Posted on 07/31/2002 10:34:02 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
It looks like the EnviroNazis have been whacking away for a while, huh?
Excerpt:
Environmentalists charge that DDT is dangerous to humans and animals, but the first study to find an elevated risk of breast cancer from exposure to DDT "has now failed to be replicated at least eight times," with some studies even finding "significantly" reduced risk Ð and there were similar findings for "multiple myeloma, hepatic cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma" (Attaran et al. 2000, 731, 730). Amir Attaran, who was one of the leaders in the successful effort to prevent the total banning of DDT for disease (malaria) vector control, added that although "hundreds of millions (and perhaps billions) of people have been exposed to elevated concentrations of DDT...the literature does not contain even one peer-reviewed, independently replicated study linking DDT exposure to any adverse health outcome" (Attaran and Maharaj 2000).
< snip >
It was in the early days of the modern anti-chemical hysteria that DDT became a target for activists, leading to the ban. In their zeal for what they imagined to be chemical-free purity, they ignored the real costs and benefits of the ban. It is interesting to note that the December 31, 1972 EPA press release titled "DDT Ban Takes Effect," which decreed that the "general use of the pesticide DDT will no longer be legal in the United States after today," also conceded the enormous benefit to human health from the use of DDT. DDT was developed as the first of the modern insecticides early in World War II. It was initially used with great effect to combat malaria, typhus, and the other insect-borne human diseases among both military and civilian populations.
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Excerpt:
Environmentalists charge that DDT is dangerous to humans and animals, but the first study to find an elevated risk of breast cancer from exposure to DDT "has now failed to be replicated at least eight times," with some studies even finding "significantly" reduced risk Ð and there were similar findings for "multiple myeloma, hepatic cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma" (Attaran et al. 2000, 731, 730). Amir Attaran, who was one of the leaders in the successful effort to prevent the total banning of DDT for disease (malaria) vector control, added that although "hundreds of millions (and perhaps billions) of people have been exposed to elevated concentrations of DDT...the literature does not contain even one peer-reviewed, independently replicated study linking DDT exposure to any adverse health outcome" (Attaran and Maharaj 2000).
< snip >
It was in the early days of the modern anti-chemical hysteria that DDT became a target for activists, leading to the ban. In their zeal for what they imagined to be chemical-free purity, they ignored the real costs and benefits of the ban. It is interesting to note that the December 31, 1972 EPA press release titled "DDT Ban Takes Effect," which decreed that the "general use of the pesticide DDT will no longer be legal in the United States after today," also conceded the enormous benefit to human health from the use of DDT. DDT was developed as the first of the modern insecticides early in World War II. It was initially used with great effect to combat malaria, typhus, and the other insect-borne human diseases among both military and civilian populations.
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Oh wait, I forgot, its HIV that's killing Africans.
Everything in the world is made out of chemicals! This includes air, food, water, dirt, plants and animals!
It had zero effect. I guess I could have drowned a couple of bugs in the solution, but that's the only way it was going to be deadly. It had lost all its potency.
The funny thing is that I thought I recalled that the main reason for banning it domestically was that it didn't break down.
With my boys, this is a moot point. They wear sweat pants during the warm months of Texas, complain to me that they are hot and wear shorts to school in January & February and complain that they are cold.
It seems that MTV plays their Winter rap videos in the Summer and in the Winter they play...
I drew the line when my Fifteen year old wanted to wear a black wool/plastic knit hat during the summer. I figured that the extra heat to his head would keep him from watching out for traffic when crossing streets, even though he thought that he would be cool,rad, phat or what-ever.
For my skeeters, I use good ole Malathion.
But the shells on the eggs of eagles and other raptors is thinned by the presence of DDT and its metabolites in the food chain. Therefore, it was destroying the eagle population, because the eggs were being crushed during the brood period, and the total hatch was way down. This, too was never conclusively proven, but it made a dandy talking point, because, after all, aren't eagles the symbol of America? And DDT has the most annoying characteristic of persisting in the environment, degrading only slowly. Years ago, low levels of DDT could not be detected, but improved technology made it possible to detect DDT in terms of parts per billion. There was something called the Delaney Amendment, that made it illegal to process for food any raw materials that contained ANY traces of certain chlorinated hydrocarbons, of which DDT is one. So, DDT had to be outlawed completely. In spite of any benefits that may have come from its use.
