Word: ddt
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...smoking habits. But nearly everywhere, dust consists of some combination of shed bits of human skin, animal fur, decomposing insects, food debris, lint and organic fibers from clothes, bedding and other fabrics, tracked-in soil, soot, particulate matter from smoking and cooking, and, disturbingly, lead, arsenic and even DDT...
There's not much to fret about in simple particles of dirt or organic materials such as pollen (though they can trigger allergies), but lead, arsenic and DDT can be a more serious matter. About one-third of the arsenic in the atmosphere comes from natural sources - volcanoes principally. The rest comes from mining, smelting, burning fossil fuels and other industrial processes. Even in relatively low concentrations, arsenic is not without risk, especially to small children who play on the floor and routinely transfer things from their hands to their mouths. The same is true for lead, which comes less...
...fact that DDT is still in house dust is a surprise to most people, since the pesticide was banned in the U.S. in 1972. But a house is a little like a living organism: once it absorbs a contaminant, it may never purge it completely. "Dust in our homes," says Beamer, "especially deep dust in our carpets and furniture, is a conglomerate of substances over the life of the home and can provide a historical record of chemicals that have entered...
...hope this movement is not a fad," one activist told a TIME reporter after the first Earth Day 38 years ago, "but the signs are not encouraging." On the one hand, less than three months later, President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency. The air and water got cleaner, DDT was banned, leaded gas phased out, recycling phased in. On the other hand, the world's population has nearly doubled, glaciers are melting, gas is within a drip of $4 a gallon, and there are food riots in countries where prices have soared owing to the diversion of grain...
...problem is that those backing the bans seem to be confused as to the true impact of these flimsy sacks. Alderman Sam Shropshire, sponsor of a bill to ban them in Annapolis, Md., last year (the ban was rejected in Novermber) compares plastic bag use to DDT: “It’s wrong, it’s immoral,” he says, “They’re inundating our environment...