farm where I was growing tomatoes and other crops.
So from about 1983 through 1998 I was exposed to Daconil a lot and I don't have green ears, or black fingers or an orange nose or purple feet and I ate plenty of tomatoes in the field without washing them and I'm quite alive and fine as were all the commercial farmers I knew back then who also used Daconil as an important adjunct to their commercial ventures.
So when Late Blight appeared as it did last Spring I had absolutely NO hesitation in using it last year and none this year either. I follow the Cornell updates for NYS and surrounding states such as MA, PA and CT and that helps as well.
if you have any personal hesitations then don't use it. Copper is the most widely suggested organic alternative as you saw from reading the two links I posted, but in the one link you also saw the cautions about using copper as well and copper is not very effective at helping to prevent LB as you also read in those two links on organic products suggested for LB.