DDT is safe: just ask the professor who ate it for 40 ...
... DDT is safe: just ask the professor who ate it for 40 years Culture/Society Editorial
Editorial Source: The Telegraph (UK) Published: 07/19/2001 Author ...
Banning DDT to control global population [Free Republic]
... Banning DDT to control global population Government Front Page News Source: ECO-LOGIC
-----ON-LINE---- Published: Jan/15/2001 Author: Paul K. Driessen Posted ...
Bring back DDT [Free Republic]
... Bring back DDT Culture/Society Editorial Source: Jewish World Review Published: April
24 2001 Author: Betsy Hart Posted on 04/24/2001 06:02:38 PDT by SJackson. ...
Audubon's Fly-by-Night Pesticide Campaign [Free Republic]
... 30 years after its successful but untruthful campaign against the insecticide
DDT, the Audubon Society is targeting lawn chemicals used to control grubs ...
CENTER NAMES TEN TOP SCARE CAMPAIGNS THREATENING [Free ...
... The Banning of DDT is first on the list of the Centers Chicken Little Awards, largely
due to the alarmist, false writings of Rachel Carson. "The sole purpose ...
Killing Mosquitoes Or Killing Humans? [Free Republic]
... long since been proven wrong. By way of just one example, she claimed that DDT spraying
could wipe out the US robin population. Instead, it actually increased ...
Billions Served (benefits of biotechnology the Greens won't ...
... Of course. This is a negative effect. We always have this. Take the case of DDT.
When it was banned here in the US and the European countries, I testified ...
Scams, Scalawags, and an all-too-gullible Public...famous frauds sold to America
Bring Back DDT, and Save Lives from the Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2000.
Bring back DDT, Jewish World Review, April 24, 2001.
Well, it looks like the media and the EPA have done a good snow job onYet all this has now fallen under a shadow. In 2004, the Environmental Protection Administration will begin the largest dredging operation in history in a quixotic attempt to rid the Hudson of the last traces of a relatively harmless industrial chemical present only in a few parts per million-one ounce in 32 tons or a teaspoon over five acres. Working eighteen hours a day for five years, the EPA plans to excavate a 40-mile stretch north of Albany of nearly 2.65 million cubic yards of silt and mud-enough to cover 40 football fields to a height of five stories. These spoils will be carted off by huge dump trucks to who-knows-where, to be spread upon the landscape in "de-watering" ponds, then eventually embedded in concrete and shipped off by rail for ultimate disposal near Buffalo or Houston. When this is all done, the EPA will then dig up another 2 billion pounds of sand and gravel from somewhere and dump it back into the river, trying to recreate the aquatic environment.
< snip >
What is the purpose of all this? Ostensibly, it is to remove the last 150,000 pounds of PCBs, a chlorinated hydrocarbon that was dumped into the river by General Electric Company from 1947 to 1977. Once thought to be a serious cancer risk, PCBs have turned out to be relatively harmless. People who handled them for decades in an occupational setting have proved to have lower cancer rates than the rest of the population. Although the EPA never fails to mention "suspected carcinogen" in its press releases, the actual scientific justification for the dredging is some sketchy and contested evidence that PCBs may cause some temporary retardation in learning or motor skills among infants who are highly exposed in the womb. This kind of exposure would require a pregnant woman to eat a contaminated fish per day, every day. By its own standards, the EPA is preparing to spend $500 million-all of it billable to General Electric-to ensure that a woman with child can live by subsistence fishing along the Hudson River.
But that is only the official explanation. The real purpose of the dredging will be to prove to the people of the Hudson Valley that nineteenth and twentieth century industrialization was a gigantic mistake-a "pollution-based prosperity" that never should have happened in the first place. People actually living in these communities don't share this vision. But it has always been the favorite fantasy of the Hudson's landed aristocracy-possibly the closest thing America has ever come to producing a true leisure class. For decades this courageous little band of aristocrats and their admirers have fought a rear-guard action against power plants, factories, and anything to do with industrial life. In the process, they helped give birth to what is known as the "environmental movement."
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