Word: ddt
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Causes are forgotten, but effects, like DDT, accumulate in the social system: Jagger's Luciferian image is now absolute, fixed. He is even credited, in some quarters, with having "destroyed" the rock festival as a form through the Stones' famous appearance at Altamont in 1969, when a Hell's Angel knifed a man in the audience. It is an illusion that rock culture died or went sour because of Altamont. That event was merely a peg for a death announcement, just as Woodstock served to announce a birth that had actually happened long before. Yet the myth...
...When DDT first appeared in the U.S. in 1942, it seemed almost like a miracle drug. Cheap and efficient, it destroyed pests, reduced such insect-borne diseases as malaria, and brought bumper harvests. But over the years scientists found disturbing evidence, first publicized in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, that DDT was harmful to animals too, and might threaten man as well...
After 17 months of weighing the evidence pro and con, Environmental Protection Administrator William D. Ruckelshaus announced his verdict last week: "DDT is an uncontrollable, durable chemical that persists in the aquatic and terrestrial environments." Because it lasts so long, it can build up in fish and animals until it "may have a serious effect" on human beings...
With that, he imposed an almost total ban on the pesticide (exceptions: in cases of sudden epidemic, when DDT is the most effective means of combatting disease-carrying insects; shipment to countries where malaria is a problem; and use on onions, green peppers and sweet potatoes in certain areas that are particularly vulnerable to pests). The ban will not go into effect until the end of the year, allowing time to train farmers in using DOT'S chief substitute, methyl parathion, which is highly toxic but breaks down soon after being used...
...immediately challenged in suits filed by the manufacturer and processors of DDT. Another challenge came from the Environmental Defense Fund, which has been chiefly responsible for forcing the issue. It filed a court petition asking that the ban go into effect immediately and that it forbid all domestic applications of the onetime miracle...