The joys of having a safe effective insecticide like DDT ???
DDT was never the horrible chemical that it was painted to be.
The two problems were -- at the time that Rachel Carson was gathering evidence for her book, we were literally marinating in the stuff. A little bit is good so a lot will be even better. Cheap to make, cheap to buy and it doesn't hurt anything else except for insects. The second problem is that DDT kills the beneficial bugs as well as the bad ones.
Therefore, DDT would be an amazing resource to have now that we know to #1) - not use so much and #2) - know where and how to apply it.
It would prevent
stories like this from Reuters:
More than 1,000 exposed to dengue in Florida: CDC
Five percent of the population of Key West, Florida -- more than 1,000 people -- have been infected at some point with the dengue virus, government researchers reported on Tuesday.
Most probably did not even know it, but the findings show the sometimes deadly infection is making its way north into the United States, the researchers said.
"We're concerned that if dengue gains a foothold in Key West, it will travel to other southern cities where the mosquito that transmits dengue is present, like Miami," said Harold Margolis, chief of the dengue branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"These cases represent the reemergence of dengue fever in Florida and elsewhere in the United States after 75 years," Margolis said in a statement.
"These people had not traveled outside of Florida, so we need to determine if these cases are an isolated occurrence or if dengue has once again become endemic in the continental United States."
Dengue is the most common virus transmitted by mosquitoes, infecting 50 million to 100 million people every year and killing 25,000 of them.
And before any fool tries to make a climate link, we had malaria and dengue up the East Coast to Boston back 100-150 years ago. It was only the advent of insecticides like DDT and treatments like pouring kerosene over mosquito breeding grounds (still ponds) that knocked it back. If we remove the prevention, these diseases will come back -- Dengue was a significant problem up until the 1940's.
Posted by DaveH at July 13, 2010 9:37 PM