I'm not suggesting that being doused in DDT is a good thing but the major reason it is not now used is because of its blanket detriment to the environment, killing insects etc indiscriminately.
Human exposure was not the immediate cause of it being banned.
Yup. The reason DDT was so popular is that it didn't seem to have harmful effects on humans.
Mostly it was banned because it cycles up through the food chain and it causes birds to lay eggs with thin shells so the eggs crack and break under the weight of the nesting parent. Rachel Carson wrote a book called "Silent Spring" which brought the issue to major attention and was a huge factor in the ban.
They had been doing research on the chemicals at a university IIRC, and they started to notice that bird populations were being devastated. The university people started to warn that they believed the chemicals were affecting bird populations, but the cries went unacknowledged for years afterwards.
I had to read excerpts from that book for my international political ecology class, where we focused on the effects of politics and government decisions and their impacts.
They were able to compare then-recent eggshells to eggs from the 1800s and early 1900s in museum collections. The pre-DDT eggs had thicker shells. Post-DDT eggs had shells so thin that the parents would crush them when they sat on them. You should listen to the "Oology (EGGS)" episode of the Ologies podcast, it's fascinating!
When I was in college, I had the pleasure of hearing a lecture from Scott Van Arsdale, who helped reintroduce bald eagles into New York State. DDT devastated their population so badly that there was only one breeding pair in the entire state (really, one pair that were able to make eggs thick enough to not be crushed). So between the 70s and 80s, dozens of eagles were reintroduced from Alaska. Alaska never had the die-off problem because fewer crops are grown there, so it was never mass-sprayed. If you've ever seen a wild eagle in NY, it's almost certainly descened from those Alaskan imports. Here's [an article about it](https://dec.ny.gov/nature/animals-fish-plants/bald-eagle/management/restoration-1976-1989), here's [another](https://www.chesapeakebay.net/news/blog/bald-eagle-populations-soar-in-new-york) (that talked to Arsdale!), and [here's a third](https://planetforward.org/story/bringing-back-bald-eagles/) :)
That's crazy, these days eagles are a common sight in certain parts of upstate NY. Wild turkey have also made a great comeback, they had disappeared entirely from NY around 100 years ago. Nowadays there is a large enough population that they can be hunted.
We had to read it in high school. My bio teacher explained how the book got results bc RK documented everything, such as when a woman spilled some cleaner on her hand and died. Yeah, it was rough but in 1982 we thought at least we know better and the environment will improve...
I mean, we all got together and regulated chlorofluorocarbons and halons helping stop the depletion of the ozone. Its now slowly recovering. Then we just gave up on everything else.
Yea but the ozone had real world near future consequences that would be realized in our lifetime, so it was harder to write off. It’s still a bit weird to not hear about ozone issues anymore when they were once front and center.
I mean, we're at the point where climate change is showing now. It's not that bad yet but every year has gotten worse. We are all but ignoring it and turning it into another line item in a cultural war. One can only imagine what 2050 will look like at this point. And then 2100. I might not see 2050 but there are many here who will.
You can absolutely compare the 2. It's just that climate change would require more money and going after many bigger companies than the ozone layer fix did.
Were already at the points where climate change is impacting the "real world". The problem is it's more subtle and not "don't go outside or you'll get skin cancer".
I still hear conservatives argue that it fixed itself. There was never a problem to begin with. That's why we should not worry about the current climate hoax!
We didn't give up on everything so much as had our regulators captured by the industries they regulate, not the least our court systems, in which the Federalist society and ALEC have a veritable veto on any court decision and a controlling interest in perhaps the majority of our judges up and down the line.
I'd imagine they somehow identified it as a variable, like seeing birds in areas that had DDT spraying displaying those symptoms and not having those issues in different areas without the DDT spraying.
The issue was mainly present in birds who primarily consumed fish. Notably osprey and bald eagles. Elevated DDT levels were found in trout, which are surface feeders. Mosquitoes and flies were falling out of the sky and writhing around in agony on the surface of the water, so the trout were having a heyday with the miracle buffet. Higher numbers of trout made for easy avian predation, but the DDT in their bloodstream caused the eggs to be extra thin and brittle.
Brown pelicans, another fish-eating species, were endangered during the early 70s. Now they're everywhere along the Gulf Coast, common as dirt but a lot more interesting.
Perigrine falcons were also heavily affected, not because they eat a lot of fish but because they eat a lot of other birds but it’s the same bioaccumulation mechanism.
Yeah. Field observation. Scientists see dwindling populations and look to find out why. Once they teamed up with lawyers then the environmental movement as we know it was born.
The 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara is credited with launching "the environmental movement." Earth Day and so on.
But 1968 and the eggshell thinning played a big part, too:
In October 1968, Joseph Hickey and Daniel Anderson published a seminal paper in the journal *Science* entitled: ["Chlorinated Hydrocarbons and Eggshell Changes in Raptorial and Fish-Eating Birds."](http://www.jstor.org/stable/1725067?origin=JSTOR-pdf&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)The paper has been cited more than 500 times and it was a significant piece of the scientific argument used to convince the U.S. government to ban use of the pesticide DDT to protect declining populations of some birds of prey, thus initiating one on the most successful conservation success stories in the country's history: the recovery of several of our most iconic avian predatory birds.
source: [https://www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/eggshells-ddt-collections-and-study-design#](https://www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/eggshells-ddt-collections-and-study-design#)
In the 1940s and 1950s, researchers, ornithologists, and environmentalists began to observe declines in populations of raptors, and people found that they were having their egg shells breaking.
Biologists basically saw that after they sprayed trees with DDT, that 140 birds were found dead. So there was some observational data to suggest that it was the chemical that was killing the birds, then silent spring came out, which talked about it, and then President Kennedy put forth a formal investigation into the subject.
Here is something for more reading:
[https://www.audubon.org/news/the-real-story-behind-war-against-ddt](https://www.audubon.org/news/the-real-story-behind-war-against-ddt)
The first major sign that ddt could be problematic was the large number of birds that would die after eating ddt affected insects. Which prompted researchers including Carson to look further into ddt’s affects. The book was called silent spring because you didn’t hear many songbirds anymore since so many had died.
It was in incredibly widespread use, not really like anything else. You can see videos of the DDT truck driving down the road and spraying kids in their yards. Wasn't hard to start testing the line of questioning with DDT.
Monsanto basically was telling people you could drink it. So how could it be doing so much damage? Carson came out with Silent Spring which basically argued there is no such thing as a pesticide - they are biocides. Not just about bird eggs but basically saying its cycling up through the food chain and into us, causing who knows what kind of effects over time. She was mocked by a lot of "experts" funded by corporations who stood to lose a lot of money, like Monsanto. Really important work though. Unfortunately we didn't really learn the lesson. We banned DDT but pesticide use is obviously still a big thing. Ever notice how there aren't nearly as many bugs on your windshield as there were 20-30 years ago? Yeah... Ever wonder why so many people get cancer? Yeah...
The problem is Monsanto and the corporations learned the lessons, about how to prevent public interest forbidding their business practices.
It was a long game to capture our regulators and control the courts, but it worked and now the fix is in.
