DDT was disposed of by dropping 27,000 barrels of the substance in the Pacific off the coast of Catalina Islands.
Is your complaint that actual harm to a human has not been proven by this incident? I’m kinda curious (not really) where you stand on mRNA based COVID-19 vaccines given your phrasing of your dismissal of harm.
This comment is so stupid. It starts with some facts, or corrections to a misconception in the grandparent post. That's reasonable. Then what, some weird jump to covid and the idea they the GP may also have an unorthodox view about it, presumably something that's viewed as a mortal sin? GP may have been quick to push back on the DDT thing, but suddenly it's been taken into religious inquisition territory. This is pretty fucked up.
I’m not sure there was a misconception in the GP. That author obviously knew what this article/title was in reference to and rejected it with high confidence. Too high confidence, in my estimation. So high as to be hubris.
His description of the popular narrative and describing it as a “conspiracy theory” puts him into what I would describe as reactionary politics. Hence, my mention that I could likely predict this reactionary stance on mRNA vaccines. Not for sure, but with relatively high confidence.
Unorthodox view is one thing, and is defensible. GP’s attitude was more derisive than that. You are right to the extent that my comment didn’t benefit from mention of vaccines. But yours doesn’t benefit from the hyperbole of mortal sin or religious inquisition.
Saying it was a conspiracy theory is not in this case accusing them of lying. I agree it's true. True conspiracy theory, it was totally immoral and they did it as a team.
Theorization is generally the only sure-fire way of detecting conspiracies, some conspiracy theories are true, there's conspiracies, Julius Caesar's death of course. Officially declared a conspiracy by Rome.
Yeah that is what I say when I reread it, wow. The intent of my post was did they actually dig deep into scandals and get fresh scandals? Like maybe there's plutonium mixed in with the DDT, which I agree is there. I mean did they corroborate it, see for themselves? Rake mud?
No because then I get a cookies consent form, obviously I will, I have the right to stay out of it. I have the right not to consent to tracking cookies, so I have the right to go off the title and the other comments rather than read the article.
I wanted to read the article, that was my intent. But come on, fucking consent forms everywhere? I'm not obliged to consent!
If you have JS disabled, you might have missed the photos and videos in the article showing corroded punctured barrels in the ocean. However the text of the article does mention that tests show dangerously high levels of DDT near the leaking barrels (actually orders of magnitude above the "dangerous" threshold)
But DDT is also has lots of direct negative health effects on humans:
likely carcinogen (multiple types of cancer), can cause damage to the nervous system, hormonal+reproductive+developmental effects.
Worth pointing out that there are multiple ways to fight mosquitos and malaria. DDT was only one.
Seems like Silent Spring got us moving on not being entitled to pollute indiscriminately.
The US had lost a lot of insect population due to excessive insecticides and pesticides - note the recent discussions on the disappearance of fireflies, the diseases in bees, the reduction of butterflies.
DDT causes significant health problems for humans, including infertility, birth defects, cancer, and brain damage to children. It also wreaks havoc on various wild animals.
It should be reserved as a last resort and not used indiscriminately. While killing mosquitos has saved many lives, DDT has also ruined many lives.
Pretty much everyone involved in selling the virtues of DDT has their own questionable motives, and one of the biggest funders of pro-DDT messaging has been the tobacco industry (because they thought this message could undermine public support for environmentalism and government regulation).
For some reason it has become a thing for reactionary conservatives.
I was at a school board meeting and one of the parent rights robots was reading some petition to use DDT in the fields, because he was bit by a horsefly while watching a baseball game.
I would argue that it was good business in wealthy countries to eliminate DDT as it was off-patent. This coupled with it being being highly persistent made it cheap to use on mosquito nets and screens. The successors that entered the market after DDT was banned (chiefly neonicotinoids) have caused new problems like honeybee colony collapse.
Disclaimer #1: I am not a doctor or medical researcher. This is just some of what turns up with some cursory skimming of journal abstracts. I have not deeply investigated these studies. There are also plenty of studies that were inconclusive or failed to find a link between DDT and this or that health problem.
Disclaimer #2: Using DDT to control mosquitos clearly also saves many lives, and almost everyone agrees that it should not be completely discarded in cases where there is no better alternative. But it also shouldn’t be used indiscriminately or treated as benign.
