Again, no what I said. I have incorporated several organic methods into my backyard, some of which have had limited results. I do feel that the organic methods cannot do the complete job of protecting the fruit.
Organic growers must limit their varieties of fruit to disease resistant cultivars or they will soon be out of business. Backyard orchardists can do a better job of spraying if they are knowlegable, mainly because they don't have to monitor hundreds of trees.
Not all backyard orchardists are lazy.
Believe me, like any business, the organic commercial growers take shortcuts if it saves them time and money.
I really don't care about commercial growers and neither should you. This newsgroup is for home gardeners. If you want to wage your campaign against commercial growers, seek another newsgroup.
I meant to say Codling Moths. The pheremones attract the moths to the trap, where they get ensnarred.
That's why I have given up on pheremones, and gone over to sticky balls. However, it is no easy task to smear that stuff on, hang them up, and then take them down.
I meant to address the Codling Moths when refering to pheramones. However, I also tried the attractant sold for apple maggot flies, which was also very expensive. I now rely strictly on sticky balls.
I was going for Codling Moths, so my approach was valid.
I'm not a fanatic, and I'm not going to apply any adjectives to YOU. But, you might ask yourself a question. When you make statements like "relatively innocuous", what are you basing that on?
Bingo! You're just like me, then. So, before you call me a fanatic, you should read the entire discussion from the beginning. The OP asked a question which reveals total lack of experience or knowledge. From his question, we had no choice but to assume that he wanted to spray food crops as well as ornamentals. I cannot prove that this was the case, nor can you disprove it. But, everyone knows people who see (or hear) only the word(s) they were looking for (such as "sure", or "yep - go ahead", don't listen to or read the rest, and run right out the door to buy armloads of whatever they were asking about.
In such cases, the only proper response is to jackknife a tractor trailor in the middle of the conversation, spur a debate, and hope the OP will read it all.
This requires a thinking process which extends beyond 15 minutes. Not applicable in many cases. :-) Bugs cause people to become irrational. People will plant trees, knowing full well they may take 5 years to look good. They'll slowly put away $$$ for retirement or their kids' college. They'll budget 3 years out to buy a boat or a bunch of woodworking equipment. All require long term thinking, and patience.
But, unfortunately, certain organic bug control methods seem to have emotional alarms attached to them. So, even if you show people 10 ag college studies indicating that Bt works nicely (but takes longer than 3 days), they simply shut down and won't consider it. The bugs must vanish NOW. And, anyone who suggests completely effective non-chem alternative is a tree-hugging fanatic.
According to our guvmint, about 25% of non-organic farmers are behaving like tree-hugging fanatics whenever possible. The reason is simple: Unlike some of the air-head home gardeners who think they're "informed" because they read the back of the Ortho container, farmers HAVE to read in order to stay in business.
You still have not addressed the fact that with perhaps one or two tiny exceptions (which some people spend all day searching for, and then use to refute what I'm saying), chemicals are not tested on the target population we're concerned with, namely, people. Therefore, nobody can truly predict toxicity unless they have solid information from events such as accidental exposure to manufacturing personnel, followed by illnesses which can only be attributed to that exposure.
I don't know how old you are, so you may or may not be familiar with the little dance that the chem industry has done over the past 30-40 years. It's fun to watch. They'll test chemicals on mice or rates, find no problems, and proclaim a product is, or seems safe. A non-industry researcher will test another chemical on rodents and find that they develop cancer or other problems. The chem companies will then say that we cannot extrapolate from results obtained using animals because they respond differently than we do to chemical exposure. So, it's a matter of convenience. Both sides can pick and choose the results they like.
But, you cannot dispute two things:
- As I mentioned before, legislation dating back to the early 1970s exempts a long list of so-called "inert" ingredients from testing. Unfortunately, this list includes things which are KNOWN to cause health problems in humans, such as toluene. The chem industry loves this legislation. They bought it. You should be concerned about it.