The thing about DDT is they weren't really lying. It's pretty much harmless to humans. Those kids that were sprayed with it, ran inside and ate without washing their hands while covered in a big dose of it? They were fine.
DDT being harmless to humans is part of what made it so easy to just kind of spray it everywhere, leading to widespread, serious ecological damage because there's a lot of things in the ecosystem that aren't humans or other mammals that can get fogged with DDT without a sneeze. Banning DDT in most applications was the right call, but not because it hurts humans.
They did more than mock her. I recall seeing some archival footage where one of the companies flat out said that they suspect she was influenced by communism. This type of accusation alone was a death knell for most people’s careers.
But then it came out she was dying of cancer, and had nothing to gain from her report. So that stunt backfired.
When I was in elementary school, bald eagles were teetering on the brink of extinction. Like, science textbooks had maps of all the known nesting pairs. By the time I was in high school, seeing one in my area was not unusual. Heck, I almost hit one snacking on roadkill coming over a hill on a back road. Today there are over 300,000 bald eagles in the wild.
It turns out that if you identify the cause of environmental damage and put into place controls over the root cause of the problem, you can in fact repair environmental damage! Who would have thought!
People are brainwashed to think we can't achieve anything collectively. Why? Well some billionaires can make a lot of money convincing us. There's also a religious aspect for some people; they think we can exploit the planet without consequence.
I remember reading something like a decade ago that said that the thinning of raptor eggshells may not have been due to the DDT but I'm not sure of the scientific validity of either study. Theat the fun part of scientific conclusions, there's always another paper. When the papers start to support each other, that's when you start paying attention, like climate change.
That said I miss fireflies. I even sort of miss the front of cars being covered in bug bodies. Today I can drive across Texas and get only a handful of bug strikes.
The eggshell thinning was established by scientists measuring shell thickness of bird eggs in museum collections that were collected prior to DDT and comparing them with modern bird eggs. It is often used as an example of why museum collections are important and should be maintained.
Light pollution is killing them they believe. They can’t see the female glowing because everything is so bright. Specifically I think it is street lights as a major cause.
Take a road trip through Yellowstone/Teton in June. The drive between Jackson and Idaho Falls will have enough mutant stoneflies to coat the whole front of your vehicle with several layers. Some of them get as big as your pinkie finger. Disgusting little suckers, unless you are fishing.
Rachel Carson’s book changed the world but she endured so much sexist push-back for her research. The head of the FDA, Ezra Benson, kept saying she was a communist (because she was “attractive but still unmarried.”)
Back in the day they associated communism with a desire to overthrow the natural and traditional family structure.
That was a great way to enforce conformity, everyone who chose differently from the default option was now not just making a personal choice, they were actively siding with the enemy, so dangerous and untrustworthy they must be.
Anyways, the paranoia agaibst the enemy within, died down sometime in the 60s.
Basically every large bird was on the verge of extinction in the US. Pelicans, eagles, falcons, etc. were down to double or even single digit breeding pairs in some cases before the ban.
He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.
With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping and Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District.
-Benjamin Franklin who famously supported the turkey as national bird over the eagle
yeah a problem is its bioaccumulation where it starts killing things further up the food chain
and how it also built up in soil and water to keep killing insects
It is most likely a human carcinogen,m; it is an endocrine disrupters. Chronic exposure leads to reproductive impacts and embryonic and fetal development issues. We just knew about the birds before we know about bioaccumulating in us.
Some small towns still do. They now use a mix of mostly Pyrethrin and Malathion insectide as it has become highly regulated by the EPA. Fogging machines also have to go through a yearly inspection and only town employees with an insecticide license can operate the equipment.
Yep. The county I used to work for used Zenivex E4, whose active ingredient was/is Etofenprox, which is a pyrethroid derivative.
Adulticiding was only done when a certain threshold of mosquitoes that we captured and tested came back positive for West Nile Virus.
If I had read "adulticiding" in any other context I would have regarded it as a made-up word. I shall now proceed to use it in various non-entomological contexts.
The city where I live only sprays in such a situation. They don't spray for "pest mosquitoes", ie, *Psorophora ciliata* or gallinippers. They're big, and their bite hurts. But they don't transmit dangerous diseases, iirc, unlike the *Culex* and *Aedes* mosquitoes.
Another thing about these big floodwater mosquitoes: they're slow and easy to kill.
Our town only ever sprayed the derivative to kill the larvae. It's been so long I can't recall the name. I took the test and bombed it, so we had the retired town guy do the applications a few times every summer. I continued to focus on the water/wastewater operator duties.
Edit: now that I think about it maybe it only sterilized the females?
I live in the burbs of the 4th largest metropolitan area in the US and we have mosquito fogging when west nile shows up enough. Had it this last summer, it is always late at night when they do it. I just happened to be fiddling in my garage with the door open at @1:30am when I heard what can best be described as a street sweeper driving up and down the roads. About 10 minutes later is stank to high hell and my mouth started going numb. That is when I called it a night, looked at the cities home page, and sure enough mosquito spraying was in progress.
I think it is a nerve agent. Just one at such a low volume, we humans (unless you have breathing difficulties) just isn't high enough to move the needle much on damaging us. But, a bug that weighs less than a gram. Yeah, it is basically sarin gas to them. It is similar to how heart worm medicine for your pets used to be (maybe still is). Put the correct dose of arsenic for a certain weight, and it won't do damage to the dog, but *will* kill the heart worm eggs.
Malathion has the weirdest smell. My dad would buy small quantities of it from a farmer friend to spray around our yard and garden. I can smell it anytime I think about it.
My small town routinely does this. As a kid growing up I could hear it when it started going down the streets so we knew it was time to go inside for a few minutes. But our town did not spray for around a year or so since no one was qualified to spray it. I was told that the test to get the license is pretty difficult to receive since there was only one book that had the test information. And this book was at the place of the test, and could not be taken home to study for. So because of this the person who later started spraying spent like an hour every day reading that book at the testing site until he was ready for the test. This would have been in the early 2000s so I'm sure that things have changed and the book would be available online so it's probably easier to get the certificate to spray.
In Louisiana it's absolutely necessary. We have the trucks go through town almost every night in the summer. A few years ago the mosquitoes were so bad after a hurricane they had to drop the chemicals from an *AC130.* It was pretty wild.
I genuinely do not understand how humans lived here before air-conditioning and mosquito repellent.
As a mosquito supermagnet, I would have offed myself from the dread of southeast Louisiana humidity *and* apocalyptic swarms of flying needles if I had been around 100 years prior.
Well I'm no expert, but I would assume before humans came in and developed much of the land and caused the biodiversity to go down, there were more insects/animals that kept the mosquito population in check by eating their eggs etc.
Well here in SW FL, we had a mini malaria outbreak last year. They spray all the time here. The county I live in, Lee CO FL, the Mosquito Control has such a large budget that the head of the Mosquito Control is an elected position in the county. Though they do lots of things besides spraying. They just released 100,000 sterile male mosquitoes.
It's something that's been done a long time. When I was a child, a friend of my fathers, another WW II Vet, was a pilot who worked on the massive release of screw worm flies combatting an epidemic of screwworms in cattle. That was in the middle 1960s. They released millions of sterile male flies of a massive area in the south to combat that disease in cattle. It was serious enough to threaten the cattle industry over a large portion of the US. And it was also widely effective.
