Word: ddt
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...More DDT. Chief defoliator is the two-inch-long larva of the gypsy moth, a fuzzy brown caterpillar with blue and red spots that daily consumes one square foot of tree leaves (but not farm crops). Almost any kind of tree leaf from maple and pine to magnolia is meat for its mandibles. What makes the gluttonous insect so Jiard to control is that it has lacked natural enemies. It was imported from Europe to Massachusetts in 1869 by Leopold Trouvelot, a misguided naturalist who hoped to crossbreed the hardy moths with silkworms and start a new textile industry. Instead...
...nests on nearby Bellows Island alone. This spring he found only 300. Why? Scharf partly blames dune-buggy drivers who careen through nesting grounds, plus harmful human discards like pop-top beer-can rings, which can injure hungry gulls. But the chief reason is heavy use of chlorinated hydrocarbons: DDT and its chemical cousins, dieldrin and chlordane...
...concentrated dose of poison. As a result, they lay eggs with such thin shells that most do not hatch. "Gulls here produce .42 chicks per nest compared with 1.22 chicks per nest in less polluted areas," Scharf explains. He fears for the human population too. "The Government has linked DDT with cancer in laboratory experiments. We know that it has the same type of effect on mammals as on birds. Nature is flashing a danger signal...
...signal has not gone unheeded. In 1969, Michigan banned sales of DDT; Traverse City's cherry growers also stopped using related poisons. Even so, the pesticides already in the environment will remain potent for years, and Lake Michigan is surrounded by home gardeners who use other persistent poisons. All the citizens of Traverse City can do now is rake their reeking beaches and hope for a miraculous return of the gulls-the area's best and cheapest garbagemen...
...avoid using DDT and other pesticides, more and more U.S. communities are turning to nature for help. The latest to do so are Claremont, Calif., and Albuquerque, N. Mex., whose residents have imported thousands of ladybugs to control millions of sap-sucking aphids. Claremonters report that ladybugs are cheaper than chemical sprays: $85 for 375,000 ladybugs v. $180 for a chemical spray used in Claremont last year. Moreover, a single ladybug devours as many as 40 or 50 aphids a day. Ladybugs are also easy to handle. The gardener should first cool them in his refrigerator to make them...