Known as ziram in agriculture, it was introduced in the United States in 1960 as a broad-spectrum fungicide. It was used to address scab on apples and pears, leaf curl in peaches, and anthracnose and blight in tomatoes. In 1981, additional uses for ziram were approved, including the prevention of leaf blight and scab on almonds, shot-hole in apricots, brown rot and leaf spot in cherries, and scab and anthracnose in pecans. Ziram also began to be used on residential ornaments as a bird and mammal repellent. As a protectant fungicide, it active on the plant’s surface where it forms a chemical barrier between the plant and a fungus. A protectant fungicide is not absorbed into the plant and must be applied prior to infection. Ziram can either be directly sprayed on to a plant’s leaf or it can be used as a soil and seed treatment. The top five crops ziram is used on are: almonds, peaches, nectarines, pears, and table and raisin grapes. Alternatively, ziram is used as an additive ingredient in industrial adhesives, caulking, and paint. It also serves as a bird and mammal repellent on outdoor ornamental items.
Chemistry
The compound is a prototypical zinc dithiocarbamate, a broad class of coordination complexes with the formulae Zn2, where R can be varied. Such compounds are produced by treating zinc and dithiocarbamate, as illustrated with dimethyldithiocarbamate: Annually, approximately 1.9 million pounds of the active ziram ingredient are used. Ziram is often sold in powder or granule form. Zinc bis complexes degrade thermally to give zinc sulfide.
Structure
Compounds of the type Zn2 are dimeric, i.e. their proper formula is 2. Each Zn center is in a distorted pentacoordinate site, with four Zn-S bonds of 2.3 Å length and one Zn---S interaction >2.8 Å in length. Mono-zinc derivatives are obtained by adding strong ligands such as amines, which give adducts Zn2L. File:NAFQUGEtMedtcskewview.png|thumb|left|Structure of 2.
Ecological effects
Ziram only moderately persists in soils, as it has a field half-life of 30 days In water, ziram is the most stable of all metallic dithiocarbamate fungicides, which means degradation is rather slow. If ziram reaches the bottom of a body of water, it may stay there for months. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that ziram poses a low toxicity risk to mammals, a moderate risk to birds, and a high risk to aquatic species. After reviewing studies that investigated the effect of ziram on aquatic organisms, the Pesticide Action NetworkPesticide Database concluded that its LC50 dose for amphibians places it in the "highly toxic" category.