None of that is reason or justification for illegally dumping it in the ocean, specifically along the coast of one of the most populous cities in the country.
Except it's not banned in much of the world and was overused for decades after the publishing of Silent Spring, which led to widespread resistance in mosquitos. With agriculture use finally banned in the 90s, it can be used far more effectively in a targeted fashion, because for all its effectiveness, it's still nasty nasty stuff.
> "Silent Spring” is thus likely responsible for 10s of millions of deaths from malaria including that of millions of children.
This statement has been debunked as nonsense by virtually every reputable, non-industry funded scientist in the field. It’s been a while, but the last time I looked into this, Naomi Oreskes and other historians had documented that the attacks on Silent Spring were invented by public relations agencies who were paid by industrial polluters responsible for manufacturing and distributing DDT to spread this disinformation. For decades, so-called "libertarian" think tanks (think environmental whitewashing and climate denial) helped spread these lies until the paper trail was finally uncovered and exposed in the 2000s, however, some groups have continued to spread this nonsense, most notably people and organizations connected to the Heartland Institute, which is the Alex Jones/Infowars-equivalent of public policy. For these people, anything and everything which improves public health and the environment is a communist conspiracy.
The idea that reduced pesticide use creating more deaths due to malaria was not debunked....
The idea that Carson wanted a complete pesticide ban and that Silent Spring was the main cause of the reduced use may have been debunked. And certainly biased organizations blamed her.
Heck, the "Silent spring killed more people than Hitler" quote comes from Michael Crichton in 2004, your timeline seems ridiculously misleading to me, despite there being some truth to your statements
The "Silent spring killed more people than Hitler" line from Crichton, or variations on it, predates him by many decades. Crichton, as it is well known, helped spread much of this old disinformation (most famously the climate denial), in the same way that Scott Adams did after Crichton passed away in 2008 and took up the same cause. How and why Crichton and Adams got roped into this universe of alternate facts is something I can’t explain.
The generalized sentiment predates him, but I have never seen the comparison of banning DDT to causing more death than Hitler anywhere but from post 2000 and originally from Crichton. If it comes from somewhere else can you source it?
Note, I'm playing devils advocate in my above comment. So I would like to know if I am wrong about that. (You used the word "variations" so perhaps you just meant the sentiment of Silent Spring causing malaria deaths and not a mass murderer comparison)
We need better targeted control methods. It's my fear that the same people that fought pesticide control will also fight genetically modified control methods.
It seems to take about 50 years of headlines (2 generations) for environmental concerns to get through to the public enough to make an impact. This is actually a really underappreciated thing. What's the next environmental catastrophe in 50 years? (optimistically assuming we somehow start acting on and survive the current global warming disaster that was discovered in 70sa/80s)
The studies linking aquatic harm are actually better than the studies linking terrestrial or avian harm. As it's poorly soluble in water it just sorta hangs around and kills fish. This was known all the way back in the 1940's https://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy-pdfs/CI...
You could use your browser's Reader Mode. Firefox and Safari users already have it, and Chrome users can enable Reader Mode in chrome://flags (and then restart the browser for the new feature to be available)
45 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24894661
DDT was disposed of by dropping 27,000 barrels of the substance in the Pacific off the coast of Catalina Islands.
Is your complaint that actual harm to a human has not been proven by this incident? I’m kinda curious (not really) where you stand on mRNA based COVID-19 vaccines given your phrasing of your dismissal of harm.
His description of the popular narrative and describing it as a “conspiracy theory” puts him into what I would describe as reactionary politics. Hence, my mention that I could likely predict this reactionary stance on mRNA vaccines. Not for sure, but with relatively high confidence.
Unorthodox view is one thing, and is defensible. GP’s attitude was more derisive than that. You are right to the extent that my comment didn’t benefit from mention of vaccines. But yours doesn’t benefit from the hyperbole of mortal sin or religious inquisition.
Theorization is generally the only sure-fire way of detecting conspiracies, some conspiracy theories are true, there's conspiracies, Julius Caesar's death of course. Officially declared a conspiracy by Rome.
