Vince, there are many threads here about Daconil where you can read the links and comments made by others. The search feature is at the bottom of this page/

I also suggest that anyone wanting info about any product access EXTOXNET, which is NOT a goverment connected organization and read about Daconil or anything else for that matter.

I think it's good to remember that toxicity is uppermost in everyones mind, toxicity for humans, fish, insects, and the environment in general.

One should not assume that all compounds that are natural ( I won't say organic since the technical definition of that would mean any compound with a carbon atom) have low toxicities.

Nor should one assume that all compounds that are synthetic have high toxicity.

Compare Rotenone, accepted as organic by every orgainc certifying agency that I know of, with something synthetic, such as Daconil ( chlorothalonil). The data is out there for anyone to research.

Without my saying more, b'c I don't really want to see yet another long thread about Daconil or any other so called synthetic substance here when there are so many here already that anyone can bring up with a search, I'll just say that the data you're looking for is available online, best via Google, and I'd start with EXTOXNET.

Threads on topics such as this tend to get divisive and often turn nasty b'c there are so many differeng opinions that can be found online. So it's best to pay attention to the data presented not by one group or another, who often have agendas, rather, look for neutral groups such as EXTONET, which is a consortium of Universities.

If anyone needs any help with the kinds of tests that are done that are discussed at EXTONET that you aren't familiar with, I'd be glad to help to the extent that I can.

And please do remember that there already is a Forum here at GW on all things organic ( natural). ( smile)

Carolyn

Vince,

Im sure you have eaten products sprayed with daconil (bravo) thousands of times by now. The difference is with this is you know it's been sprayed.

Yes, just because the EPA and the FDA give it a blessing does not mean you can drink it.

And...

Carolyn is right on when she say's this is a controversial topic.

Unfortunately,

Your choices are

1. Spray you're plants and enjoy a season long harvest of disease free product that will hold up on the windowsill weeks after harvest.

or...

2. Let nature take it's course and watch all you're hard work shrivel up and die a slow death as all you're tomatoes ripen at once and rot off the vine.

My advice is to spray at a low rate, obey the "days to harvest" interval and wash them off really good.

Like you, I don't trust the DuPont's or any of the big chem companies of the world. What was considered safe a year ago is now a banned product. One day anti-oxident pills are great and cure every malady out there and the next Sunday newspaper says no they really don't and by the way you should limit your intake of them. Vioxx is ok to take and widely prescribed by thousands of doctors on Monday but not after 12:01AM Tuesday since they are now banned for killing people. So I tend to stick to natural methods where I can control what my family eats. From that EXTOXNET site I see words like WARNING and DANGER and I like fish, my eyes and my skin. Yeah I'm funny like that. And I've never seen a bottle of Rotenone in my life. My organic garden is light years better than it was back in my chem days. I feel like I've made the right choice and would never go back to the spray bottle even if it meant a total loss of some backyard tomatoes.

Farmers now, that's a whole different story.

And yes I agree, a NATURAL rattlesnake bite is far more toxic than some Daconil spray. But I'll pass on both thank u.

My advice is to spray at a low rate, obey the "days to harvest" interval and wash them off really good

*****

Actually there are no days to harvest interval re harvest. Daconil can be used up to the DAY of harvest which tells you a lot right there.

And I wonder how many of you know that Daconil is the most widely used anti-fungal in the ***World*** and it has been used for about 25-30 years and has more background studies than any other substance I know of as far as what we folks might use in our gardens or farmers in their fields.

Carolyn, who prefers to put things into perspective if she can.

3. Change your cultural methods to reduce disease and standards to accept some disease at a tolerable level.

A few spots on the leaves is no reason to panick.

The Korney's Cross I posted about 2-3 weeks ago with septoria is now without any disease. I did not spray and it has been rainy and humid this entire time. All I did, remove infected leaves and mulched heavy to prevent any soil contact or splashing. That's it. It has outgrown it for now.

Remember, chemicals are only tested for the minimum to get it on the market. Simply look at the product info for daconil and you will see lots of "not knowns" or "not tested" for several health effects catagories. Isn't that rather odd since as Carolyn claims "has more background studies than any other substance I know of..".

If it disrupts biological processes in target organisms it is likely to disrupt various processes in others.

Which is more important? A tomato or a liver not taxed by an unataural compound. One can argue there are plenty of "natural" things already taxing our livers but why add insult to injury?

True True True

How and where you grow them is key. Jammed up against a building or solid wall/fence planted close together in a wet/humid season is inviting problems IMO.