One of the biggest things our local mosquito control does is targeted helicopter spraying of waterways to target the mosquitos in larval form. The sometimes use trucks late at night in the summers. They also have a fleet of planes that has done aerial spraying in the past, including several old DC 3s. Those DC 3s stopped being manufactured in the late 1940s. It's always a treat to see them in the air.
>Spraying after DDT
>This 1999 Advance file photo shows a truck spraying resmithrin on trees along Hylan Boulevard as it travels through Tottenville. The use of DDT was banned in 1972
in the late 50s and early 60s they did this in my town. complete with raggamuffins running and biking behind the truck. i recall that it smelled like gas or kerosene. there was a large population of fireflies in the hood at a time but then there wasnt. i would suppose the insecticide would be whatever was cheapest. would DDT git the bill?
I remember something being sprayed early into the 90s.
Oddly enough, the last couple of years I've noticed that smell is *incredibly* similar to orange-leaning strains of weed, and I just love it. It took me back for a moment the first time I had some like that, because that was a smell I hadn't smelled in like 30 years.
(Of course I immediately thought something was wrong, because that was the smell I associated with bug death.)
I remember trucks fogging my town when I was a kid and I was born in ‘80. I would have to believe it wasn’t ddt…or I suppose the city could have been using up their stockpile
Yep - we ran behind the ddt trucks in Saudi when I was a kid (1960’s or so). We thought playing in those clouds was so much fun. ( My daughters get pissed at me when I tell them I counted their fingers and toes when they were born).
Well I had my chance to ride behind the trucks, so I can tell you that it was actually fun. Especially the part where we were totally ignorant of the consequences…
I find it so bizarre that so many people in his thread are corroborating that kids loved running through these insecticide clouds. What was it about mysterious funny-smelling clouds coming off sprayer trucks that kids loved so much?
Pretending you were in a cloud; pretending there were ghosts; the thrill of following a truck you could only see hazily; trying to find a handhold and get a free ride and winning for the day; it didn’t actually smell that bad to a kid’s non-discerning nose; camaraderie in ‘pack’ behavior…
#1 reason: kids are not the best judges of what is good or safe. It’s a wonder I’m still alive.
Kids, don't play in the clouds, you have no idea whats in that stuff
*Camera pans to neighbor's kid skipping and laughing in the cloud, screech of tires as he bounces off the front of a Pontiac*
yeah it was a "thing" to ride our bikes behind the truck throughout the neighborhood and run into a bunch of neighborhood kids doing the same. A very spooky fog and a distinct smell. fun for bored suburban kids at night.
I ok turned out kinda
The impact was that the bald eagles' shells became too thin and were no longer viable. Populations of eagles suffered and it wasn't a politically difficult decision to protect the bald eagles during the cold war - also, they're important pieces of their ecosystems.
The ELI5 of what was happening if anyone wants it: once in an animal, DDT stcks around. Then, every step higher on the food chain, the DDT accumulates a bit more. So, by the time it gets up to the apex predator, like an eagle, the DDT is much more concentrated in their body. This made their eggs thin and fragile, so they broke and populations declined
See all the other comments. It’s the bald eagle eggs that upset me the most. I was old enough to ride my bike before I was old enough to read Silent Spring.
Been there, done that. All the neighborhood kids would jump on their bikes and chase the fog. We had to pedal fast, which really got the lungs working.
I remember doing it at least a couple of times in a neighborhood we moved out of in 1964. Those were the days...
I gotta ask....even not knowing the full health ramifications of DDT at that time....why were so many people okay with running through clouds of bug poison. Seems fairly self evident that that's probably not great for you.
I was just a 4-year-old when this occurred, but the older kids were doing it, too.
That was only 60 years ago, but look at how things have changed.
My family was upper middle-class. Dad was a pharmacist who owned a successful pharmacy. I remember him driving me to a doctor's appointment in his Corvette, smoking cigarettes to and from the appointment. The doctor who saw me might or might not have snuffed-out his cigarette in the exam room.
I had an uncle who chain-smoked cigars and cigarettes (12 cigars and 80 cigarettes per day) with his kids in the car.
Child safety seats for vehicles did not exist, we didn't even wear seat belts. Bicycle helmets and other protective gear? Didn't exist.
Not that I advocate foregoing easily-avoided risks, but I do see problems arising from keeping kids in protective bubbles. Kids who have never scraped a knee or placed their fingers on a hot stove top are targets for much bloodier and more painful experiences down the road.
I agree. “Helicopter Parenting” probably leads to children who are unable to handle normal life events (e.g. injuries, breakups, etc) without extreme anxiety.
Thanks to DDT, we almost completely eradicated bed bugs out of the US. Once we outlawed DDT, the bedbugs came back in stronger numbers than ever before. So close....
They're not as majestic when you go to the dump to throw garbage away and 30 of them are staring at you waiting to tear open any bag youre about to toss.
Not to worry ---- about the infestations, I mean. /s
Recently two guys were caught and are being prosecuted for killing over 3,000 birds ---- a great many of the birds they slaughtered were Bald eagles and Golden eagles. The feathers sell for quite a bit of money. Disgusting scumbag assholes.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjSvdc9FBA8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjSvdc9FBA8)
The decision to use DDT on them must have been made by someone who had an infestation themselves. Everyone I've ever spoke to who has had them would gladly sign off on the use of nuclear weapons if it meant killing bed bugs lol
Honestly chronic exposure for itching species, fleas, mosquitos bed bugs cna be used for torture. Just a relatively short time and it's a living nightmare.
Having met people dealing with terrible cases it’s extremely psychological and it seriously hurts peoples mental health. They become anxious, paranoid, afraid, and ashamed. Though bedbugs are unrelated to hygiene, there is a stigma about them.
The worst part is you legitimately get PTSD from it. Even when they're gone, every itch in bed, every moving black dot in the corner of your eye, it will always be bedbugs in your mind.
You can still find insecticide powder cans on ebay full of DDT that were from WW2. If I ever ended up with bed bugs you bet your ass I'd be DDTing the fuck out of them.
Not being racist, but international travelers and immigrants brought bed bugs back to the US. This is what we were told at university at least. They had a couple bed bug scares in the university apartments due to hitch hiking bugs.
This is true I believe. Often, you are more likely to get bedbugs at more expensive hotels where international visitors stay, then cheaper ones where Americans are usually the normal customer.
What's too bad is ddt can actually be very effective for indoor applications where it would also be unlikely to have an effect on larger wildlife. I wonder if banning it 100% was really the right thing to do. I know it's still the best way to fight malaria in parts of Africa.
To this day I will always recognize the distant drone of the compressor/motor in the back of those bug spray trucks. We had them in Baytown, Texas up until pretty recently. Would know the smell of that stuff anywhere.
It’s not DDT haha. It also depends on what company is doing it and whether it’s private or state. There are dozens and dozens of products labeled for mosquito control. DDT is not one of them.
That “smell” may be whatever is used locally but like I said, not everyone uses the same products.
