It does not enter the plant cells and is not easily washed off by rain. The EPA has extensive toxicology data, and residue data for several food crops. There is sufficient information from these sources to feel confident that a spray applied once a year at the label rate does not present a health hazard. It should also be noted that few garden plants will have edible parts at the stage of the growing season during which gypsy moth sprays are applied. If individuals are still concerned about the pesticide applications, early season vegetables can be covered on the day the spray is applied.
Toxicity is the potential for a substance to cause harm to organisms with which it interacts.
Acute toxicity Acute or short term toxicity levels, as presented in the following chart, include the amount of material needed to kill one half of the experimental animals when administered in a single dose. These numbers represent the amount of material fed to the test animal population in one day which resulted in death of half the test population. It is generally expressed as milligrams per kilogram of body weight. The USDA found the risk levels for 4-chloroaniline to be 100 to 1,000 times below the one in a million cancer risk associated with smoking two cigarettes in a lifetime or eating six pounds of peanut butter in a lifetime. Chronic toxicity Chronic toxicity is a measure of damage caused in test animals due to the administration of repeated small doses over an extended period of time.