It is amazing that if grown with proper spacing, soakerhose, proper mulch and plenty of good soil/compost you can lower your odds greatly on ever losing a crop. I never have. I lose a few lower leaves but enjoy fantastic yields without any sprays and live in a humid area.

Another side note. I have seen many posts here recommending this pesticide or that pesticide. In today's litigious society I would be careful about what I am recommending. Opinions on chems sometimes change after the latest and greatest study comes out. My advice to those here who recommend certain pesticides is not to offer them (recommendations)as blanket statements or to insinuate that they are being offered as some kind of proof or that the person is an authority on the particular pesticide.

(And Carolyn I am certainly not referring to you. You have always told folks that you feel it is mainly safe and that they should do their own research and make up their OWN minds. You have actually convinced me that it is one of the least toxic of the Home Depot green bottle pesticides. (You know, the aisle that smells so awful you gag when you walk past it SMILE))

(And Carolyn your posts have always been greatly appreciated by me and so many others.)

But anyone making statements like:

"Use Sevin it works great!"

I don't know if that's such a good idea.

Dang- uall are gonna make me think I should stop using chlordane,diazanon,malathion.

Dang- uall are gonna make me think I should stop using chlordane,diazanon,malathion.

As a doctor, I would think you would know to always drink in moderation

At least there's one positive benifit- my plants have all developed a twitch. I never have to shake my plants to polinate them, they do it all by themselves.

2. Let nature take it's course and watch all you're hard work shrivel up and die a slow death as all you're tomatoes ripen at once and rot off the vine.
My advice is to spray at a low rate, obey the "days to harvest" interval and wash them off really good.
???????????????????

Sorry Timmy1, but that's some of the worst advice I've heard in a LONGGGG time.

I NEVER spray my plants with anything. I do lose some here and there, but it's small. I also enjoy a FULL year round harvest of many veggies including tomatoes. I can't understand why we would even discuss this.
I think it's funny to sit back and watch people argue over which is the safest poison to consume.
I don't need chemical companies to help me grow food, neither do you!
Tom

Maybe I should have put a question mark behind this sentance.

I don't want to start a controversy, but my feeling is that if any one could give me an example of such a nasty looking natural product that can be metablized safely by the Human digestive tract, it would be very much appreciated?

The point of the thread was for someone to find an example of a natural compound that resembles closely the structure of chlorothalonil. I have never seen one like this before.

Vince

Perhaps you used the wrong message board. There are other websites far better suited to answer your question. Not many chemists here. Mostly tomato growers.

-Dang- uall are gonna make me think I should stop using chlordane,diazanon,malathion.

As a doctor, I would think you would know to always drink in moderation.

Tomatoes should never drink these before 5:00pm and never with an olive.

Hey- I got the answer to all your problems. If you dpn't like it- DON'T USE IT!

Is that to hard for you to think of?

Also, why do you feel you should express your totally unfounded health concerns. Go do something useful, like, pick up some empties along the side of road.

Chemist my arss, hahahalol
Got nothing better to do since school let out?

I don't want to start a controversy, but my feeling is that if any one could give me an example of such a nasty looking natural product that can be metablized safely by the Human digestive tract, it would be very much appreciated?

The point of the thread was for someone to find an example of a natural compound that resembles closely the structure of chlorothalonil. I have never seen one like this before.

******

First, I don't know why you're specifying a "natural" compound b'c that's the group for which the least amount of chemical structures is known. It seems to me that the question you pose is just as valid when comparing chlorothalinol to ANY similarly composed substance.

Vince, I don't know how many chemical structural formulas for the various and many pesticides. miticides, systemics, bacteriostatics, natural substances, etc., that are used by folks who grow in home gardens or farmers who grow commercially, that you knmow, but speaking for myself I know very few of them.

So if the point of your thread, as you say above, is to compare cholorothalinol with another substance that resembles it, other than yourself who must have looked at many other structures of many substances, I sure don't know of anyone who keeps that information at hand.

I know I'd have to laboriously individually enter the generic/trsde and scientific names for 100's of substances in order to answer your question as you've now posed it. And I'm not going to take the time to do that.

In addition, for many substances , as far as I know, the actual chemical structure is not known. That would pertain, I think, primarily to many natural substances.

So I apologize for not understanding or appreciating what you were after as far as information about chemical structures.

I'll let others who might know those many chemical formulas answer your question b/c I can't without doing a tremendous amount of research and I'm just not willing to take the time to do that. I don't know how anyone could, actually.

Carolyn

Sorry, I can't help you with molecular structures & chains, etc. But I can give you a more natural substance that can be much more deadly, poisonous as many have called daconil here via agendas... that substance is known as... NaCl.

