DDT
DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) is a powerful insecticide with a controversial history. It is an extremely stable and resistant chemical: the discoverer found that jars that had contained DDT and were subsequently autoclaved[1] still had enough DDT residue in them to kill insects. A little goes a long way.
DDT use was restricted and then banned in most Western countries in the 1960s and '70s, and in those countries where it remains legal, it is only used as a health measure to control the mosquitoes that spread malaria. Only China and India still manufacture it.
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[edit] DDT bans and mass murder
Wingnuts (Lee Doren from the YouTube channel "HowTheWorldWorks" is one example) and corporate shills will sometimes imply that a supposed worldwide ban on DDT has killed millions of people by giving them malaria or some other mosquito-borne disease, and that Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring was responsible for the alleged ban. There's even a site run by the right-wing think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute titled Rachelwaswrong.org[2][3] This is total rubbish. Carson devoted some of her book into weighing the pros and cons of DDT use,[4][5] but her findings did not lead to a global ban. There was and is no global ban on DDT; only agricultural use is banned. Places with deadly mosquito-borne illnesses still use DDT, and in some places excessive use has led to the development of DDT-resistant mosquitoes.[6][7] In fact, the drastic reduction of DDT use in agriculture delayed the onset of resistance in mosquitoes.
[edit] DDT deniers
- Brian Dunning's DDT Skeptoid episode
- Michael Fumento
- Steve Milloy
[edit] External links
- DDT: An Introduction, Duke University
- DDT profile, EPA
- DDT and Attacks on Rachel Carson, Cliffs Notes version, Bug Girl
- Deltoid DDT category and DDT ban myth bingo
- Ed Darrell DDT category
- Bate and Switch: How a Free Market Magician Manipulated Two Decades of Environmental Science, Stories That Matter
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Brought up to a very high pressure and temperature in a specially designed device, the autoclave, and left to react.
- ↑ Rachel was wrong
- ↑ Rachel Carson, Mass Murderer? The creation of an anti-environmental myth
- ↑ The Unending War on Rachel Carson
- ↑ In defense of Rachel Carson SARAH GREY takes a fresh look at the author of the environmentalist classic Silent Spring
- ↑ http://www.panna.org/issues/persistent-poisons/the-ddt-story
- ↑ Rachel Carson Didn’t Kill Millions of Africans by William Souder