- The U of Rochester does drug research. They run radio & newspaper ads asking for people who may want to participate in drug tests for all sorts of stuff. Maybe some organization near you runs similar ads. Please let me know right away if you EVER see an ad asking for people to be used as test subjects for agricultural chemicals. I won't hold my breath. This is the ONLY valid method for determining the relative safety or toxicity of these products, according to the chem companies.
The message from "Doug Kanter" contains these words:
Some years back Malathion was withdrawn from garden use in the UK, and afaik throughout Europe, because sufficient research on its garden usage had not been done, and no manufacturer would invest the money to do it.
Regulatory Status: Malathion is a slightly toxic compound in EPA toxicity class III. Labels for products containing it must carry the Signal Word CAUTION.
Effects of malathion are similar to those observed with other organophosphates, except that larger doses are required to produce them [2,8].
Extoxnet is funded by Monsanto & other chemical companies in the US & Canada, so it is the first source of info for people who want the best possible spin or wish to ignore the full scope of the issues.
And are you aware that the EPA by law is not permitted to include in their assessments the proven hazards of the break-down metabolites which are more hazardous than the parent chemicals?
What Extoxnet likes to ignore are such EPA statements as (from the EPA website itself): "There is insufficient scientific evidence to assess the potential for causing cancer in humans."
When Dr Harold T. Smith, senior project leader with the Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service of the USDA, announced that the EPA was considering changing Malthion's status because the best studies indicate it to be carcinogenic, behind the scenes political pressures were soon brought to bear against the EPA (in the current Republican climate of "industry profits before public health") so that when the EPA made the report Dr Smith had prematurely announced, the warnings were rendered tepid, such as "There is evidence of carcinogicity."
The EPA in the long run decided not to recategorize this pesticide as more than moderately dangerous even while acknowledging the validity of the research done by people like Dr. Jerry Reeves at David Grant Medical Center Travis Air Force Base, which concluded Malathion causes aplastic anemia & childhood leukemia from exposures lasting for as brief a time as two minutes, concluding in fact that "all cases" scene in an eight year period were caused by malathion & propoxur. All cases.
THe EPA decided it was only a Category III risk even while acknowledging the research of Dr. Albright & his team at St. Luke's Hospital Kidney Center in Bethlehem Pennsylvania, which established that LOW levels of malathion exposure cause kidney failure in humans. THe manufacturer had already admnitted LOW exposures had caused kidney failure in animals but insisted no such study proved this was a risk for humans. Albright's published case proved otherwise, & he was very certain, LOW exposure, one time, of household use, was the cause of kidney failure.
The EPA was pressured into lending small weight to the St Luke Hospital findings because it was definitively true of only one case. So too the EPA which does not often consider research done in Europe failed to give any weight to Erasmus University research of Dr. Lindhout which established that use during pregnancy of malathion in a headlouse shampoo caused birth defects reesulting in infant paralysis. But the manufacturer denies malthion per se was the cause, because what really causes birth defects is a metabolite produced by the liver from malathion. The EPA decided not to include in their assessment the harmful effects of any breakdown chemical or metabolite, though not denying the validity of the findings that low level malathion exposure during early pregnancy is the source of the metabolite that causes infant paralysis.
The final wishywashy warnings the EPA ended up with in their final document were softened but still alarming in parts, but it was regarded as a political victory at Drexel Chemical. Not a scientific victory.
In the end a political decision was made: the threat from West Nile Virus vs a few paralyzed children fell in favor of malthion. The economic harm from medflies to citrus crops was found to be a bigger financial hit than the medical costs of childhood leukemias & elder kidney failures. Remember these are only the risks for LOW level exposures when used as directed.
An animal modeled study in Finland ran some of the same tests for which the chemical industry liked the outcomes. They made change. They used older adult rats instead of young rats. They discovered that allegedly safe levels of malathion cause serious brain damage, & they concluded that government safety boundaries based on what can be tolerated by young healthy rats has no application for what exposure will do the population at large. Brain damage would be expected at least for the elderly.
The EPA set out criteria that EXCLUDED injury to the the central nervous system, so their decision excluded many other definitive cases of nerve damage, paralysis, & brain damage in humans caused by low level exposures to this toxin.
