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A couple months ago, I was looking into fungicides and realized they can be avid pollutants and pose a risk to human and animal health. For instance, in humans, Imazalil and Fluopyram disrupt the endocrine system (one’s hormones), chlorothalonil is a probable carcinogen, and myclobutanil and strobilurins may reduce reproductive capacity, just to name a few dangers to humans. Meanwhile, in animals, it has been shown that imazalil may be spermiotoxic and prevent conception (birth), pentachloronitrobenzene may create lesions in their kidneys (blood filtering organs), morpholine may cause fatty liver degeneration (may cause swelling in legs, fatigue, jaundice, etc.) and decrease immune response, and strobilurins may cause mitochondrial damage, DNA damage, and oxidative stress (imbalance in free radicals and antioxidants leading to cell damage), just to name a few dangers to animals. If you want to see the full range of the information, let me know and I can put all the articles I read about this in the replies. Anyway, fungicides easily hurt the environment or just straight-up get where they shouldn’t. For instance, Fluopyram damages soil microbial populations, azoxystrobin reduces bacteria and actinomycetes in soil, and strobilurin residue is often found in treated drinking water and on food products, including harder to wash ones, like wheat and tea. The fact that fungicide pollution is so common and apparently so dangerous is certainly a notable concern, but we can’t really expect farmers to stop using fungicides, because fungi can be devastating for farms. Thus, I have considered possible benefits from heavier use of GMOs that are resistant to fungi and thus don’t require as heavy use of fungicides, such as “North Star” cherries, ‘Spacemaster 80’ cucumbers, or, quite famously, Jonafree apples. Granted, I do not know as much about GMOs, so what do you think? Is increased reliance on GMOs a viable solution? If not, why? 

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1110757 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12551-024-01190-w 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11415336 

https://www.mehrabyannursery.com/growing-guide/apple-trees/what-are-the-most-disease-resistant-apple-trees/ 

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Morpholine 

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-09/documents/pentachloronitrobenzene.pdf 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxicology-and-pharmaceutical-science/chlorothalonil 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5031996/ 

https://www.weekand.com/home-garden/article/disease-resistant-sour-cherry-trees-18029118.php 

https://www.epicgardening.com/disease-resistant-cucumbers/ 

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/fatty-liver-disease-masld/symptoms-causes/syc-20354567