Word: ddt
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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When dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) was first offered to the general public in 1945, the U.S. Army and Public Health Service warned that the wonder insecticide had better be used cautiously. No one knew much about DDT's long-range effect on human beings or on the balance of nature...
...warnings have often been repeated in technical journals. But the public, delighted with DDT, kept right on spraying closets, beds, kitchens and household pets. Whole communities were engulfed in artificially created DDT fogs. Gardeners and dairy farmers found it a quick means of destroying insect pests. By 1947, the manufacture of DDT .had boomed into a $30 million industry...
Last week, Columnist-Crusader Albert Deutsch of the New York Post raised a hue & cry against the dangers of DDT, with a series of articles called "DDT and You." Deutsch based his original assertions on research by Manhattan's Dr. Morton Biskind, printed in The American Journal of Digestive Diseases. Deutsch contended that the mysterious ailment called virus X, which rose to epidemic proportions in Los Angeles about two years ago, has the same symptoms as DDT poisoning and may be traced to indiscriminate use of the chemical. X disease, which has attacked herds of cattle in 37 states...
...stepped forward to deny that careless use of DDT is dangerous. At least six cases of fatal DDT poisoning have been reported; numerous nonfatal cases are on record. DDT has, indeed, been getting into dairy products: the Department of Agriculture recently issued a directive recommending that farmers stop using the chemical in dairy barns, on milk cows, or on fodder destined for consumption by milk cows...
...deserted," said an Israeli captain. "There wasn't even a stray cat here. We didn't consider these Arab villages fit places for our people to live, but we had to have some place to put them." First the government sent workmen to spray Akir with DDT. Cement was poured over the earthen floors; boards or tin roofs replaced Arab thatching. Water pipes were laid between the courtyards...