Rethinking DDT

[KennyR]

Oh man...these anti-environment and far-right freaks will try to sell you any bullshiy to get a profitable product back on the market. Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane is dead in the developed world and good riddance. Let it rest in peace. (Which it will do, in the soil and your adipose tissues, for some decades yet. Cancer, anyone?)

What kind of moron doesn't believe the four decades of scientific evidence that piled up against DDT? Even for years while they were using it people had their doubts - birds breaking their own eggs sitting on them, dying fish, deformed frogs, shellfish all changing sex, and of course alarmingly high levels of the stuff in the fat of higher animals - us for one. It's an organochloride for Christ's sake - they're all nasty {bleep}s. A lot of good people campaigned a long time and accrued a lot of solid evidence to get that stuff banned. More than they should have done: industry did its best to discredit them for years. That was a disgrace and the banning of DDT was a victory for science and justice.

I'm trained as an analytical chemist and from everyone I hear from in the field, DDT is the classic persistent pollutant. You can find it in EVERY water sample WORLDWIDE, and thanks to its nonpolar nature, loves to dissolve in the fat cells of animals. As an organochloride its a carcinogenic (I don't care what these {bleep}ers say), a toxin, and an environmental disaster waiting to happen.

Diseases killing millions of children? Nothing compared to the disaster of letting this stuff build up in your water table. Then it'll be killing hundreds of millions. If diseases are so bad then discover a better pesticide - preferably one that doesn't hang around for decades and turn people into cancer waiting to happen.

And the worst part of it all is, not only will you be poisoning yourselves and your own animals, you'll be doing it to us too. Which is the equivalent of us conducting nuclear tests 10 miles off the US eastern seaboard. I can see the EU starting a trade war to keep DDT off the market, if the US is ever retarded enough to bring it back.

"Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein.

[KennyR]

And anyone who doubts that should look at the situation around the fast-shrinking Aral Sea in Asia. This sea has shrunk due to agricultural and water use. What has also happened is that the pesticides and herbicides used for thousands of square miles around have concentrated in this sea.

The Aral Sea now has a cancer rate up to 5 times the average in the former USSR, thanks to these chemicals. This includes DDT, but also includes many of the same family less powerful than DDT. So much for 'junk science' claims. This guy should be arrested and jailed for putting people's lives and livelihoods in danger by spreading such lies, thats how pissed off I am about his claims, and those of people like him. They are the Holocaust Deniers of environmental science, and I strongly suspect they're doing it only for potential profit. Sickening.

[KennyR]

@T_Bone

The Aral Sea comparison was to show that pesticides (yes, most of those are related to DDT), do cause cancer. Carcinogenics don't need a certain dose to have an effect (unlike toxicity), they'll raise cancer rates even at the slightest levels. And the thing about DDT is, once its in your body, you won't get rid of it without a crash diet. Its use anywhere is simply unacceptable.

[KennyR]

Don't get too complacent, Red - these guys just want to sell DDT to the third world. The only junk science is from industry (yet {bleep}ing again).

[KennyR]

Erm, this junkscience article is full of scientific errors. It seems to be fulfilling its namesake. How can this site pretend to be fighting in the corner of science when it is full of such gaping holes?

For example:

Gas chromatography detected DDT in samples of wildlife and soil collected before DDT was even produced.

Which is, frankly, bollocks. Organochlorides are xenobiotic - they are not found in nature. The only real way they can be produced non-synthetically is by the burning of organic matter with a lot of salt (sodium chloride). They are not produced by any plant or animal, to my knowledge. They are alien to life chemistry, partly why they are so effective at killing it.

Human ingestion of DDT was estimated to average about 0.0026 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per day (mg/kg/day) about 0.18 milligrams per day.

In 1967, the daily average intake of DDT by 20 men with high occupational exposure was estimated to be 17.5 to 18 mg/man per day, as compared with an average of 0.04 mg/man per day for the general population.

Yes, but two vital facts these fail to tell you are that:

a) DDT intake is cumulative (it is not broken up by the body or excreted, and accumulates as DDT and DDE in fatty tissues. Over time the poisoning can become chronic. The body cannot excrete it because none of its metabolites are polar, and so cannot be extracted by the kidneys.

b) DDT and DDE are endocrine disruptors even at very low levels, like most organohalides. This means it can cause diseases not related to itself. For instance, cancers associated with hormone imbalance. Such poisoning likely takes time, and so tests on lab animals with huge doses of DDT are worthless. Note how there is not one test mentioned where small cumulative doses are given over a period of years or even decades.

"Even after 20 years of follow-up, exposure to relatively high concentrations of DDE or PCBs showed no evidence of contributing to an increased risk of breast cancer."

The article listed is old. PCBs are now known to be carcinogenic and if burned can form dioxin, an even more lethal compound found in agent orange. If a farmer burns his leftover crops containing DDT, chances are he'll produce dioxin. Dioxins are among the most lethal compounds known to man and are teratogenic, mutagenic, carcinogenic, and very toxic.

Summary: the junkscience article is a very one sided review that lists only one side of the difficulties in DDT use. It has zero scientific value, and I can only assume so does the whole site. Junk science indeed.

*clonk*

(The sound of my cranium hitting some masonry.)