Word: ddt
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Excerpted in the New Yorker three months before it was published as a book, biologist Rachel Carson's eloquent, rigorous attack on the overuse of DDT and other pesticides--she called them "elixirs of death"--had already upset the chemical industry. Velsicol, maker of two top bug killers, threatened to sue the book's publisher, Houghton Mifflin, which stood firm but asked a toxicologist to recheck Carson's facts before it shipped Silent Spring to bookstores...
...Silent Spring "something I believed in so deeply that there was no other course; nothing that ever happened made me even consider turning back." When the book appeared, industry critics assailed "the hysterical woman," but it became an instant best seller with lasting impact. It spurred the banning of DDT in the U.S., the passage of major environmental laws and eventually a global treaty to phase out 12 pesticides known as "the dirty dozen." Carson died, at 56, of cancer less than two years after the book's publication, but if she were alive today, she would undoubtedly warn about...
...some U-Haul, indignant that there is no longer space to stand on the can-littered ground. How about that for an argument for kegs? They are more environmentally friendly. Kegs are a reusable resource, while aluminum cans clog our waterways. Aluminum cans could be the next DDT, and the Harvard community just wants to do its part to protect the Spotted Owl for our nation’s children...
CANCER CLUSTER Women on New York's Long Island face a breast-cancer risk 30% higher than the national average. Activists blamed pesticides that farmers used to spray on potatoes and other crops, but a seven-year, $8 million government-ordered study found no link--at least to DDT (banned in 1972). The jury is still out on the pesticides now in use. --By David Bjerklie...
...organic fruits and vegetables contain pesticide residue, but far less often than conventional produce does (23% vs. 73% of the time). And when residues show up, they're usually in very low concentrations. Why does organic food contain chemicals in any amount? Pesticides that were banned long ago, like DDT, can hang around in soil for years...