Word: insects
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...ordered: "Take it away!" The waiter apologized and rushed to produce a fresh salad, but Nader's anger only rose. While his luncheon companions watched the turmoil that had erupted around him, Nader launched into a detailed indictment of sanitation in restaurants. He pointed out that flies killed by insect spray often fall into food, thereby providing customers not only with an unappetizing bonus but also with a dose of DDT?or something even stronger...
...than about some forms of canned meat; the chairman of the Senate Consumer Subcommittee, Utah's Frank Moss, likes to point out this discrepancy by reading the can labels to his audiences. When Consumers Union analyzed federally inspected pork sausage, inspectors found that one-eighth of the samples contained "insect fragments, insect larvae, rodent hairs and other kinds of filth." Investigators for the National Commission on Product Safety have found many potentially lethal toys on the market. Eleven Philadelphia children recently had to have tiny toy darts, which they accidentally inhaled from a plastic blowgun, removed from their lungs. Other...
...same time, the lake's population of grebes began to decrease, dropping from 1,000 pairs to only 20 within one year. The baffling change was explained in 1962 by Rachel Carson, in Silent Spring. Grebes, she wrote, feed mainly on fish. The fish, in turn, eat insect larvae and zooplankton, and these foods had become saturated with the DDD dumped into Clear Lake. Thus, over a long period, the grebes accumulated lethal amounts of the long-lasting pesticide in their tissues and died by the hundreds. Even worse, because of the DDD in their eggs, thousands of grebes...
...personality is apparently triggered by some violent alteration in his environment, such as sharp fluctuations in temperature or humidity. At such times, he develops a voracious appetite. He and his fellows move relentlessly across countries and continents, consuming almost everything in their path that man, beast or insect could possibly eat. In the wake of a swarm, the fields and the trees are stripped bare-as if some huge vacuum cleaner had passed over the land. One ton of locusts, which is only a small platoon in a typical swarm, can consume as much in a day as ten elephants...
...Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, the U.S. produced 167 million Ibs. Last year production slipped to 138 million Ibs., nearly 80% of which was exported. Not only has adverse publicity curtailed the chemical's use; its efficiency has been impaired by the resistance developed by many strains of insects. One scientist estimates that 150 pests formerly controlled by DDT are now immune to it. Nor do scientists expect to produce a new all-purpose bug killer. Instead they are emphasizing more subtle and selective methods of pest control-among them, the breeding of new insect-resistant crops, trapping pests...