Posted on 08/07/2016 2:30:39 PM PDT by Enlightened1
We don’t have any spraying where I live. One of my neighbors chastised me a number of years ago because when he walked his dog past our property he was beseiged by mosquitos.
We now have two bug-zappers in our front yard. They are incredibly effective.
My great uncle was a big farmer in eastern North Dakota from the 30’s into the 90’s. He used to mix DDT and water with his bare arms. He passed in 1998 at the at the ripe old age of 89. DDT didn’t hurt that him a bit.
Testing testing, WHO are crouching behind closed doors, hands sweaty rubbing them together as they villonously groan, maybe this will be the one
They sprayed/fogged with DDT when we were kids-we used to put a cloth over our nose and mouth and run behind the truck in the fog-it was supposed to be harmful to animals-especially birds-but not humans-and it wasn’t a neurotoxin, like this s*** is-they should bring back the DDT for a few months instead of spraying this stuff...
As kids back in the 50's, we used to ride bicycles behind the village's fog truck that sprayed DDT. It did not hurt us a bit -- then again?
I won’t argue but what happened to the eagles and the hawks? I could see that it might have disrupted the food chain or something but birds of prey were almost non-existent for many years. I don’t remember other birds being in short supply but definitely hawks and eagles.
We have a mosquito epidemic and just where is the Batman?
“As kids back in the 50’s, we used to ride bicycles behind the village’s fog truck that sprayed DDT.”
The fogger trucks were more popular than ice cream trucks and drew more kids to follow than the pied piper.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/07/06/bald-eagle-ddt-myth-still-flying-high.html
DDT was banned in 1972. The following year, the Bald Eagle was placed on the new Endangered Species List. Even back in the early 1920’s the government was warning of the decline of eagles due to killing of them. (Viewed as a threat to livestock and other small game animals.)
The article discusses studies where eagles were fed DDT with no adverse results.
I’ve wondered if this reflected a smaller number of bugs available for the birds’ diet, meaning that the DDT did what it was intended to do, but unfortunately this side effect also starved the birds of calcium.
DDT was not worse, probably the safest insecticide we ever had until that lying Rachel Carson.
Sounds reasonable, I do remember farmers shooting them.
Killing off the insects that were at the bottom of the food chain for birds that eagles dined on, probably had knock-on ill effects to the eagles. When captive eagles fed a control diet got a DDT supplement, of course this was not a factor.
I’d think this should teach us that it would not be wrong to bring back DDT, but that it should be carefully used. Too widespread a distribution in nature, and birds will be starved. Maybe this new chemical is only fatal to mosquitos, making it preferable ecologically.
Mercury poisoning most likely.
Their decline began before DDT was around and began to recover while DDT was still in use.
The only bird that were affected by DDT were birds like purple martians and some song birds that eat mosquitoes.
But as mosquitoes made up a insignificant part of their diet (around 2%) it was not a major problem.
Agreed.
It is harmful to reproductive systems in people and animals.
And that is one of them.
Many of us are still around despite our childhood fascination with the DDT fogging trucks cruising through our neighborhoods, but we also endured around 100 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests upwind from us. Yet, in bipartisan political speech, there is much whining in favor of cowering in reaction to foreign enemies threatening us with their inferior, unreliable nuclear weapons despite our anti-missile defenses.
Too bad they can’t use somthing nice and safe, like DDT.
The whole Zika crisis is a bureaucratic criminal joke. A year ago the CDC could have instituted a travel ban to and from Brazil and then arranged assistance through the Dept. of Agriculture or State to attack Zika at its source.
But nooooooo, they sat in there offices and schemed to extort money from Congress for their “Turn you kids queer” and “Count your parents guns” programs along with the usual grants to buddies program.
So now their buddies are getting huge no-compete contracts to spray ineffective sprays on the ground and from the air in addition to the door-to-door testing. Doctors incomes are up significantly for unnecessary pat-on-the-head visits.
Notice any similarity between the Zika crisis and the Ebola crisis? I mean even down to the TV rent-a-docs (La Poop, etc.) crying out the end of the world is near if they don’t get their multi-billion dollar slush fund.
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