HARMLESS TO FRUIT 



31 



PREJUDICE AGAINST SPRAYING 



It is quite natural that when most people first 

 learn that the fruit they eat has at some time in its 

 history been sprayed with poison they should object on 

 hygienic grounds. Both in Europe and America the 

 development of the practice of spraying has been 

 accompanied by occasional scares, the last one on this 

 side of the water occurring in September, 1881, when 

 the people of New York, Boston and other eastern 

 cities were agitated by an exaggerated "grape scare," 

 due to the finding of particles of Bordeaux mixture on 

 some of the grapes in the New York market. But 

 w^hen the spraying, either with the insecticides or 

 fungicides now commonly in use, is done with proper 

 reference to the time, methods, and conditions of treat- 

 ment, there is no danger to the consumer. Both prac- 

 tical experience and chemical tests have demonstrated 

 that apples sprayed early in the season with Paris 

 green or London purple retain none of the poison at 

 the time of ripening. The most recent demonstration 

 of this appears in the last report of the experimental 

 farms of Canada. A peck of Rhode Island Greening 

 apples that had been sprayed tw^ice with Paris green 

 (i pound to 200 gallons of water) were care- 

 fully gathered, without rubbing, and tested for 

 arsenic. ''The process to w^hich they were submitted 

 is one that affords extremely accurate results, and is 

 considered the most delicate of all for the detection of 

 arsenic. It is capable of revealing the presence of one- 

 fifty-thousandth part of a grain of arsenic. If twenty- 

 three thousand bushels of apples contained two and a 

 half grains of arsenic, the minimum fatal dose for an 

 adult, the poison could have been detected by this 

 method." Notwithstanding the most careful analysis 

 no traces of poison were found ; and in conclusion, the 



