nguyenal, You posted the following that seems excellent in how to spray fruit trees. I suggest you start a thread and re-post it: Posted by nguyena1 (My Page) on Sat, Feb 12, 11 at 1:19 Thanks glenn, my plan of protection for my new peach and plum trees are going to be Copper, Daconil, and Captan. I found this pdf to be quite useful in when to apply what. I've used trazicide on my vegetable garden before and think I will stick with to nuke all bugs. www.caf.wvu.edu/kearneysville/vadisbul.pdf

It has a low toxicity rate, but some people shy away from it's use. It used to be 1ppm allowable, but those limits have been gone for 13-ish years now. It's now crop specific levels. That said, if you eat non-organic grapes, strawberries, asparagus, or drink wine...you're most likely getting your fill of it. Grapes, raisins, and wine are especially high in it...10-20x the old "acceptable level." Animal tests have established you'd need to ingest rather extreme levels you won't get from a normal diet for toxicity/harm...both from intense 1-time exposure and long-term (3-24 months) exposure. Long story short...it's not much of a concern when used properly, but infant to 6 year olds might want to avoid a lot of constant exposure...even then it's not a high danger, just a concern.

I've never heard of any toxic effects from the use of Daconil but always make sure you wash your toms thoroughly before eating. Daconil is also a preventative measure and would have limited success on plants already infected. This of course depends heavily on what is affecting your plants. Post pictures of the problem for identification.

This is actually a pretty thought-provoking thread. I would like first to commend Carolyn on pointing to one of my favorite resources, extoxnet. Extoxnet is a collaboration of several well-respected universities (and certainly not corporate whores), synthesizing all of the available objective testing of these various chemicals. While I'm not trying to illegitimatize the premises of those who choose not to use synthetic chemicals (as I think Bigdaddy would attest, following a former back-and-forth we had on insecticides), I think it's extremely important to look at all the OBJECTIVE data in coming to conclusions on chemicals. Most synthetic chemicals, especially the old ones (e.g. Sevin) are extremely well-tested. Daconil, however, is probably one of the lesser-tested pesticides. Korney - you are also to be commended for putting all things in perspective on what home-use Daconil is. It very much DOES matter what the concentration is. After all, arsenic exists naturally in potatoes; cyanide in lima beans. There are many, many other examples. Hoosier, I respect your position and I, myself, try to avoid most synthetic chemicals until some other means fails. However, citing scorecard.org, a wing of the propagandist Green Media Toolshed (I encourage anyone to visit Green Media's mission statement as a reference) as your authority hurts your credibility somewhat (much like when my little brother attacks genetically modified plants by citing gmwatch.org). Such organizations (another example is the Pesticides Action Network) cherry pick the tests that serve their interests. It is similar, albeit on the opposite side of the debate, to relying only upon, say, Dow Chemical's testing to make your point. When comparing such a source to objective testing presented by extoxnet, extoxnet inevitably wins the credibility battle. Having said all of this, it is interesting that extoxnet reveals that chlorothalonil has only slight toxicity to mammals (mostly skin and eye irritation, both of which can be avoided by the most simple protective measures), the possibility to be carcinogenic in very high doses, a fairly moderate persistence in soil, and an unlikelihood to affect groundwater. With the testing available thus far, I will not hesitate to use Daconil sparingly, after a problem has arisen (and quite honestly, this is rare for me, and only on ornamentals; I don't have a lot of vegetable plantings at this time). The objective evidence simply doesn't suggest that limited home use will cause any appreciable damage to health or the environment. Finally, since DDT was mentioned, it is interesting that DDT was found to contribute, I recall, to only something like one single human death worldwide (a very unusual circumstance contributed to this). Also, it was not found to contribute to egg shell thinning, as was originally suspected. Interestingly, however, while pre-DDT malaria deaths (e.g., in Africa) were literally hundreds of thousands of times greater than when DDT was in widespread use, once DDT was initially banned in many such countries, malaria deaths rose, again, to pre-DDT levels. At least two scientists who recently wrote to the University of Iowa alumni magazine claimed that literally millions of human malaria deaths would have been prevented had DDT remained in use for mosquitoes, with no appreciable environmental impact. I think it is illustrative of the dangers of taking a "zero-tolerance" chemical attitude - allowing this attitude to trump both the hard evidence and the value of human life. Sorry if this is a little off-topic from Vince's initial post, but it helps to put things into perspective. Vince - it's ultimately up to you, but I see no reason you can't spray sparingly with a clear conscience.