Plants with a twitch.

ROFLMAO.

Maybe this was the wrong place to ask such a question. Was having some beer last night and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Either way it seems some folks are getting upset so I'm finished here. Thanks for the input.

Vince

CHLOROTHALONIL SCORE CARD

CHLOROTHALONIL HAZARD RANKING

Although I know it is of the utmost concern, I couldn't find anything regarding how Daconil affects the flavor of tomatoes.

"-------. Either way it seems some folks are getting upset so I'm finished here. Thanks for the input. "

I do have scientific research proof that certain hydro-carbon compounds in tomatoes can cause people to be irritable and short tempered.

dcarch :-)

OK, just the facts. What hoosiercherokee did was generalize a chemical and pointed to a rating for the broad, general ingredient, though never put it into its proper perspective...

It's only a category II for eye irritation. Obviously, don't spray it in your eyes... I wonder what the category would be for vinegar or concentrated lemon juice...

The home use Daconil is only 29.6%.

Here's some FACTS from the proper MSDS:

TOXICOLOGICAL INFORMATION
ACUTE
MSDS

EYES:Eye irritant (rabbit and monkey); reversible corneal, iridal and conjunctival
effects; maximum mean scores (noted at 24 hours): Rabbits - 23.3/110; Monkeys -
25.3/110. This product is considered to be a moderate to severe eye irritant. All irritation
clearing by day 21. EPA FIFRA toxicity category - II.

DERMAL LD50:Pratically non-toxic, (Rat) LD50 >5.8 gm/Kg); EPA FIFRA toxicity
category - IV. Slightly irritating to skin (Rabbit); EPA FIFRA toxicity category - IV.

ORAL LD50:This product is practically nontoxic if ingested. Rat LD50 >17.4 g/kg. EPA
FIFRA toxicity category - IV.

INHALATION LC50:This product if inhaled is practically nontoxic. 4 hour inhalation
LC50 for rats >7.16 mg/liter. EPA FIFRA toxicity category - IV.

SENSITIZATION:Guinea pig - no evidence of allergic skin reactions.

There is no epidemiology data classifying chlorothalonil as a human carcinogen.

STATE REGULATIONS

PROPOSITION 65 STATEMENT:Chlorothalonil is on the California Prop. 65
list. When this product is used according to the label directions, exposure and thus risk is
below the level which requires a Prop 65 warning.

........................

* Daconil concentrate for home gardens contains 29.6% chlorathalonil.
* Daconil is diluted anywhere from 1 to 3 tsp (1 tbsp) per gallon depending on crop.
* There are 768 teaspoons in a gallon.
Daconil
Ratio
chlorathalonil (%)
undiluted
~3:1
29.6%
1 tsp
768:1
.039%
2 tsp
384:1
.077%
3 tsp (1 tbsp)
256:1
.116%

I think for tomatoes the recommended application rate is 2 teaspoons.... 0.077%

How does this compare to organic-type fungicides?
The MSDS for Serenade (an OMRI-approved organic fungal control) contains these facts:
* May be irritating to skin for some individuals.
* If product comes into contact with skin, irritation may occur.

and from the Serenade label:
If inhaled: Move person to fresh air. If person is not breathing, call 911 or an ambulance, then give artificial respiration, preferably mouth-to-mouth if possible. Call a poison control center or doctor for further treatment advice.

If in eyes: Hold eye open and rinse slowly and gently with water for 15-20 minutes. Call a poison control center or doctor for treatment advice.

PRECAUTIONARY STATEMENTS--SERENADE

SERENADE--HAZARDS TO HUMANS & DOMESTIC ANIMALS

CAUTION
Harmful if inhaled. Avoid breathing spray mist. Remove contaminated clothing and wash before reuse. Avoid contact with skin, eyes, or clothing. Wash thoroughly with soap and water.

(The above statements are for Serenade, not Daconil.)

Would you consider sodium chloride a poison too, or no?

Is there any documented info or links on 0.077% chlorothalonil like we commonly use on tomatoes? (that's 77 THOUSANDTHS of ONE percent!)

INFO PERTINENT TO 29.6% CHLOROTHALONIL aka "Daconil for Home Use"

What Korney doesn't tell you is that many farmers, golf course maintenance workers, students at ag schools, etc. have seen reps from a company that sells chlorothanlonil based fungicides quickly leave the field when their product is being applied.

