Word: ddt
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...chemicals concocted by man have been so widely used and so thoroughly applauded as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, more commonly known as DDT. It has proved its unmatched power in the worldwide battle against those pestborne killers, typhus, encephalitis and, particularly, malaria. Its mastery over the mosquitoes that carry malaria has undoubtedly spared millions of people from death and debilitating infection. Equally potent in saving crops, it has almost doubled the yield from U.S. cotton fields in the past two decades by controlling the boll weevil. Even the Swedes, who have decided to ban the chemical, readily acknowledge its effectiveness. In 1948 they...
...growing numbers of scientists and politicians are convinced that Müller's miracle is more curse than cure. Long after exterminating the bugs at which it is aimed, DDT goes on performing its lethal work, washing from fields into rivers, lingering on the leaves of trees, floating about in the atmosphere for years-and contaminating everything it touches. There are some scientists who estimate that as much as two-thirds of the 1.5 million tons of DDT produced by man may still be adrift...
Poisonous Broth. More widespread than radioactive fallout, DDT is found in every kind of aquatic life and in almost every animal. Even mother's milk exhibits traces of DDT two or three times as high as the maximum standard for cow's milk set by the Food and Drug Administration. In any other container, a current quip has it, mother's milk would be prohibited from crossing state lines...
...also in trouble within the states. Arizona has already banned DDT spraying. Michigan recently imposed a similar ban after the FDA condemned some 700,000 coho salmon from Lake Michigan because they had unacceptably high concentrations of DDT. Stringent controls are now being considered in the states of Massachusetts, New York and Wisconsin...
Europeans have taken even more decisive action. Following discovery of the chemicals in their herring catch, the Swedes ordered a two-year ban on DDT, as well as the related pesticides lindane, aldrin and dieldrin. The Netherlands decided to stop using DDT. So did Denmark. West Germany limits spraying so severely that only 192 tons of the substance were used throughout the country last year. France and Britain are keeping a watch on pesticide levels within their borders. The Russians, too, are concerned, as Premier Aleksei Kosygin indicated when he offered to join with the Swedes in cleaning up what...