Keep it out of your eyes and don't drink it, and you will be fine.
Different forms of sulfides are also used in dandruff shampoos.
I would not take a bath in any water with dissolved inorganic
pesticides, but lime sulfur, I'd put that in my jacuzzi to simulate
the hot Springs.
The first statement is pretty much the general approach I'd use for
any fungicide. Some are more toxic than others, and I feel our goal
should be to figure out an approach to growing apples and other crops
that minimizes toxicity to the environment and humans. That can best
be done selecting from all available pesticides and fertilizers,
rather than drawing arbitrary lines between one type of chemical and
another. As Dave also points out, it is easier to do this in the West
but between irrigation and trucking the overall system is not terribly
sustainable. There are a number of important environmental reasons to
keep food production as local as possible. Growers who attempt to grow
organic apples in the Northeastern US have a tough time of it, and
usually end up using a pest management program that when evaluated
using some form of environmental impact assessment rates worse than an
IPM approach using conventional chemicals. (see Kovach et al. 1992. A
method to measure the environmental impact of pesticides. )
Organic agriculture did not start as a way to deal with pesticides and
food safety, but rather as a response to the production of nitrogen
fertilizer using the Bosch/Haber process, which Sir Albert Howard saw
as having a long-term detrimental effect on soil fertility, He said
soil nutrients should come from organic sources rather than
synthesized fertilizers. There is a connection with plant diseases:
Howard believed that much disease came from poorly managed soil. In
the US, Rodale promoted the organic approach to agriculture with the
same emphasis. It wasn't until the 1960's with Rachel Carson’s Silent
Spring that the organic movement’s focus expanded to include pest
control and pesticides. However, the basis for determining what is
healthy for the environment is still based on science and philosophy
from the early 1900's.
So, organic certification programs have given farmers a set of
guidelines that are only loosely based on science. While the mission
of achieving agricultural sustainability is not only valid but
crucial, the organic movement these days in some sectors is as much
religion and cult as it is science. Following the guidelines of
organic certification is not necessarily environmentally sustainable.
As detailed by Vincent, some formulations of sulfur and copper are
used as fungicides, and certified by the (OMRI) as acceptable in
organic systems, yet both materials can be toxic to plants, soil
microbes and fauna, and potentially humans.
I think to date the apple orchard that came closest to being
sustainable in the Northeastern US was Ron Prokopy's. It was based
around disease resistant cultivars, and used a minimal number of
insecticide and fungicide sprays, about 4 or 5 total a year, chemicals
that were relatively benign. Ron struggled to stay away from
fungicides, but decided that he couldn't spend the time physically
washing and rubbing the sooty blotch and flyspeck from his apples.
Flavor? I don't know of any objective tests. To do them, I'd have to
use the word organoleptic in a grant proposal, and I refuse to do that.
Back to chemicals - one has to be careful with the words inorganic and
organic. In fact, many "organic fungicides" approved by Organic
Materials Review Institute (OMRI) are inorganic. And naturally, most
chemicals that can't pass the OMRI naturalness filter are in fact
organic chemicals. Ironic, isn't it? This always messes with my
students. By the way, no doubt sulfide chemicals are useful in the
treatment of topical dermatitis, but there are some OTC fungicides
used for athlete's foot and yeast infections that are the same as or
closely related to tree fruit fungicides (e.g. triazoles).
________________________________________________________
Daniel R. Cooley
Dept. of Plant, Soil & Insect Sci.
Fernald Hall 103
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
Office: 413-577-3803
Cell: 413-531-3383
dcoo...@microbio.umass.edu
FAX 413-545-2115
http://people.umass.edu/dcooley/
Office location: 103 Clark Hall
