L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground (2020)

None of that is reason or justification for illegally dumping it in the ocean, specifically along the coast of one of the most populous cities in the country.

Except it's not banned in much of the world and was overused for decades after the publishing of Silent Spring, which led to widespread resistance in mosquitos. With agriculture use finally banned in the 90s, it can be used far more effectively in a targeted fashion, because for all its effectiveness, it's still nasty nasty stuff.

> "Silent Spring” is thus likely responsible for 10s of millions of deaths from malaria including that of millions of children.

This statement has been debunked as nonsense by virtually every reputable, non-industry funded scientist in the field. It’s been a while, but the last time I looked into this, Naomi Oreskes and other historians had documented that the attacks on Silent Spring were invented by public relations agencies who were paid by industrial polluters responsible for manufacturing and distributing DDT to spread this disinformation. For decades, so-called "libertarian" think tanks (think environmental whitewashing and climate denial) helped spread these lies until the paper trail was finally uncovered and exposed in the 2000s, however, some groups have continued to spread this nonsense, most notably people and organizations connected to the Heartland Institute, which is the Alex Jones/Infowars-equivalent of public policy. For these people, anything and everything which improves public health and the environment is a communist conspiracy.

DDT has a long persistence in the environment, longer than mustard.