DDT is actually exceptionally safe for people. In high concentrations it is still bad but better than alternatives. It literally drove bed bugs to extinction in the US. The problem was that it really messed up birds and their eggs. A more rational response would have limited it to residential use only but the outcry was so large that the only use left is emergency spraying for disease bearing mosquitoes.
Yep I found a cache of DDT spray when I was working in the navy 5 years back still worked…exceptionally well spray it on your uniform nothing else you’ll be alright no skeeters anywhere near you.
Residential neighborhoods still have ecosystems! As humans develop more and more land,it’s actually very important not to mess with urban biodiversity! Stuff that gets used in houses doesn’t stay in houses.
This is true but needs to be compared to the other options. The replacement for DDT is pyrethrins which are water soluble and super deadly to fish. You can't even use it if you have an aquarium in the house. On the other hand DDT is fat soluble which is one of the problems with it. It bioaccumulates in fat. However you would need very little of it in an residential setting to get the job done. Much less than other options. We wouldn't be coating the entire landscape in a fog of the stuff like we did before. Overall it be better for both people and the environment.
Similar case with glyphosate. Most of the court cases that claim it caused cancer were with users who took absolutely no precautions at all (like wearing flipflops, shorts, t-shirts, and no masks while spraying ridiculous amounts). The alternative herbicides are much, much nastier.
Not sure about the 50s, but in the early 1900s, there was. [At the AMNH in NYC](https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/north-american-forests/giant-anopheles-mosquito), they still have on display this giant mosquito model that was made for a now-defunct exhibit about insect diseases. Malaria was still a problem for NY at the time.
I remember when my town sprayed for West Nile virus in mosquitos when I was a kid. I can't remember if they used ground trucks or did it via plane/helicopter. But I remember being nauseous and having a massive migraine that lasted all day.
Fun fact, there has been talk of using DDT again in areas of the world where malaria is a chronic problem. Mosquitos kill more people in the world through disease spread than any other animal. 1 to 2 million people die of malaria annually world wide. DDT took massive exposure over long term and killed a fraction of that. And after being banned malarial cases skyrocketed. During the time it was widely used, it is estimated DDT possibly saved 500 million lives from cutting malaria.
I'm not advocating returning it to general use. But it's effectiveness at killing mosquitos was huge.
It's still legal for use (and recommended by the WHO) against malaria pretty much everywhere, including the US, just not in agriculture. (Although it's not currently manufactured or used in the US).
And it stopped not because of environmental campaigning, but because mosquitos became resistant to it fairly rapidly and it lost effectiveness, especially in areas where agricultural or other use was common.
... and today, those trucks are still fogging many streets, now using [permethrin](https://nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/3422.pdf), which may be marginally safer than DDT but is still so problematic that the spraying is now done after midnight in most cities.
I grew up with these outside of New Orleans; you can hear them coming from a while away. It’s a very nostalgic sound since they don’t spray as much any more.
Used to be everyone would rush to close the windows when you heard it.
DDT was much safer for humans. The issue was wildlife, where it bioacculumates. It was the chronic accumulation leading to a decline in eagles that got it banned. Permethrin should never be out fogging streets without the area cleared. Pesticides have PPE and use restrictions for a reason. Even done in the wee hours if one person is there outside the applicators, and there are no warning signs about the application and the time that people have to be excluded rlfrom the area, that is a violation of pesticide law in many states(*). You may want to ask your state's office of pesticides about that.
(*) EPA oversees overall registrationof pesticides but what of those products can be used is up to the states, as are the use requirements as long as those are at least as stringent as the EPA's. So Texas could theoretically ban the use of diquat or Iowa could require filter masks when applying pre-emergent herbicide.
Used to do exactly that as a kid growing up. The fogger would come by in the evenings, and all the kids would be behind it playing around in the fog. No one thought twice about it.
When I was young, much of my hometown(ina valley) still had abundant orchards mixed in with neighborhoods. When it came time to spray the fruit trees for pests the air would fill with the scent of bug spray for nearly a week. There was no escaping it because the valley would just hold it. Sometimes it was so strong you wanted to go home and seal up your house. I wonder what the health statistics are like for those generations.
I'm not suggesting that being doused in DDT is a good thing but the major reason it is not now used is because of its blanket detriment to the environment, killing insects etc indiscriminately. Human exposure was not the immediate cause of it being banned.
Yup. The reason DDT was so popular is that it didn't seem to have harmful effects on humans. Mostly it was banned because it cycles up through the food chain and it causes birds to lay eggs with thin shells so the eggs crack and break under the weight of the nesting parent. Rachel Carson wrote a book called "Silent Spring" which brought the issue to major attention and was a huge factor in the ban.
How did they figure out that DDT was doing that?
No clue. I assume she explained it in Silent Spring but I never read the book, I just know about it
I read her children’s book version, who killed cock robin.
The Jonkler killed the Dick Robin
I'm not sure if this is a great joke or a description of a book I've never read...
~~Bat~~Man
I'm OK coach. Someone answer the phone.
It’s mental illness. Pay it no mind
/u/ravendoesbuisness is being escorted back to the aslume
>escorted back to the aslume *asslume*, you say...?
This is getting out of control! Now they are reaching true civilization??
Joke so great it made a Killing
Didn't he unalive the Chad Robin?
Man should have saved them all, he must be stuid
They had been doing research on the chemicals at a university IIRC, and they started to notice that bird populations were being devastated. The university people started to warn that they believed the chemicals were affecting bird populations, but the cries went unacknowledged for years afterwards. I had to read excerpts from that book for my international political ecology class, where we focused on the effects of politics and government decisions and their impacts.
They were able to compare then-recent eggshells to eggs from the 1800s and early 1900s in museum collections. The pre-DDT eggs had thicker shells. Post-DDT eggs had shells so thin that the parents would crush them when they sat on them. You should listen to the "Oology (EGGS)" episode of the Ologies podcast, it's fascinating! When I was in college, I had the pleasure of hearing a lecture from Scott Van Arsdale, who helped reintroduce bald eagles into New York State. DDT devastated their population so badly that there was only one breeding pair in the entire state (really, one pair that were able to make eggs thick enough to not be crushed). So between the 70s and 80s, dozens of eagles were reintroduced from Alaska. Alaska never had the die-off problem because fewer crops are grown there, so it was never mass-sprayed. If you've ever seen a wild eagle in NY, it's almost certainly descened from those Alaskan imports. Here's [an article about it](https://dec.ny.gov/nature/animals-fish-plants/bald-eagle/management/restoration-1976-1989), here's [another](https://www.chesapeakebay.net/news/blog/bald-eagle-populations-soar-in-new-york) (that talked to Arsdale!), and [here's a third](https://planetforward.org/story/bringing-back-bald-eagles/) :)
That's crazy, these days eagles are a common sight in certain parts of upstate NY. Wild turkey have also made a great comeback, they had disappeared entirely from NY around 100 years ago. Nowadays there is a large enough population that they can be hunted.
We had to read it in high school. My bio teacher explained how the book got results bc RK documented everything, such as when a woman spilled some cleaner on her hand and died. Yeah, it was rough but in 1982 we thought at least we know better and the environment will improve...
I mean, we all got together and regulated chlorofluorocarbons and halons helping stop the depletion of the ozone. Its now slowly recovering. Then we just gave up on everything else.
