DDT causes significant health problems for humans, including infertility, birth defects, cancer, and brain damage to children. It also wreaks havoc on various wild animals. It should be reserved as a last resort and not used indiscriminately. While killing mosquitos has saved many lives, DDT has also ruined many lives. Pretty much everyone involved in selling the virtues of DDT has their own questionable motives, and…
For some reason it has become a thing for reactionary conservatives.
I was at a school board meeting and one of the parent rights robots was reading some petition to use DDT in the fields, because he was bit by a horsefly while watching a baseball game.
DDT causes significant health problems for humans, including infertility, birth defects, cancer, and brain damage to children. It also wreaks havoc on various wild animals. It should be reserved as a last resort and not used indiscriminately. While killing mosquitos has saved many lives, DDT has also ruined many lives. Pretty much everyone involved in selling the virtues of DDT has their own questionable motives, and…
> DDT causes significant health problems for humans, including infertility, birth defects, cancer, and brain damage to children.
I would argue that it was good business in wealthy countries to eliminate DDT as it was off-patent. This coupled with it being being highly persistent made it cheap to use on mosquito nets and screens. The successors that entered the market after DDT was banned (chiefly neonicotinoids) have caused new problems like honeybee colony collapse.
I mean the US government itself was dumping mustard gas and other toxic chemicals into this area for decades. Not sure the DDT ranks that high of concern.
DDT has a long persistence in the environment, longer than mustard.
Sure but mustard kills you dead real quick. And is slowly leaking even decades later. It hasn’t gone away.
We need better targeted control methods. It's my fear that the same people that fought pesticide control will also fight genetically modified control methods.
> "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 relation…
The idea that reduced pesticide use creating more deaths due to malaria was not debunked....
The idea that Carson wanted a complete pesticide ban and that Silent Spring was the main cause of the reduced use may have been debunked. And certainly biased organizations blamed her.
Heck, the "Silent spring killed more people than Hitler" quote comes from Michael Crichton in 2004, your timeline seems ridiculously misleading to me, despite there being some truth to your statements
I mean the US government itself was dumping mustard gas and other toxic chemicals into this area for decades. Not sure the DDT ranks that high of concern.
>Not sure the DDT ranks that high of concern.
The studies linking aquatic harm are actually better than the studies linking terrestrial or avian harm. As it's poorly soluble in water it just sorta hangs around and kills fish. This was known all the way back in the 1940's https://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy-pdfs/CI...
Not a conspiracy theory. DDT was disposed of by dropping 27,000 barrels of the substance in the Pacific off the coast of Catalina Islands. Is your complaint that actual harm to a human has not been proven by this incident? I’m kinda curious (not really) where you stand on mRNA based COVID-19 vaccines given your phrasing of your dismissal of harm.
This comment is so stupid. It starts with some facts, or corrections to a misconception in the grandparent post. That's reasonable. Then what, some weird jump to covid and the idea they the GP may also have an unorthodox view about it, presumably something that's viewed as a mortal sin? GP may have been quick to push back on the DDT thing, but suddenly it's been taken into religious inquisition territory. This is pretty fucked up.
> "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 relation…
The idea that reduced pesticide use creating more deaths due to malaria was not debunked.... The idea that Carson wanted a complete pesticide ban and that Silent Spring was the main cause of the reduced use may have been debunked. And certainly biased organizations blamed her. Heck, the "Silent spring killed more people than Hitler" quote comes from Michael Crichton in 2004, your timeline seems ridiculously misleadin…
The "Silent spring killed more people than Hitler" line from Crichton, or variations on it, predates him by many decades. Crichton, as it is well known, helped spread much of this old disinformation (most famously the climate denial), in the same way that Scott Adams did after Crichton passed away in 2008 and took up the same cause. How and why Crichton and Adams got roped into this universe of alternate facts is something I can’t explain.