NYT Article Admits DDT Ban as a Cause of Bedbug Outbreak

NewsBusters ^ | August 25, 2010 | P.J. Gladnick

[PJ-Comix]

Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite.

Unfortunately for residents of many urban areas such as New York and Philadelphia, the bedbugs are not only biting but spreading at an alarming rate. Despite this outbreak, the mainstream media has until recently kept insisting that bedbugs developed a resistance to DDT so any emergency lifting of the EPA ban on that pesticide is unnecessary. However, your humble correspondent has speculated that the MSM would eventually have to change its position on the DDT ban due to the fact that so many of its members are being assaulted by bedbug attacks which keep increasing despite the use of other pesticides. Well, it now appears that New York Times writer, Emily B. Hager, has had a revelation about DDT. While its not an outright call for a lifting of the DDT, consider it an important pit stop on the way to demanding the ban be lifted:

...Bedbugs, once nearly eradicated, have spread across New York City, in part because of the decline in the use of DDT. According to the city’s Department of Housing and Preservation, the number of bedbug violations has gone up 67 percent in the last two years. In the most recent fiscal year, which ended on June 30, the city’s 311 help line recorded 12,768 bedbug complaints, 16 percent more than the previous year and 39 percent above the year before. A New York City community health survey showed that in 2009, 1 in 15 New Yorkers had bedbugs in their homes, a number that is probably higher now.

[MarkL]

(I also remember the cicadas. What a racket!)

I had a visitor from the west coast come out, and she couldn't believe the noise by the little critters! They do get loud, don't they? We're right in the middle of their "season" right now.

Mark

[RachelFaith]

I said this on another thread when the bedbug issue first came up.

DDT not only will kill those bugs, but the BAN is responsible for the MURDER of millions in 3rd world countries.

Bring BACK DDT !!!

[blau993]

I had the same thought, but isn’t it closer to 50 years. I remember having to read “Silent Spring” as a freshman in high school, and I graduated from high school in 1963.

[raybbr]

It may be 50 years in the U.S. I am not sure about around the world.

[raybbr]

From here:

III. EPA hearings

DDT was banned by an EPA administrator who ignored the decision of his own administrative law judge.

 

• Extensive hearings on DDT before an EPA administrative law judge occurred during 1971-1972. The EPA hearing examiner, Judge Edmund Sweeney, concluded that "DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man... DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man... The use of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife."
  
  [Sweeney, EM. 1972. EPA Hearing Examiner's recommendations and findings concerning DDT hearings, April 25, 1972 (40 CFR 164.32, 113 pages). Summarized in Barrons (May 1, 1972) and Oregonian (April 26, 1972)]

• Overruling the EPA hearing examiner, EPA administrator Ruckelshaus banned DDT in 1972. Ruckelshaus never attended a single hour of the seven months of EPA hearings on DDT. Ruckelshaus' aides reported he did not even read the transcript of the EPA hearings on DDT.
  
  [Santa Ana Register, April 25, 1972]

• After reversing the EPA hearing examiner's decision, Ruckelshaus refused to release materials upon which his ban was based. Ruckelshaus rebuffed USDA efforts to obtain those materials through the Freedom of Information Act, claiming that they were just "internal memos." Scientists were therefore prevented from refuting the false allegations in the Ruckelshaus' "Opinion and Order on DDT."

[altair]

It - the DDT ban - has caused literally millions of deaths by malaria over the past thirty-odd years.

You misunderestimate the number and you left out dengue.

Call a spade a spade. The DDT ban was genocide on the 3rd world in the tropics. But hey, all those mosquitos are more deserving of life than people, right?

I have family in places where dengue, malaria, etc. are serious business and for me, it's personal.

[altair]

DDT not only will kill those bugs, but the BAN is responsible for the MURDER of millions in 3rd world countries.

Amen! (It's 10s or hundreds of millions, but who cares about the 3rd world, right?)

I'm not the only FReeper who lives in the 3rd world.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Also kills flies and mosquitos.

[King_Corey]

Time Magazine
Science: Homemade DDT
Monday, Aug. 06, 1945

Many a civilian would give red points to get his hands on a little DDT, the Army’s high-priority insecticide. Recently citizens of Media and Swarthmore, Philadelphia suburbs, were astonished: two of the towns’ hardware stores offered bottles of DDT for sale across the open counter. The solution was just right for killing flies and mosquitoes. The stores did a land-office business at $1 per pint. Then WPB heard about it and asked grimly: where did the stuff come from?

The answer: a Swarthmore chemist named Walter Steuber (of Houdry Process Corp.) had decided that the easiest way to get DDT was to make it himself. He was turning it out by the gallon in his cellar. Said Steuber: any competent chemist can figure out the formula and make DDT out of non-priority materials. The ingredients are: chloral hydrate (better known as “Mickey Finn”), monochlor benzine, and concentrated sulfuric acid.

WPB solemnly ruled: “Anybody can make DDT, provided he uses non-priority materials or materials for which he has obtained a priority rating. But you can’t sell it except for military or experimental purposes.”

Last week, as a result of Steuber’s enterprise, WPB suddenly changed its mind. Beginning this month, it announced, regular manufacturers will be allowed to sell limited supplies of DDT to civilians, manufacturers producing less than 1,000 lbs. weekly may sell their product to anyone they choose.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,803716,00.html#ixzz0xebmKAUZ