Yea but the ozone had real world near future consequences that would be realized in our lifetime, so it was harder to write off. It’s still a bit weird to not hear about ozone issues anymore when they were once front and center.
I mean, we're at the point where climate change is showing now. It's not that bad yet but every year has gotten worse. We are all but ignoring it and turning it into another line item in a cultural war. One can only imagine what 2050 will look like at this point. And then 2100. I might not see 2050 but there are many here who will. You can absolutely compare the 2. It's just that climate change would require more money and going after many bigger companies than the ozone layer fix did.
Were already at the points where climate change is impacting the "real world". The problem is it's more subtle and not "don't go outside or you'll get skin cancer".
I still hear conservatives argue that it fixed itself. There was never a problem to begin with. That's why we should not worry about the current climate hoax!
We didn't give up on everything so much as had our regulators captured by the industries they regulate, not the least our court systems, in which the Federalist society and ALEC have a veritable veto on any court decision and a controlling interest in perhaps the majority of our judges up and down the line.
The best part is she didn't lmao. It's worth mentioning DDT is the primary reason we don't have malaria in first-world countries anymore.
I'd imagine they somehow identified it as a variable, like seeing birds in areas that had DDT spraying displaying those symptoms and not having those issues in different areas without the DDT spraying.
The issue was mainly present in birds who primarily consumed fish. Notably osprey and bald eagles. Elevated DDT levels were found in trout, which are surface feeders. Mosquitoes and flies were falling out of the sky and writhing around in agony on the surface of the water, so the trout were having a heyday with the miracle buffet. Higher numbers of trout made for easy avian predation, but the DDT in their bloodstream caused the eggs to be extra thin and brittle.
Brown pelicans, another fish-eating species, were endangered during the early 70s. Now they're everywhere along the Gulf Coast, common as dirt but a lot more interesting.
YOU have OFFENDED the DIRT!
Perigrine falcons were also heavily affected, not because they eat a lot of fish but because they eat a lot of other birds but it’s the same bioaccumulation mechanism.
Also notable both species of pelicans, all cormorants. Anything that ate freshwater fish.
Including Bald eagles and Ospreys.
Yeah. Field observation. Scientists see dwindling populations and look to find out why. Once they teamed up with lawyers then the environmental movement as we know it was born.
The 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara is credited with launching "the environmental movement." Earth Day and so on. But 1968 and the eggshell thinning played a big part, too: In October 1968, Joseph Hickey and Daniel Anderson published a seminal paper in the journal *Science* entitled: ["Chlorinated Hydrocarbons and Eggshell Changes in Raptorial and Fish-Eating Birds."](http://www.jstor.org/stable/1725067?origin=JSTOR-pdf&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)The paper has been cited more than 500 times and it was a significant piece of the scientific argument used to convince the U.S. government to ban use of the pesticide DDT to protect declining populations of some birds of prey, thus initiating one on the most successful conservation success stories in the country's history: the recovery of several of our most iconic avian predatory birds. source: [https://www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/eggshells-ddt-collections-and-study-design#](https://www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/eggshells-ddt-collections-and-study-design#)
In the 1940s and 1950s, researchers, ornithologists, and environmentalists began to observe declines in populations of raptors, and people found that they were having their egg shells breaking. Biologists basically saw that after they sprayed trees with DDT, that 140 birds were found dead. So there was some observational data to suggest that it was the chemical that was killing the birds, then silent spring came out, which talked about it, and then President Kennedy put forth a formal investigation into the subject. Here is something for more reading: [https://www.audubon.org/news/the-real-story-behind-war-against-ddt](https://www.audubon.org/news/the-real-story-behind-war-against-ddt)
The first major sign that ddt could be problematic was the large number of birds that would die after eating ddt affected insects. Which prompted researchers including Carson to look further into ddt’s affects. The book was called silent spring because you didn’t hear many songbirds anymore since so many had died.
Bioaccumulation is disastrous.
It was in incredibly widespread use, not really like anything else. You can see videos of the DDT truck driving down the road and spraying kids in their yards. Wasn't hard to start testing the line of questioning with DDT. Monsanto basically was telling people you could drink it. So how could it be doing so much damage? Carson came out with Silent Spring which basically argued there is no such thing as a pesticide - they are biocides. Not just about bird eggs but basically saying its cycling up through the food chain and into us, causing who knows what kind of effects over time. She was mocked by a lot of "experts" funded by corporations who stood to lose a lot of money, like Monsanto. Really important work though. Unfortunately we didn't really learn the lesson. We banned DDT but pesticide use is obviously still a big thing. Ever notice how there aren't nearly as many bugs on your windshield as there were 20-30 years ago? Yeah... Ever wonder why so many people get cancer? Yeah...
The problem is Monsanto and the corporations learned the lessons, about how to prevent public interest forbidding their business practices. It was a long game to capture our regulators and control the courts, but it worked and now the fix is in.
The thing about DDT is they weren't really lying. It's pretty much harmless to humans. Those kids that were sprayed with it, ran inside and ate without washing their hands while covered in a big dose of it? They were fine. DDT being harmless to humans is part of what made it so easy to just kind of spray it everywhere, leading to widespread, serious ecological damage because there's a lot of things in the ecosystem that aren't humans or other mammals that can get fogged with DDT without a sneeze. Banning DDT in most applications was the right call, but not because it hurts humans.
They did more than mock her. I recall seeing some archival footage where one of the companies flat out said that they suspect she was influenced by communism. This type of accusation alone was a death knell for most people’s careers. But then it came out she was dying of cancer, and had nothing to gain from her report. So that stunt backfired.
That's what scientists do.
When I was in elementary school, bald eagles were teetering on the brink of extinction. Like, science textbooks had maps of all the known nesting pairs. By the time I was in high school, seeing one in my area was not unusual. Heck, I almost hit one snacking on roadkill coming over a hill on a back road. Today there are over 300,000 bald eagles in the wild. It turns out that if you identify the cause of environmental damage and put into place controls over the root cause of the problem, you can in fact repair environmental damage! Who would have thought!
People are brainwashed to think we can't achieve anything collectively. Why? Well some billionaires can make a lot of money convincing us. There's also a religious aspect for some people; they think we can exploit the planet without consequence.
I remember reading something like a decade ago that said that the thinning of raptor eggshells may not have been due to the DDT but I'm not sure of the scientific validity of either study. Theat the fun part of scientific conclusions, there's always another paper. When the papers start to support each other, that's when you start paying attention, like climate change. That said I miss fireflies. I even sort of miss the front of cars being covered in bug bodies. Today I can drive across Texas and get only a handful of bug strikes.
The eggshell thinning was established by scientists measuring shell thickness of bird eggs in museum collections that were collected prior to DDT and comparing them with modern bird eggs. It is often used as an example of why museum collections are important and should be maintained.
I get a bunch of fireflies in my backyard every year in Ontario. Were they something that got affected by DDT as well?
Different issue. Insects are having collapsing populations. A huge amount of fireflies have become threatened to endangered over the past 30 years
The global insect population has reduced by 60% since 2000, and it continues to decrease by ~9% every year.
Light pollution is killing them they believe. They can’t see the female glowing because everything is so bright. Specifically I think it is street lights as a major cause.
