Word: ddt
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...with its sonic boom and probable pollution of the stratosphere. Nixon offered no proposals for curbing exhaust from the 83 million old cars now on the roads. Moreover the President paid little attention to the key problem of enforcement. Last fall, for example, the Federal Government announced that DDT must soon be phased out of use in the U.S. But delaying actions by farmers and manufacturers are likely to keep the persistent pesticide in use for years to come...
Likewise, our pacification man offers the Prince some DDT: "It's been declared too dangerous for use in the U. S. A. but not anywhere else...
Flash: the Department of Agriculture has just discovered how to banish pests without lethal insecticides like DDT. "Beer, either fresh or stale," reports the department's recent newsletter, "is substantially superior to other bait compounds used to control slugs, one of the most troublesome pests infesting farms, gardens and greenhouses...
...sometimes triggers a series of dangerous changes. Nature immediately tries to restore the balance?and often overreacts. When farmers wipe out one pest with powerful chemicals, they may soon find their crops afflicted with six pests that are resistant to the chemicals. Worse, the impact of a pesticide like DDT can be vastly magnified in food chains. Thus DDT kills insect-eating birds that normally control the pests that now destroy the farmers' crops. The "domino theory" is clearly applicable to the environment...
...hike in food prices. Fortunately, ecologists are developing reasonable replacements; there is nothing wrong with organic fertilizers or the prechemical method of crop rotation. Much is also being learned about the biological control of pests. To kill the leaf hopper Dikrella, which destroys grapes and is now immune to DDT, California ecologists have employed a tiny wasp?and the cost of controlling leaf hoppers has declined by 87% since the wasp buzzed into action...