KennyR wrote:
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.
(That article didn't mention DDT)
They [pesticides] were already heavilly concentrated here, the pesticides were used in concentrations (not considering the shrinking and concentration of the basin) up to 50 times what even the Soviet Union considered acceptable.
This area would be a disaster even without DDT, but hypothetically, even if DDT weren't banned, it should never have been used in the concentrations it has been in this area.
As a matter of fact, DDT was never supposed to be used agriculturally AT ALL, but it's use as part of a disease controll strategy is priceless.
The Aral Sea now has a cancer rate up to 5 times the average in the former USSR, thanks to these chemicals.
You mean thanks to the mismanagement of these, and many other chemicals, specifically in this region. The chemicals themselves didn't cause this problem. Idiots did.
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.
Everything he's said is spot on. The west has used a product to improve their own lives, accepting the risk to the world as worth the benefits to themselves, but Africa can go screw? I don't know what profits could be made off of DDT, it's rather cheap compared to other solutions, and can be generically produced, as opposed to most products nowdays, especially when concerning agriculture.
