PESTICIDAL MANIACS
In the 1930s, scientists developed synthetic organic chemicals to combat farm pests. (‘Synthetic’ here means made by humans – not naturally occurring, while ‘organic’ means containing carbon, not the popular use as in “organic farming”.) DDT, known as “Deet,” a widely used insect repellant, was scientist Paul Muller’s Nobel Prize winning discovery.
A decade later, enthusiasm over Muller’s success waned as environmentalists began questioning the dangers of pesticide use. Chemicals found in pesticides, surfacing in fish, herbivores, and fish eating birds, were stubborn and didn’t break down in nature due to their synthetic design. By the time they reached the human food supply, concentrations had reached levels potentially harmful to children and the elderly. http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2008-03/parkinson-linked-pesticides There are a variety of other synthetic organic chemicals being used to help produce more food, begging the question, what future side effects could these chemicals have on human life?
April 25th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Bad enough we let them put the “clean air” and “clean water” acts into play that actually allow more pollution, but now the federal government says states can’t regulate emissions themselves because it’s “interstate commerce” and thus, the federal government’s job to regulate. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17452633
With all the bulls*** we keep doing to our environment, we’re on a collision course with catastrophe. We’ve killed off the bees, now we’re killing off ourselves. If it’s not us killing each other with guns and bombs, it’s gonna be gasses and crap we’ve put in the air from all these deregulated factories. With the way we keep messing up our pollution laws, it’s only a matter of time until something like this comes to bite us in the ass.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
I just got finished with my dangerous materials testing and this reminded me about some of the chemicals I was reading about for the test. We get these warning packets with different chemicals listed in them and how we’re supposed to remove each one from a site or fight it on fire. Well, if you want to get a sense for just how dangerous some of these chemicals are, here’s a sample of one that they say could be used as a weapon against us. It’s supposedly a relative of industrial pesticides. http://www.ilpi.com/msds/vx.html
May 24th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Hit by friendly fire in 1994. The beat goes on. Organophosphates are still allowed in unsafe uses. Operators do not follow safety guidelines. Dursban got me when an exterminator did our house for termites. We eat is, breathe it and drink it every day. U wirrt nire abiyt what my neighbors are going to get me with next than about weapons of mass destruction from our enemies. The government and big business don’t care about those of us whose lives have been turned upside down with this stuff.
Wild Canary
June 1st, 2008 at 10:20 am
DDT(Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane) and DEET(N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide) are not even remotely related chemicals. Furthermore, DEET is commercially available and DDT is difficult for soveriegn nations to purchase, due to misinformation campaigns like your web site.
DDT was not banned because their was any scientific evidence supporting claims it was causing harm. It was banned because of Rachel Carson and the burgeoning “environmental movement” which was spaned from the hippie, feel good sixties.
If all natural and organic are so great … then stop using modern medicine, don’t take antibiotics or prescription medication anymore and let’s see how long you live compared to the rest of us. Just 100 years ago the average person lived under 60 years. Now, it is not unusual to find people living productive lives well past the age 100.
So much for “organic” living. Nobody was organic in 1908, everyone smoked and, to quote my great grandmother, “you only went to the hospital to die.”
Please stop spreading lies about DDT. Millions of people have died from malaria, west nile and yellow fever because DDT was so demonized and then banned around the world. Poor countries are denied medical and food aid for failing to bann DDT.
In essence, the US has a policy of letting people starve to death if they don’t ban the use of a chemical that “MIGHT” harm the birds. You should use your site to raise awareness about that.
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:04 am
Dude, while you’ve got a valid point about the whole DEET-DDT mis-connection, you’re still off base about DDT and it’s dangers. The stuff is a neurochemical that doesn’t break down in water. It’s proven to make children sick. Not only that, it isn’t used in many places around the world because it’s ineffective in heavy forested environments. In fact, in the middle americas, they can’t effectively utilize the chemical because it has no significant impact on insect life cycles, it just adds the chemical to the environment.
Maybe DDT has its uses in specific places (Maybe in Africa where there are serious health risks like Malaria skyrocketting, where DDT could be used responsibly to make an impact) but the key would be to use the chemical in a manner that doesn’t over-saturate the global food market with a chemical that can lead to serious neurological damage. DDT is dangerous and it’s use must be monitored to protect global health. No different than us over-using anti-bacterials or vaccines when they are unneccisary (have you read the super-virus article yet?)
Use the right medicine on the right victims in the right levels for the right symptoms.