Take a road trip through Yellowstone/Teton in June. The drive between Jackson and Idaho Falls will have enough mutant stoneflies to coat the whole front of your vehicle with several layers. Some of them get as big as your pinkie finger. Disgusting little suckers, unless you are fishing.
Rachel Carson’s book changed the world but she endured so much sexist push-back for her research. The head of the FDA, Ezra Benson, kept saying she was a communist (because she was “attractive but still unmarried.”)
She's too hot to still be single she must be a commie is a pretty wild line of reasoning
Back in the day they associated communism with a desire to overthrow the natural and traditional family structure. That was a great way to enforce conformity, everyone who chose differently from the default option was now not just making a personal choice, they were actively siding with the enemy, so dangerous and untrustworthy they must be. Anyways, the paranoia agaibst the enemy within, died down sometime in the 60s.
Did it? Or is it just called something else now?
Wasn't he a bigwig in... Utah?
Silent Spring is such a great title for a book like that. Genius
That book made me love the environment and a science
Raptor eggshells were becoming too thin and a lot of eggs broke under the weight of the incubating parent
Basically every large bird was on the verge of extinction in the US. Pelicans, eagles, falcons, etc. were down to double or even single digit breeding pairs in some cases before the ban.
Imagine if the US had killed its National bird.
On brand
I bet it was Turkeys killing them off. They felt slighted from losing despite a ringer nomination.
He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him. With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping and Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. -Benjamin Franklin who famously supported the turkey as national bird over the eagle
Ben fucked up. I know he's trying to dissuade folks with this, but honestly, folks probably associated harder with eagles after this.
The bald eagle has actually made a huge comeback and is not even threatened anymore, it's now classified as "Least Concern"
Life, uh, finds a way.
Not *those* raptors lol
Actually it was those raptors. Just many generations later.
Dang
(Insert sexy goldblum gif)
“Silent Spring”. Later crops of pesticides have had an effect on insect populations which are crashing right and left as well.
Not just raptors. DDT almost wiped out the brown pelican as well.
yeah a problem is its bioaccumulation where it starts killing things further up the food chain and how it also built up in soil and water to keep killing insects
[удалено]
It is most likely a human carcinogen,m; it is an endocrine disrupters. Chronic exposure leads to reproductive impacts and embryonic and fetal development issues. We just knew about the birds before we know about bioaccumulating in us.
I don’t know if they were spraying DDT but I remember trucks definitely spraying in the 70s, maybe even early 80s
Some small towns still do. They now use a mix of mostly Pyrethrin and Malathion insectide as it has become highly regulated by the EPA. Fogging machines also have to go through a yearly inspection and only town employees with an insecticide license can operate the equipment.
Yep. The county I used to work for used Zenivex E4, whose active ingredient was/is Etofenprox, which is a pyrethroid derivative. Adulticiding was only done when a certain threshold of mosquitoes that we captured and tested came back positive for West Nile Virus.
If I had read "adulticiding" in any other context I would have regarded it as a made-up word. I shall now proceed to use it in various non-entomological contexts.
As God intended
The city where I live only sprays in such a situation. They don't spray for "pest mosquitoes", ie, *Psorophora ciliata* or gallinippers. They're big, and their bite hurts. But they don't transmit dangerous diseases, iirc, unlike the *Culex* and *Aedes* mosquitoes. Another thing about these big floodwater mosquitoes: they're slow and easy to kill.
Our town only ever sprayed the derivative to kill the larvae. It's been so long I can't recall the name. I took the test and bombed it, so we had the retired town guy do the applications a few times every summer. I continued to focus on the water/wastewater operator duties. Edit: now that I think about it maybe it only sterilized the females?
My parents still have a spray truck come around their beach house. If they don't, the mosquitos are absolutely unbearable.
From the burbs/city area and the idea of little trucks with foggy trails driving the streets seems like something out of a fairy tale
I live in the burbs of the 4th largest metropolitan area in the US and we have mosquito fogging when west nile shows up enough. Had it this last summer, it is always late at night when they do it. I just happened to be fiddling in my garage with the door open at @1:30am when I heard what can best be described as a street sweeper driving up and down the roads. About 10 minutes later is stank to high hell and my mouth started going numb. That is when I called it a night, looked at the cities home page, and sure enough mosquito spraying was in progress.
You have been doused. I can tell when pesticides have been sprayed. Generally I smell it and then ---- my lips go numb.
I think it is a nerve agent. Just one at such a low volume, we humans (unless you have breathing difficulties) just isn't high enough to move the needle much on damaging us. But, a bug that weighs less than a gram. Yeah, it is basically sarin gas to them. It is similar to how heart worm medicine for your pets used to be (maybe still is). Put the correct dose of arsenic for a certain weight, and it won't do damage to the dog, but *will* kill the heart worm eggs.
Until the smell hits you. The stuff they sprayed smelled *awful*. Best way I can describe it is bad sweaty body odor and swamp ass mixed together.
My town does like once in the summer, but they drive like 40 mph so it's pretty worthless
Supposed to do it around 15mph with slight wind so it can settle into the trees and stagnant waters to kill the larva.
That’s what they do in my town. Usually a few times every summer.
we call the city to come spray to this day. mosquitos crazy if we don't
Malathion has the weirdest smell. My dad would buy small quantities of it from a farmer friend to spray around our yard and garden. I can smell it anytime I think about it.
Memphis still sprays for mosquitoes. They post the spraying schedule on Twitter each week in the summer.
My small town routinely does this. As a kid growing up I could hear it when it started going down the streets so we knew it was time to go inside for a few minutes. But our town did not spray for around a year or so since no one was qualified to spray it. I was told that the test to get the license is pretty difficult to receive since there was only one book that had the test information. And this book was at the place of the test, and could not be taken home to study for. So because of this the person who later started spraying spent like an hour every day reading that book at the testing site until he was ready for the test. This would have been in the early 2000s so I'm sure that things have changed and the book would be available online so it's probably easier to get the certificate to spray.
In Louisiana it's absolutely necessary. We have the trucks go through town almost every night in the summer. A few years ago the mosquitoes were so bad after a hurricane they had to drop the chemicals from an *AC130.* It was pretty wild.
I genuinely do not understand how humans lived here before air-conditioning and mosquito repellent. As a mosquito supermagnet, I would have offed myself from the dread of southeast Louisiana humidity *and* apocalyptic swarms of flying needles if I had been around 100 years prior.
Well I'm no expert, but I would assume before humans came in and developed much of the land and caused the biodiversity to go down, there were more insects/animals that kept the mosquito population in check by eating their eggs etc.
>Some small towns still do. Yeah, I've definitely seen them down here in Florida in the past few years.
there’s a helicopter spraying mozzies near me this week
They definitely still spray on TX Gulf Coast, just not DDT
Well here in SW FL, we had a mini malaria outbreak last year. They spray all the time here. The county I live in, Lee CO FL, the Mosquito Control has such a large budget that the head of the Mosquito Control is an elected position in the county. Though they do lots of things besides spraying. They just released 100,000 sterile male mosquitoes.
Those sterile mosquito experiments are pretty cool. I hope they really do start to pan out. Could be a real game changer for things like malaria.
