Environmentalists=Silent Spring's Rachel Carson. [60's) pesticides and pollution of the environment, plus DDT [the single most effective agent said ever developed for saving human life on types of wildlife]. JFK had a government funded scientific committee investigate Carson's pseudo-science, because of all the controversy over her book. The investigators validated Carson's claims and added more regulations on the use of pesticides, which cost taxpayers billions of dollars. However, I didnt realize til now; that the government never banned DDT in malaria spraying outside the US, but more about its agricultural use and/or limited use. Scientists found out later that the DDT resistance could last almost a decade. Mosquitos were said to have become immune to DDT in poor countries, and was why the spraying stopped.
Now environmentalists believe that it was never about not using DDT, when it was discussed about using or not using again, but about BIG BUSINESS in the manufacture of new pesticides.
I hope for a dry/hot period early summer "after the black flies" and lots of mosquito eating insects-hummers, etc. Some people just seem to attract the mosquitos more than others.
As I said gardening or landscaping is supposed to be a relaxing thing!! It's like you are trying to "outwit a bug", and losing.
The insects will inherit the earth?
This interesting because my mother worked in that campaign to get DDT banned. She collected signatures and did other work.
We lived in one of those neighborhoods where they used to spray once a week and all the kids would get on their bikes and ride behind the spray truck. Now, a lot of the people who grew up in that neighborhood seem to be dying of cancers, but I don’t think that most of the people that died were the ones riding behind the truck, but I can’t be sure.
Three died of brain tumors before they were 21, three breast cancers, one pancreatic and two I’m not sure about. ....and that’s just the ones that I know about. Does anyone know if that is an abnormal rate of cancer?
http://junkscience.com/ddt/ This is well worth the read (links), and exposes yet another activist alarm-ism over DDT. It tracks borderline or unprovable studies that have been used to vilify DDT.
Obviously all pesticide needs judicial and conscientious application, but, stretching the true or outright lying is not helping people where it can and does do good.