And whether it's 29.6% or 82.5% ... it's still chlorothanlonil ... and the parts per million that you inhale, ingest, or otherwise come in contact with are relative both to the mix concentration and the distance from the spray head. So a home gardener with a one gallon pump up sprayer can get just as heavy a dose from close proximity to a hand held wand as a field worker might get standing ten feet distant from a tractor mounted spray rig.

We've hashed through this issue here in this same forum many times in the past two years. I was just providing some information for others to consider. I'll leave it to Korney and Carolyn to sell you on Daconil "for home use."

I'll leave it to Korney and Carolyn to sell you on Daconil "for home use."

*****

Bill, I'm not trying to sell anyone on anything.

As one person above said, I encourage everyone to do their own research and make up their own mind about what they use.

I suggested starting with EXTOXNET as being unbiased, but the MSDS sheet for a product is just as unbiased and it's the MSDS sheets that are required to be present in every lab for every substance there.

When there was a chemical spill in the lab we always rushed to the MSDS sheets for advice.

So again, I'm not trying to sell anyone anything. That I have come to the conclusion that Daconil is an OK thing for me, is one thing,and that was done after much research online plus the positive impact it made on my tomato growing.

Other than the use of Daconil everything I grow is grown organically. And to tell the truth I haven't even needed to use Daconil for the past three years.

Carolyn

Good website Carolyn, thanks for sharing.

Bill, I'm not selling anything either. If you want to be organic, don't use it. If you'd like to do a controlled test with daconil, serenade and baking soda, go ahead and post the results. If you suffer ever year from early blight and other foliar diseases and wish to save your harvest or prolong your harvest, then try it if you'd like. But we already know your answer.

I'm not selling daconil, but I am sold on it. The dangers you list, and you say it's still daconil/chlorothalonil whatever %, are actually reduced 384 times by the time it comes out of the sprayer for the 29.6% version. I'll gladly choose to use it, it gets my "seal of approval."

I bought daconil for the first time tonight with the thought to use lightly and infrequently because after the last couple of years harvests which have been dismal I needed something. Per Dr. Carolyn's remarks and I quote:

"That I have come to the conclusion that Daconil is an OK thing for me, is one thing,and that was done after much research online plus the positive impact it made on my tomato growing. Other than the use of Daconil everything I grow is grown organically. And to tell the truth I haven't even needed to use Daconil for the past three years."

I translate that to mean she uses it only as needed which is what I plan to do plus she's a doctor for godsakes shouldn't she know a bit more of what she speaks! I might be a little paranoid about it and wash and scrub my tomatoes more than normal but I WILL HAVE tomatoes at long last.

I translate that to mean she uses it only as needed which is what I plan to do plus she's a doctor for godsakes shouldn't she know a bit more of what she speaks! I might be a little paranoid about it and wash and scrub my tomatoes more than normal but I WILL HAVE tomatoes at long last.

******

Pretty please lets' not assume b'c I have a Ph.D in Human Infectious Diseases and taught med students most of my life that I know more than others about anything ( other than perhaps about infectious diseases). ( smile)

I do know how to use Google to research different subjects and that avenue of exploration is available to everyone who wants to know more.

In my first post here I offered to interpret any tests re Daconil that anyone might come up with, if I know about them, b'c LD 50 and other such tests are pretty standard in Biology and used for human drugs as well.

Carolyn, whose professional career is over and done with as of 1999.

blush, lol I don't think I ever completely revealed here at the forums how high the pedestal I was standing concerning personal beliefs about organic gardening. To step from such self imposed "tomato-less" heights meant I had to tell myself I might not know everything. :)

Though I am starting off with a banner year, I am starting to see some problems again. I just bought Daconil for the first time and will be using it as prescribed, 1 Tbs/gallon every 7 days. My plan is to harvest right before each spraying and of course wash my veggies as usual. I practice crop rotation in my garden, but I guess the bad pathogens have just had time to propagate through the entire space. I don't like doing this, but I think that the product is safe enough as long as it is used as directed.

Good idea, tomatomike, I think I will follow your lead harvest first then treat, thanks :)

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.

Carolyn, please help me understand what I read on extoxnet.

I believe that I read that per NRC chlorothalonil might cause 237 excess deaths per million subjects vs. 0.0024 excess deaths per million per FDA.

I suppose that I would prefer not to add a risk of 237 ppm to my already long list of carcenogen exposure (seared beef is my personal favorite) without good reason, but to worry about 0.0024 ppm would be beyond the valley of reasonable.

So how do I determine which estimate is more likely to be correct?

Theory and tests aside, are there known case studies of persons with cancer that are linked to chlorothalonil?