As for environmental risk, that is ferocious. A study at Kent State University Department of Biological Science headed by Eric Lesnett established definitively that bluegill fish exposed to malathion experience extreme gill degeration.
A study headed by Dr. Solomon at Rutgers University published in TERATOLOGY is even more alarming, as Dr. Solomon is convinced his findings on the dangers of the breakdown metabolites to fish would be found in humans as well, if anyone bothered to look for these effects, which have not been studied because the law does not require chemical manufacturers to assess the dangers of the chemicals these toxins break down into, including malaoxon & paroxon which are more dangerous than the parent compound. Dr. Solomon discovered that exposure of malathion caused heart defects in fish at the rate of 12% to 38$. Where fish had the break-down metabolites in combination with the metabolites of at least one other pesticide, the heart defect rate raised to 50%.
That was just one of many studies that proved the dangerousness of the metabolites exceeds the dangerousness of the parent chemical, but the EPA does not require assessment of the metabolites & does not include the break-down chemicals in their safe-usage definitions. It is also one of scores of studies that shoe malathion risk increases by multiple factors if a second common garden chemical is involved in exposures. So if you use TWO garden chemicals, your risk can double, triple, or increase by factors of ten -- yet once again the chemical companies are not required to prove their chemicals are safe-as-used when the environment also has other chemicals safe-as-used in the environment. That studies prove these combinations are many times more harmful than the "official" assessment is not part o the EPA's assessment because the law requires them to assess only what the law requires the chemical companies to test, so some of the definitive & extreme hazards of malathion cannot be considered by the EPA unless & until Congress demands that the hazards caused by the by the break-down chemicals me included in the risk assessment. They are excluded
-- yet they are known to render maliathon extremely hazardous to fish populations, & to have caused such things in humans as kidney failure & infant paralysis.
Its tragic that you find a chemical-industry-funded website that intentionally overlooks the actual authoritative risks. And it's just stupid that you use malathion for purposes which cause harm to the garden strictly apart from risk to human life & the environment. It would be an ignorant choice even if the only ill effect had been the destruction of beneficial insects required for the healthy balance of the garden. It's certainly unfortunate that the actual risks extend far beyond the narrow boundaries of what the EPA is Congressionally restricted from including, & it's unfortunate that the current political climate prefers the chemical company "spin" over the complete science. But it remains that even if hadn't been true that it is a great danger to human health & the environment, it's a known hazard to the garden itself, a self-perpetuating hazard that destroys a garden's ability to manage the majority of its own requirements.
Note that the personal protective equipment section says. " Applicators and other handlers must wear long sleeved shirt and long pants, chemical resistant gloves, such as barrier laminate, or viton, protective eyewear such as goggles, shoes plus socks. Follow manufacturer's instructions for cleaning/maintaining PPE. If no such instructions for washables, use detergent and hot water. Keep and wash PPE separately from other laundry."
I believe that another poster said that he applies malathion in short sleeve shirt and shorts. He does so at his own risk. READ AND FOLLOW THE LABEL EXACTLY.
Just because a product can be purchased by anyone does not mean that it is safe to use willy-nilly. This is the point that I am trying to get across - YOU MUST READ THE LABEL - if you are to use the product safely.
Is there an effective general purpose insecticide, fungicide, miticide that will get most of those rascals out there? It is troublesome to spray for all those critters separately. I am pretty sure I've got them all.
To Doug: Huh? If you want to preach the gospel of organic pesticides, you should offer advice based on your experience. Nobody wants to spray chemicals around needlessly, but many of us have not found methods that work within our limited time for the gardens and fruit trees.
To Walter:
Well anyway, I like Sevin as a general insecticide. Sevin is very effective against most garden pests and breaks down pretty fast. It is not fungicidal though. It is also highly toxic to bees, lady bugs predacious wasps and other beneficial insects. Don't use it where bees are foraging. Use as the label directs, and not within 7 days of harvest (14 days for leafy vegetables).
There was a backlash against Sevin when it was used in the gypsy moth eradications programs in the northeast. This was based on hysteria and not science. Still, one must be carefull with such chemicals. this site has some useful pesticides fact sheets
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.