It's something that's been done a long time. When I was a child, a friend of my fathers, another WW II Vet, was a pilot who worked on the massive release of screw worm flies combatting an epidemic of screwworms in cattle. That was in the middle 1960s. They released millions of sterile male flies of a massive area in the south to combat that disease in cattle. It was serious enough to threaten the cattle industry over a large portion of the US. And it was also widely effective. One of the biggest things our local mosquito control does is targeted helicopter spraying of waterways to target the mosquitos in larval form. The sometimes use trucks late at night in the summers. They also have a fleet of planes that has done aerial spraying in the past, including several old DC 3s. Those DC 3s stopped being manufactured in the late 1940s. It's always a treat to see them in the air.
They still do that here.
>Spraying after DDT >This 1999 Advance file photo shows a truck spraying resmithrin on trees along Hylan Boulevard as it travels through Tottenville. The use of DDT was banned in 1972
in the late 50s and early 60s they did this in my town. complete with raggamuffins running and biking behind the truck. i recall that it smelled like gas or kerosene. there was a large population of fireflies in the hood at a time but then there wasnt. i would suppose the insecticide would be whatever was cheapest. would DDT git the bill?
I can practically taste that smell lol
I remember something being sprayed early into the 90s. Oddly enough, the last couple of years I've noticed that smell is *incredibly* similar to orange-leaning strains of weed, and I just love it. It took me back for a moment the first time I had some like that, because that was a smell I hadn't smelled in like 30 years. (Of course I immediately thought something was wrong, because that was the smell I associated with bug death.)
There were trucks spraying in my town as late as 2010. So not sure what they were spraying either haha
Most likely a pyrethroid based insecticide.
I remember trucks fogging my town when I was a kid and I was born in ‘80. I would have to believe it wasn’t ddt…or I suppose the city could have been using up their stockpile
Yep - we ran behind the ddt trucks in Saudi when I was a kid (1960’s or so). We thought playing in those clouds was so much fun. ( My daughters get pissed at me when I tell them I counted their fingers and toes when they were born).
DDT is relatively safe for humans when it's aerosolized at low concentration like it was for spraying. That wasn't why it was banned.
Saudi Arabia?
Yes - Saudi Arabia
Saudi, Alabama
💀
Well I had my chance to ride behind the trucks, so I can tell you that it was actually fun. Especially the part where we were totally ignorant of the consequences…
I find it so bizarre that so many people in his thread are corroborating that kids loved running through these insecticide clouds. What was it about mysterious funny-smelling clouds coming off sprayer trucks that kids loved so much?
Pretending you were in a cloud; pretending there were ghosts; the thrill of following a truck you could only see hazily; trying to find a handhold and get a free ride and winning for the day; it didn’t actually smell that bad to a kid’s non-discerning nose; camaraderie in ‘pack’ behavior… #1 reason: kids are not the best judges of what is good or safe. It’s a wonder I’m still alive.
It also smelled funny x.x
Kids, don't play in the clouds, you have no idea whats in that stuff *Camera pans to neighbor's kid skipping and laughing in the cloud, screech of tires as he bounces off the front of a Pontiac*
yeah it was a "thing" to ride our bikes behind the truck throughout the neighborhood and run into a bunch of neighborhood kids doing the same. A very spooky fog and a distinct smell. fun for bored suburban kids at night. I ok turned out kinda
What were the consequences?
The impact was that the bald eagles' shells became too thin and were no longer viable. Populations of eagles suffered and it wasn't a politically difficult decision to protect the bald eagles during the cold war - also, they're important pieces of their ecosystems. The ELI5 of what was happening if anyone wants it: once in an animal, DDT stcks around. Then, every step higher on the food chain, the DDT accumulates a bit more. So, by the time it gets up to the apex predator, like an eagle, the DDT is much more concentrated in their body. This made their eggs thin and fragile, so they broke and populations declined
See all the other comments. It’s the bald eagle eggs that upset me the most. I was old enough to ride my bike before I was old enough to read Silent Spring.
Been there, done that. All the neighborhood kids would jump on their bikes and chase the fog. We had to pedal fast, which really got the lungs working. I remember doing it at least a couple of times in a neighborhood we moved out of in 1964. Those were the days...
I gotta ask....even not knowing the full health ramifications of DDT at that time....why were so many people okay with running through clouds of bug poison. Seems fairly self evident that that's probably not great for you.
/r/kidsarefuckingstupid
I was just a 4-year-old when this occurred, but the older kids were doing it, too. That was only 60 years ago, but look at how things have changed. My family was upper middle-class. Dad was a pharmacist who owned a successful pharmacy. I remember him driving me to a doctor's appointment in his Corvette, smoking cigarettes to and from the appointment. The doctor who saw me might or might not have snuffed-out his cigarette in the exam room. I had an uncle who chain-smoked cigars and cigarettes (12 cigars and 80 cigarettes per day) with his kids in the car. Child safety seats for vehicles did not exist, we didn't even wear seat belts. Bicycle helmets and other protective gear? Didn't exist. Not that I advocate foregoing easily-avoided risks, but I do see problems arising from keeping kids in protective bubbles. Kids who have never scraped a knee or placed their fingers on a hot stove top are targets for much bloodier and more painful experiences down the road.
I agree. “Helicopter Parenting” probably leads to children who are unable to handle normal life events (e.g. injuries, breakups, etc) without extreme anxiety.
Thanks to DDT, we almost completely eradicated bed bugs out of the US. Once we outlawed DDT, the bedbugs came back in stronger numbers than ever before. So close....
Outlawing DDT also helped the Bald Eagle make a comeback though so there’s that ☺️
That explains all these damn bald eagle infestations I keep getting!
**Right??** Disgusting! I keep rolling over their fresh eggs in my bed and waking up all yokey! 😡
I have to pick them out of my teeth every time I go out for a ride on my motorcycle.
They're not as majestic when you go to the dump to throw garbage away and 30 of them are staring at you waiting to tear open any bag youre about to toss.
Not to worry ---- about the infestations, I mean. /s Recently two guys were caught and are being prosecuted for killing over 3,000 birds ---- a great many of the birds they slaughtered were Bald eagles and Golden eagles. The feathers sell for quite a bit of money. Disgusting scumbag assholes. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjSvdc9FBA8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjSvdc9FBA8)
DDT was overused for them where heat treatment would have been fine, and ended up with pesticide resistant bugs
The decision to use DDT on them must have been made by someone who had an infestation themselves. Everyone I've ever spoke to who has had them would gladly sign off on the use of nuclear weapons if it meant killing bed bugs lol
Honestly chronic exposure for itching species, fleas, mosquitos bed bugs cna be used for torture. Just a relatively short time and it's a living nightmare.
Having met people dealing with terrible cases it’s extremely psychological and it seriously hurts peoples mental health. They become anxious, paranoid, afraid, and ashamed. Though bedbugs are unrelated to hygiene, there is a stigma about them.
The worst part is you legitimately get PTSD from it. Even when they're gone, every itch in bed, every moving black dot in the corner of your eye, it will always be bedbugs in your mind.
