Word: ddt
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...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...
...mount a scientific assault on elm disease. Experts have long known that it is caused by a fungus, carried by the elm-bark beetle, that clogs the tree's circulatory system. But ever since the disease hit the U.S. in the early 1930s, every cure has failed. DDT may kill birds as well as the beetles; another pesticide named Bidrin sometimes destroys the trees. Frantic elm owners have resorted to such quack remedies as turpentine injections or driving galvanized nails into the trunks (in hopes that the zinc oxide will deter the fungus). So far, the only solution...
...enhancer that medical research shows can cause brain damage in some animals. The three largest producers of baby food have since stopped using it. In addition, Nader's repeated warnings about the dangers of cyclamates and DDT helped to nudge the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to press research that led to recent federal restrictions on their use. From witness chairs and podiums, he has also taken aim at excessively fatty hot dogs, unclean fish, tractors that tip over and kill farmers, and the dangerous misuse of medical X rays. He has revealed that some color-television sets were...
...going," said Finch, ruefully quoting an aide, "there are not going to be too many more people we can offend." He ticked off a list of the recently alienated: farmers (by the ban on DDT), the overweight (by the ban on cyclamates) and sportsmen (by the impounding of Lake Michigan coho salmon last spring). "The first problem we have," said Finch, "is 40,000 inflammable Santa Clauses. I guess HEW will be known as the department that killed Santa Claus...
...grebe's problems began in the late '40s when the local mosquito abatement district sprayed thousands of pounds of DDD, a chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticide, on Clear Lake to rid the area of swarms of buzzing black gnats. The chemical, a close cousin of DDT, worked so well that developers previously put off by the gnats began building houses around the lake...