[ansel12]

Don't be skeptical. Here is the google link, for page after page of links, for account after account of it. Running Behind the DDT Truck

Here is one account "If you are close to my age, you remember in the mid-to-late-1950's running behind the DDT trucks. My mom would feed us early enough that we were done with dinner in time to run after the trucks as they sprayed our neighborhood several times per week, sometimes even every night, with a thick and exciting bank of fog. Much like an ice cream truck, we couldn't wait for the sounds of the fogger motors as they rounded the corner to our street.

Kids would ride bikes, skate, and run behind them. The trucks came to our beaches where mosquito populations were high. There was a poster that I remember that hung on the wall of our school showing the government spraying school lunch room food to show that there was no danger to the children"

This movie trailer shows what it was like. The Spray Truck

Here is a photo and a sketch.

[steve86]

Yes, you certainly documented your case that it happened.

I guess I was/am the only person here with an innate aversion to inhaling droplets of insecticide, then and now.

I remember worrying about the smoke from a dump when I was 8 in 1964.

I could have seen myself watching the mosquito truck junkies from a distance and wondering WTF (although the acronym probably wasn’t invented yet) are those people thinking?

This apparently was the same mentality that led to cavalierly handling mildly radioactive items in the late forties. After all, the authorities would tell us if it might be dangerous.

Evidently it hadn’t occurred to anyone that problems might not manifest for a few decades.