Except of course that DDT was hardly ever 'banned', except for use on crops.
A more nuanced argument goes that overuse of DDT meant that mosquitoes started to become resistant to it. If you use it to spray fields and homes, almost every mosquito will become resistant and it rapidly loses effectiveness. If you use it solely in homes, then the bulk of the mosquito population will not be exposed to it on a regular basis and will therefore not develop resistance. Therefore when a mosquito flies from the fields to a village, it is likely to alight on a DDT impregnated surface and die. And of course there are other pesticides available as well.
The idea that drinking DDT for 2 years and not having any obvious adverse effects means that it's safe is laughable. I've lots of patients who've smoked for 20 years and still not died of it (though a lot of them will, and they may have low birthweight children etc...). I also have patients who've eaten salad on a regular basis for their whole lives and still not died either.
I lived in Eastern Europe for a while and have sprayed fruit trees with DDT myself. I don't look back on the experience particularly fondly. The local power station had created a moonscape for miles around it through churning coal ash unrestricted into the atmosphere. Paradoxically, sometimes it seemed that mosquitoes were the only form of wildlife that could survive this environment. People didn't live long either by Western European standards, and whilst of course this was hardly down to DDT one thing I took away from the experience was the observation that a reasonable degree of environmental hygiene can be as beneficial to people as it is to the wildlife.
For the record, I try not to eat anything organic.
I'd like to hear more about Chuck's crop-dusting days, so my apologies for continuing the digression.
Last edited by abgd; 9th Mar 2014 at 08:43.