I appreciate your recommendation that we do our own research and determine for ourselves the level of risk.
But when one official estimate is 100,000 times another, I am at a loss. Also I find that attempting to understand data from a foreign discipline, jargon can reduce our understanding. As a famous American once said "It depends what the definition of the word 'is' is."

Thanks for helping me understand.

Gary

I believe that I read that per NRC chlorothalonil might cause 237 excess deaths per million subjects vs. 0.0024 excess deaths per million per FDA.

I suppose that I would prefer not to add a risk of 237 ppm to my already long list of carcenogen exposure (seared beef is my personal favorite) without good reason, but to worry about 0.0024 ppm would be beyond the valley of reasonable.

*****

Gary, ppm is parts per million in terms of concentration, not ppm as in per million subjects, as in people.

Why there is that differential between NRC ( national Research council) and the FDA I don't know b'c I don't know what the actural experiemtns were.

I'll try to find time this weekend to take a look at the EXTOXNET site for chlorothalonil to see what I can find, but for sure they aren't talking about deaths/million humans.

Carolyn

I've done my research and will use it as needed. I hadn't mulched yet when I got a hard rain and hail and some disease started. I removed the leaves, mulched and going to apply Daconil every 7 days for at least a few weeks and maybe longer. To me it is that or lose my investment in my crop. If some are willing to do that then that is their decision and I respect it. I will do what is right for me. Jay

Carolyn, I really misled using ppm in my quote. The actual quote is excess cancers per million (indeed per million 'what' is missing from the actual quote).

Actual quote:
"risks for exposure to captan were reported to be 474 excess cancers per million" ... "chlorothalonil (237 vs. 0.0024)"

I guess I made the leap from 'cancers' to 'deaths' as most of the people I knew who had cancer did in fact die and relatively quickly. So I am a little intimidated by carcenogens.

Now as you say the conditions of the study are not stated. Perhaps the data is based on using specially bred cancer susceptable rats and soaking their kibbles in straight chlorothalonil. Differences in concentration could easily explain the two radically different numbers.

Which gets me back to the problem with laymen reading anything technical. You have no idea how easily confused we can get (although my original garbled post gives you some idea).

Thanks for any light you can shed on the matter.

Gary

Thanks for any light you can shed on the matter

*****

Gary, I haven't forgotten that I said I'd look at that EXTONET site, but I just haven't gotten to it yet. Sorry.

Carolyn, who knows that it can be difficult to properly interpret scientific data at such websites. But at least at EXTOXNET there are no agendas at work which is not true at many other similar websites, and I think that's important.

Well I have a few thoughts...not sure if any are useful...but that has never stopped me from opening my big mouth!

1 - I am not chemist but I find that often people look at individual parts rather then the whole of things. Super glue. Cyanide and acrylic, and yet originally developed and used for patching up soldiers. A cyanide based chemical that is put directly on an open wound. It's safe, but sounds more alarming then it really is.

2 - Just because something isn't safe and it is withdrawn from the market (Voluntarily) doesn't mean that the alternatives are any better. Herbal remedies can be just as bad as man made medications. Ya know above they mention Vioxx being withdrawn because in the PM it ruled and next AM it was dangerous, but how many of you still take Ibuprofen because Advil (and all) hasn't volunteered to withdraw it? Excerpt from Vioxx withdrawal info..."In addition, these regulatory agencies concluded that, although long-term placebo-controlled data are not available for non-selective NSAIDS, the current data suggests that COX 2 selective NSAIDs and non-selective NSAIDs have similar cardiovascular risk profiles." In other words there wasn't any data that showed Vioxx was more dangerous then other NSAID products. People remember Vioxx being withdrawn but how many people paid attention to the warnings put out about Advil saying prolonged use is dangerous?

I am not sure any of this had any point, I am pretty tired at the moment. I guess I could have skipped most of that and just said "Whenever you listen to someone's opinion, listen for what they don't tell you. Use plenty of sources and be willing to change if new information comes along..."

I live in Charleston SC one of the most humid places in North America (my opinion only, not fact). I'm not a farmer and only grow a few tomatoes (8-12). I have seen foliar disease and have done nothing and the plants slowly withered and died or didn't.
Since this is my first year, on my second attempt at growing organic (another story), I don't want to use any "cides"
My strategy now is to keep compost, mulch, and cornmeal on the soil surface. I have and plan to continue with a second crop ready to plant if a plant has a disease or quits producing.
I have used daconil on my lawn in the past with no ill effects, but not using a "cide" has become a challenge that I intend to win. I agree that everyone should choose what works best for their situ but it would be nice if we didn't have to buy chemicals and instead could use stuff from the backyard.