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DDT Exposure
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1972, when DDT was banned, my Dad told me that he and his five brothers would come in from the fields of my Grand Dad's truck farm covered white with DDT dust. DDT was VERY popular in the 30s and 40's. Touted as safe for nearly every application. My Dad was diagnosed with Cancer a year later and died an early death (age 53) in 1974. Anyone else have experience with DDT ?
It's being willing. I found out early that most men, regardless of cause or need, aren't willing. They blink an eye or draw a breath before they pull the trigger. I won't. ~ J.B. Books
Comments
not sure if its whaty they used but as a young kid early 1960's the city had a "fog" truck just do laps around the town up and down every street spraying just a fog of some type of insect spray to keep down mosquitos . I remember as the you posted photo us kids standing in the fog thinking it was neat .
we also had a neighbor who worked for some pesticide outfit in town . (roaches were a huge problem in our neigh hoods and a lot of bad memories ) any way I remember mom asking if it was safe and he dumped a bunch on his arms and hands and rubbed it all in said its safe as can be .. I would guess he died years ago and not from old age either
Use to ride our bikes in the fog of the bug truck,for blocks
Dad had a can of DDT. We'd put some around the floor drains in the basement for cockroaches. They would swell up and make a loud pop when you'd step on them. Man that was fun.
Hung out, swam in the river at Times Beach Missouri. Entire town contaminated with Dioxin. Closed & fenced off the entire town. Think it's now a state park. Google it, very interesting.
Dad had big hunks of asbestos too, he'd use for heat shields when welding. We use to play with it.
DDT, invented in 1874 was deemed "CRITICAL" in the completion of the Panama Canal.
Used to combat Malaria and mosquito borne Yellow Fever, it was used in the Canal Zone, for many years after the 1972 ban !
DDT is still used today in South America, Africa, and Asia.
@Ditch-Runner @montanajoe Yeah, first thought was the "Mosquito Man." Running, playing & riding bikes thru the fog.
got rid of those annoying summer head lice😂
I grew up (South, NJ) surrounded by 23 lakes, cranberry bogs and countless small streams. Mosquitos were thick in the summer !
Great fun chasing the fog truck !
City of Chesapeake, VA still uses a fog truck, only now the insecticide is Pyrethrin.
I have heard rumors that Lawyers made some big bucks on some of these chemical insect\weed killers. 😲
"We are all in this TOGETHER !!! " ... 😆😆😆
Lawyers / Politicians = children of unwed mothers !!!!!!!
Gov Brown sued Dow for DDT dumped into the Pacific after being banned. Ruined the fisheries. My mom died of a rare liver cancer. She used a sack of Chloradane Dust sprinkled around the house for bugs. They banned Chloradane Dust a year after. People around the Nashville , TN plant sued and got all the available insurance money. Our cat also died of cancer from contact under the house. Soy bean oil , the latest threat.
Chloradane was used to kill termites and later got banned.
In this part of the country we called DDT cotton dust.If you scattered cotton dust under the house you never saw another bug.
I was part of the interagency team that prepared the Environmental Impact Statement for the DDT "cleanup" on Redstone Arsenal, AL. Back story is that there was a large DDT factory on the Arsenal prior to the ban, and they would periodically wash down the excess DDT into the surrounding wetlands. DDT accumulated in fish which were heavily consumed by local residents. During one of the early public hearings, an 86 year old man, who had the highest * content of DDT ever detected in a human at that time, spoke. When asked about the effects, he said that it made him wet the bed at night.
We were on St. Simons Island Georgia in 1963, or so. I remember those fog trucks running around.
In 1996 I knew a guy in Atlanta who was bragging about how his house was termite free. Chlordane was illegal, but this guy had a 55 gallon drum of it in his basement. Every spring he would spray a quart or two of it in his basement. He was getting nutty and I told him to get rid of that stuff but he wouldn't listen.
Chlordane was really nasty, there were cases where a family moved into a house where the basement had been treated with Chlordane. In six months, mom was in the hospital, the two kids were real sick, but dad was ok. It turned out that mom spent most of her time in the toxic house, the kids were there part time, and dad wasn't inside the home that much. If your basement was treated with Chlordane, even if you kept the basement door closed, it would pass through the subfloor and the carpet and enter the living area of the house.
