Word: ddt
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Trouble is, man's prospects for winning are not very bright. Ever since the use of DDT was banned in 1967, Maine has had few weapons in its battle against the budworm. Environmentalists have suggested gradually cutting down the spruce and balsam trees to deny the caterpillar its food and replacing them with hardwood varieties immune to attack. But that plan is not practical; spruce and balsam are best adapted to the north woods and, says Fred Holt, director of Maine's bureau of forestry, "they always come back when you plant something else." Biological controls-most notably...
...wages. Therefore, the average farm worker in the grapes was earning $1.65 per hour. Yes, a $.10 increase, BUT also a medical plan (growers never provided a medical plan); ranch committees which would report health and safety violations (remember the UFW was first to ban the use of DDT in its contracts), replace the farm labor contractor with a hiring hall, grievance procedures to make sure the grower complied with the complaints of the workers; plus $.10 per box picked; and, the right, not the privilege, to negotiate their own contracts...
...problem of the affliction has been serious for the past few years, McGuire said. "DDT was one of the best controls, and ever since its use was banned the disease has been rampant," she said. The disease is carried by the elm bark beetle, which DDT kills...
...they were kids that they'd hear the mosquito control truck coming into their neighborhood. They'd race out of bed and into the garage and hop on their bikes and a whole pack of buddies would pedal like runway fools into the thick white cloud of kerosene and DDT sprayed out of a nozzle at the back. "There wasn't any chemical high to it," said the son of a dairy farmer, "but it sure was cool looking into that cloud for a while." And about the time their lungs got filled with stuff, after a couple of blocks...
...average thickness of the eggshells in the lower or older layers ranged from 1.7 to 2.6 mm., while the shells in the younger layers were only about half as thick. Such fragile eggs could easily become dehydrated and broken, killing the dinosaur embryo. Scientists now have evidence that DDT can interfere severely with the production of hormones involved in the making of eggshells, but such chemicals were obviously not around in the dinosaur's day. Erbea suggests that similar hormonal imbalances might have been caused by unusual stress. What stresses were there for dinosaurs in Late Cretaceous France...