Aspiz is the national Association of the Italian producers of Sulfurs. The no profit making Association intends to reach different purposes indissolubly tied to Sulfur and to all the legal, technical and didactic subjects related to it either for the technical/functional aspect and for the legal/economic one. In detail the main purposes of the Association are:
- To promote and increase the use of the sulfur in the traditional and biological agriculture
- To represent its Members in the relations with Authorities and Administrations, economic, political, cultural Organizations, labor movements and any other part of the Society in relation to the matters related to the production and marketing of the processed sulfur
- To provide information, assistance, consultancy to its Members with reference to general and technical problems and to any matter in the field of production and marketing of processed sulfur
- To promote and directly or indirectly organize researches, studies and activity of information and press, panel discussions and conferences, exhibitions and national and international shows about the goods and services produced by the Members
- To set up quality brands with adequate regulation of the referent methods of management
- To create a mechanism to collect data on the Italian production and marketing of sulfur and to put them available to the Members and to any Body which could need for technical, scientific and statistical purposes
Institutional Activity
In the last years the main activity of ASPIZ was to follow up the deep regulatory changes which affected the sulfur as active component, initially at European level and subsequently at national level. A Task Force has been established to work for and to defend Sulfur as active component; this Task Force produced technical and scientific studies which demonstrated the effectiveness and non toxicity of sulfur in the defense of plants from some fungal diseases (oidium) either in the traditional and biologic agriculture. In fact the Directive 2009/70/CE of the Commission on June the 25th has modified the Directive 91/414/CE and introduced the sulfur among the active components allowed in agriculture. The immediate consequence has been the set up of the “Consorzio Italia Zolfi” by the ASPIZ members which prepared some dossier containing studies of effectiveness and toxicity of the commercial compounds which will be produced and sold using the sulfur as active component and which, at the moment, are expecting the result of the evaluating process by the Entity in charge of the control of such studies.
Once PAN came into effect (D.Lgs 150/2012) introduced, among other matters, at the articles 8 and 9 respectively the obligation of the license for the sale of phytosanitary products by resellers and the license of the use of phytosanitary products and then sulfur by farmers and professional operators. ASPIZ then sensitized the Bodies in charge of organizing the courses to obtain a certificate (so called “patentino”) for the farmers especially where the courses delayed. ASPIZ became promoter of meetings held in the Ministry of Health to have clarification about the storage of phytosanitary products for which the transition to CLP classification (Regulation CE 1272/2008) created some doubt of interpretation. The DGSAN with note registered 23184 dated 2016, June the 3rd, clarified that all the phytosanitary products cannot be freely available to the buyers, but to the retailer or to the sales personnel and to the authorized operators exclusively. Then all the products, based on sulfur and those phytosanitary products classified irritant, are constrained to be stored in places not freely accessible to public but to authorized individuals only who own the license to sell phytosanitary products and the certificate for the purchase of phytosanitary products. The necessity to keep the products segregated in closets or cages remains for those products only, previously classified toxic, very toxic and harmful identified due to the chart by Ministry of Health reg. 19953 of 2015, May the 15th.
ASPIZ in 2016 commissioned a study to RESEARCH TOXICOLOGY CENTRE about the SKIN IRRITATION from the compounds based on sulfur, given that the sole indication of danger of the active component according to the Rule CE 1272/2008 (H315 causes skin irritation, is considered not correct. That study confirmed that the sulfur is not stinging for the skin pursuant to the adopted methodology RECONSTRUCTED HUMAN EPIDERMIS (RhE) MODEL
(EPISKINTM/ MTT Method)