The bottom of GP seemed to deny it happened or at least denied it caused harm to the nearby human population.
You are defending a position opposing that of the author’s likely intent.
I wanted to read the article, that was my intent. But come on, fucking consent forms everywhere? I'm not obliged to consent!
But DDT is also has lots of direct negative health effects on humans: likely carcinogen (multiple types of cancer), can cause damage to the nervous system, hormonal+reproductive+developmental effects.
Worth pointing out that there are multiple ways to fight mosquitos and malaria. DDT was only one.
The US had lost a lot of insect population due to excessive insecticides and pesticides - note the recent discussions on the disappearance of fireflies, the diseases in bees, the reduction of butterflies.
It should be reserved as a last resort and not used indiscriminately. While killing mosquitos has saved many lives, DDT has also ruined many lives.
Pretty much everyone involved in selling the virtues of DDT has their own questionable motives, and one of the biggest funders of pro-DDT messaging has been the tobacco industry (because they thought this message could undermine public support for environmentalism and government regulation).
I was at a school board meeting and one of the parent rights robots was reading some petition to use DDT in the fields, because he was bit by a horsefly while watching a baseball game.
Inject them with a hefty tot of DDT and they'll never get bitten by a horsefly again.
Source even one of these claims. Human exposure to DDT is a suspected carcinogen but has never been conclusively linked. http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/ddtgen.pdf
I would argue that it was good business in wealthy countries to eliminate DDT as it was off-patent. This coupled with it being being highly persistent made it cheap to use on mosquito nets and screens. The successors that entered the market after DDT was banned (chiefly neonicotinoids) have caused new problems like honeybee colony collapse.
Disclaimer #2: Using DDT to control mosquitos clearly also saves many lives, and almost everyone agrees that it should not be completely discarded in cases where there is no better alternative. But it also shouldn’t be used indiscriminately or treated as benign.
Impaired semen quality: https://imedea.uib-csic.es/master/cambioglobal/Modulo_IV_cod...
Low birth weight and small head circumference: https://www.nature.com/articles/pr200749
Genital malformation: https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/16061/Born...
Spontaneous abortion: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11557181/ https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ehpm/8/3/8_3_77/_pdf
Autism: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6377859/
Cognitive problems for young children: https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/164/10/955/162380
Cognitive problems among the elderly: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041201...
Chronic nervous system effects: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01406... https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/indhealth1963/22/3/22_3...
Alzheimer’s disease: https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-... https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/1...
Impaired thyroid function: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2727265/
Breast cancer: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/ehp.10260 https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/111/8&#x...
This statement has been debunked as nonsense by virtually every reputable, non-industry funded scientist in the field. It’s been a while, but the last time I looked into this, Naomi Oreskes and other historians had documented that the attacks on Silent Spring were invented by public relations agencies who were paid by industrial polluters responsible for manufacturing and distributing DDT to spread this disinformation. For decades, so-called "libertarian" think tanks (think environmental whitewashing and climate denial) helped spread these lies until the paper trail was finally uncovered and exposed in the 2000s, however, some groups have continued to spread this nonsense, most notably people and organizations connected to the Heartland Institute, which is the Alex Jones/Infowars-equivalent of public policy. For these people, anything and everything which improves public health and the environment is a communist conspiracy.
The idea that Carson wanted a complete pesticide ban and that Silent Spring was the main cause of the reduced use may have been debunked. And certainly biased organizations blamed her.
Heck, the "Silent spring killed more people than Hitler" quote comes from Michael Crichton in 2004, your timeline seems ridiculously misleading to me, despite there being some truth to your statements
Note, I'm playing devils advocate in my above comment. So I would like to know if I am wrong about that. (You used the word "variations" so perhaps you just meant the sentiment of Silent Spring causing malaria deaths and not a mass murderer comparison)
We need better targeted control methods. It's my fear that the same people that fought pesticide control will also fight genetically modified control methods.
Not sure the DDT ranks that high of concern.
If you're looking to spend limited resources addressing it, spending it on the worse situation is just smart.
The studies linking aquatic harm are actually better than the studies linking terrestrial or avian harm. As it's poorly soluble in water it just sorta hangs around and kills fish. This was known all the way back in the 1940's https://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy-pdfs/CI...