Paul, don't waste your time with Sevin dust. I recently learned it's been used so much and for so long the bugs have immunity to it. I believe it because it did nothing to help control whitefly and spider mites. Water spraying just increases your water bill because to knock off insect eggs etc. the force needed would seriously damage the leaves and the adults are back on the plants before you can turn the water off. This is the first year we don't have Japanese Beetles, probably because the whitefly and mites took over the gardens.
This is utter bullcrap. When tried, they quickly fly away only to come back in 10 to 15 minutes and pick up where they left off. If one or two end up in the bowl of water you're lucky. And try that when there are hundreds of plants involved.
Really? I've used a mason jar or mayo jar with 1/2" of water in the bottom and a drop or two of dishwashing liquid. Maybe one out of 20 will fly away, but most will drop into the soapy water. I can easily catch 100 beetles in less than 15 minutes. Milky spore is a complete waste of money.
OK .. I said I would put this post to rest due to so much controversy but I also told someone I would post any reply from the makers of Sevin-5, so here 'tis:
Mr. Dudley, Thanks for your question. Sevin is not systemic. Once Sevin has been applied, it remains effective on plants up to 7 days or until rain or overhead watering. The white material you see is the residue, which contains no active ingredients or chemicals. Water breaks the carbaryl down immediately. You might try to use a produce wash that can be found in most grocery stores. This may help remove some of the residue.
Hope this helps! Have a nice day,
J------ R------ * ( name withheld )
Consumer Product Representative PO Box 24830 Lexington, KY 40524
Wow. I always expect companies to dissimilate but that stuff's just outright lying. ALKALINE water quickly breaks down carbaryl. In my region where water is naturally soft, carbaryl can linger in water for a very long time, according to the EPA's draft report titled "Carbaryl Health Advisory." In neither case is it water that breaks it down, but bacteria in the water shortens the carbaryl halflife. Strange the don't stick to the best-case scenario possibility, as this outright lying reveals they can't be trusted.
Because fact is, water does not affect the half-life of carbaryl, neither immediately nor over time. It has little to nothign to do with the halflife of carbaryl, and your Consumer Product Representative has just kicked you in the nuts as a dope who'll believe any old crap, either not caring enough to even know a truthful answer, or deciding lying to you is best for their company.
Carbaryl remains at the application site with a half-life of 7 days to 28 days dependant on soil conditions, acidity, alkalinity, and temperature. At low temperture in low-pH conditions its half-life can extend to 4 months. In wet conditions with lots of the right bacteria, the half-life can contract to 24 hours.
Carbyral "loss" is primarily through uptake into plants, where it remains, and secondarily from bacteria in soil (or in ground water). It is regarded as largely non-toxic in crop plants because the human body excretes or urinates three-thirds of it pretty much unchanged and the metabolized remnant is well under anything that could ever be immediately toxic (long term is another matter), though it can cause nitrosocarbaryl to form in the stomach, with mutagenic risks the vendors will say is not caused by carbaryl -- which is true though they leave out the fact that carbaryl is the cause of the nitrosocarbaryl (source: Sieberg & Eisenbrand in Mutat. Research 22; Elespuru et al in Nature 247; etc).
Carbaryl is not water soluable (it is soluable in ethanol or petroleum ether); it is stable in heat and light. It appears on plants as a white or grey powdery solid (crystaline under a microscope). If you can see it as a white residue, it is ACTIVE in accordance with its average 7 to 28 day halflife (longer in cold, low-pH, or low-bacteria conditions), and much of what ceases to be detectable on the plant will then be taken into the plant for ingestion by animals or people, to be transformed into "a potent mutagen" in the stomach.
Carbaryl is not believed to be carcinogenic. However, when it comes in contact with nitrite it gives rise to N-nitrosocarbaryl, highly mutagenic at low levels of exposure, but carcinogenic only at high levels of exposure. Nitrite is a common substance found in gardens, in human saliva, as a food additive, so essentially any product with carbaryl in it must be regarded as an INEVITABLE precursor to a toxic mutagenic. Carbaryl per se has been shown in animal studies to have a harmful effect on chromosomes and cell division (mitosis), and to damage kidneys and lungs, but not so far shown to occur in humans.
But a vendor will NEVER say the simplest factual thing: Carbaryl has not yet proven to be the direct cause of harmful or taxic affects at low exposures in people, apart from giving rise to potent mutagens if injested.
If you don't want to eat carbaryl, the only way around it is to never put in harvestable plants. If you don't want animals to eat it, you won't put it on anything at all. It's best case scenario is that it'll have an immediate deadly effect on all honey bees and pollinators and crop yields will fall dramatically.
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