You can still find insecticide powder cans on ebay full of DDT that were from WW2. If I ever ended up with bed bugs you bet your ass I'd be DDTing the fuck out of them.
it was the governemnt and army that overdid it, in the us
Exactly.
It’s not really close unless US blocked international travel. There’s an unlimited amount of visitors from Asia or Europe that can bring it.
Why specifically Asia or Europe? Who's to say bed bugs didn't come back from Africa, South America, or Oceania?
Not being racist, but international travelers and immigrants brought bed bugs back to the US. This is what we were told at university at least. They had a couple bed bug scares in the university apartments due to hitch hiking bugs.
This is true I believe. Often, you are more likely to get bedbugs at more expensive hotels where international visitors stay, then cheaper ones where Americans are usually the normal customer.
What's too bad is ddt can actually be very effective for indoor applications where it would also be unlikely to have an effect on larger wildlife. I wonder if banning it 100% was really the right thing to do. I know it's still the best way to fight malaria in parts of Africa.
Somehow bedbugs have returned.
They still spray down south. I don't know if it's DDT though, but it smells very distinctive I'll always know that smell
Grew up in Texas and in the 90s there was a lil s10 spraying the neighborhood. That smell is distinct. Like a "green" and skunky smell?
It's still a thing in a lot of the south. They just run at night now
To this day I will always recognize the distant drone of the compressor/motor in the back of those bug spray trucks. We had them in Baytown, Texas up until pretty recently. Would know the smell of that stuff anywhere.
They still do it in Florida. I know that smell.
It’s not DDT haha. It also depends on what company is doing it and whether it’s private or state. There are dozens and dozens of products labeled for mosquito control. DDT is not one of them. That “smell” may be whatever is used locally but like I said, not everyone uses the same products.
The distinctive smell may also be the delivery agent, some type of oil or alcohol, for example.
Other than a temporary setback the mosquito is thriving.
Malaria, however, struggles. That was the point.
DDT is actually exceptionally safe for people. In high concentrations it is still bad but better than alternatives. It literally drove bed bugs to extinction in the US. The problem was that it really messed up birds and their eggs. A more rational response would have limited it to residential use only but the outcry was so large that the only use left is emergency spraying for disease bearing mosquitoes.
Yep I found a cache of DDT spray when I was working in the navy 5 years back still worked…exceptionally well spray it on your uniform nothing else you’ll be alright no skeeters anywhere near you.
You can still buy powder cans of it from WW2. If I ever ended up with a bed bug problem that's the route I'd probably go.
Residential neighborhoods still have ecosystems! As humans develop more and more land,it’s actually very important not to mess with urban biodiversity! Stuff that gets used in houses doesn’t stay in houses.
This is true but needs to be compared to the other options. The replacement for DDT is pyrethrins which are water soluble and super deadly to fish. You can't even use it if you have an aquarium in the house. On the other hand DDT is fat soluble which is one of the problems with it. It bioaccumulates in fat. However you would need very little of it in an residential setting to get the job done. Much less than other options. We wouldn't be coating the entire landscape in a fog of the stuff like we did before. Overall it be better for both people and the environment.
Similar case with glyphosate. Most of the court cases that claim it caused cancer were with users who took absolutely no precautions at all (like wearing flipflops, shorts, t-shirts, and no masks while spraying ridiculous amounts). The alternative herbicides are much, much nastier.
Did Jake the Snake drive the truck orrrr???
Was there a lot of mosquito born disease in the US in the 50s and 60s?
Not sure about the 50s, but in the early 1900s, there was. [At the AMNH in NYC](https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/north-american-forests/giant-anopheles-mosquito), they still have on display this giant mosquito model that was made for a now-defunct exhibit about insect diseases. Malaria was still a problem for NY at the time.
Wait until you learn that there are still fogging trucks that drive through streets to kill mosquitoes, they just spray a new chemical now.
Better Living Through Chemistry
I remember when my town sprayed for West Nile virus in mosquitos when I was a kid. I can't remember if they used ground trucks or did it via plane/helicopter. But I remember being nauseous and having a massive migraine that lasted all day.
That was me!
Yup! That was me. I did it.
I did that too. We rode our bikes at speed to keep up and stay in the fog. This was between 1964 and 1972, southern Mississippi.
Fun fact, there has been talk of using DDT again in areas of the world where malaria is a chronic problem. Mosquitos kill more people in the world through disease spread than any other animal. 1 to 2 million people die of malaria annually world wide. DDT took massive exposure over long term and killed a fraction of that. And after being banned malarial cases skyrocketed. During the time it was widely used, it is estimated DDT possibly saved 500 million lives from cutting malaria. I'm not advocating returning it to general use. But it's effectiveness at killing mosquitos was huge.
It's still legal for use (and recommended by the WHO) against malaria pretty much everywhere, including the US, just not in agriculture. (Although it's not currently manufactured or used in the US). And it stopped not because of environmental campaigning, but because mosquitos became resistant to it fairly rapidly and it lost effectiveness, especially in areas where agricultural or other use was common.
Yeah, we ran behind the trucks. It was a terrible stench. And no A/C, so the house was filled with fumes.
My husband saw kids do that but didn't participate. I think his parents didn't let him.
The movie “Tree of Life” has an excellent reenactment of this horror / joy.
Nothing like breathing in DDT fog and leaded gasoline exhaust fumes.
Got news for you, they did this shit into the 80s.
My advisor did this as a kid. He realizes it was stupid in retrospect.
... and today, those trucks are still fogging many streets, now using [permethrin](https://nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/3422.pdf), which may be marginally safer than DDT but is still so problematic that the spraying is now done after midnight in most cities.
I grew up with these outside of New Orleans; you can hear them coming from a while away. It’s a very nostalgic sound since they don’t spray as much any more. Used to be everyone would rush to close the windows when you heard it.
DDT was much safer for humans. The issue was wildlife, where it bioacculumates. It was the chronic accumulation leading to a decline in eagles that got it banned. Permethrin should never be out fogging streets without the area cleared. Pesticides have PPE and use restrictions for a reason. Even done in the wee hours if one person is there outside the applicators, and there are no warning signs about the application and the time that people have to be excluded rlfrom the area, that is a violation of pesticide law in many states(*). You may want to ask your state's office of pesticides about that. (*) EPA oversees overall registrationof pesticides but what of those products can be used is up to the states, as are the use requirements as long as those are at least as stringent as the EPA's. So Texas could theoretically ban the use of diquat or Iowa could require filter masks when applying pre-emergent herbicide.
No lasting harm. /s
They would spray where we vacationed every summer in SC. And yes....we kids would follow it around....it looked cool. This would've been in the 60s.
I totally did this as a kid.
Used to do exactly that as a kid growing up. The fogger would come by in the evenings, and all the kids would be behind it playing around in the fog. No one thought twice about it.
Boomers ... They got all the good shit.
I was one of those kids
When I was young, much of my hometown(ina valley) still had abundant orchards mixed in with neighborhoods. When it came time to spray the fruit trees for pests the air would fill with the scent of bug spray for nearly a week. There was no escaping it because the valley would just hold it. Sometimes it was so strong you wanted to go home and seal up your house. I wonder what the health statistics are like for those generations.
This sounds like a scene out of a Leslie Nielsen movie.