Chlordane was a nasty neurotoxin that ruined many peoples' lives, but it sure killed those termites!
Chlordane was banned 1988
There is an Electro-Gun for termites.
DDT was banned in ‘72 to help the eagle’s declining numbers. The chemical was ingested through the fish diet and resulted in weak eggshells that broke during incubation. After the ban, the eagle numbers slowly increased.
My grandfather had a dark pink, grainy powder with white specks in it that he would sprinkle around the foundation for bugs. It was something that got banned & yes, he died of cancer.
I dont know if DDT was the cause,but for years we almost never saw a hummingbird or bluebird. About 10 years after the ban I started seeing a few and now they are common around here.
Dad was a life long farmer . He grew up on a farm and farmed until.he died from pancreatic cancer at age 54 in 1977. We took very few precautions with the Chemicals back in the 60s and 70s . I am convinced that they contributed to his death and may be related to my own health problems. Skin cancer and arthritis .
I think DDT was banned because it caused severe weakening of the shells of bird eggs.
I kind of think that’s what I said earlier. The Eagles seem to be dying off. Seems like the greenies back in 1972 were more worried about the birds than they were about humans. Anyway, it all worked out. I love to see the come-back for the birds of prey. Oh, and we can’t forget about the humans as well.
My Dad had a couple of boxes of spray cans of military DDT. Green with black writing and the top was concave like the bottom i guess to keep it from spraying if something was placed on top of it. Us kids would take some and use it in our clubhouse that we dug a very small basement under about 4 ft x 4ft and man it would kill bugs
right now ! That was about 62 years ago. Maybe that is some of my health problem.
So your eggs have weak shells?
Over the years we have Copper(II) acetoarsenite. Yeah- arsenic. It was also used as a pigment- lovely shade of green. Like if you wanted green wallpaper. Rennovation project of family housing at Schofield barracks Hawai'i. The attics had that sprayed in there- along with DDT.
Of course, I never had to worry about that. Just sleeping on the ground and wading thru the water in areas sprayed with Agent Orange. Starting at Ft. Gordon GA, and Eglin AFB in Florida- where the Army tested the stuff in 1967.
I know all you have seen the wizard of OZ many times as I have
the "snow" used in the poppy fields was actually Asbestosis as it looked like real snow on film same with the shower to shower powder I think was its product name thats why it was pulled after the huge lawsuit by the woman who got cancer from it it had asbestosis in it
not counting all the good chemicals, we were told were good to go for years only to find out 10 years or so later "well we goofed that stuff will kill you "
25 years ago the pressure treated wood had that "copper arsenate" stuff in it. Arsenic. I built my big decks with PT wood, and of course when finished, piled up the scraps and burned them out in the yard.
Ten years later I wanted to make a garden in that same spot. But I had read that arsenic would be in that soil. I scooped up a handful of that dirt and sent it off to the lab. The report came back, that dirt was loaded with arsenic and they said to not grow edible vegetables in that spot.
Ten years out in the rain and sun, that arsenic just set there.
PT wood was the go to choice for fencing, planter boxes, window boxes, garden plots, etc. Both commercial and home built.
Never was there any Haz/Mat warnings ! ... PT saw dust was dangerous to breathe TOO ! Many times I was covered
in PT dust.
It's amazing that any of us are still alive. I never thought of the PT dust. In the 70's I worked in a machine shop & we used trichloroethylene to clean everything, including washing our hands with it.
We worked with Teflon. Did you know that it contains a nerve agent. Workers found out when the dust got on their cigarette & the nerve agent was released by the heat. They'd get the herkie-jerkies for a few hours & there was nothing you could do for them.
Remember spraying tobacco with Paris Green back in the day for worms and bugs . Been literally wet from head to toe with 2-4-d solution when a sprayer hose burst . Fix hose ,finish spraying out that barrel full then go to house to wash up . Little thought given to protective gear in the 60 and 70s .
Dad had a small orchard, sprayed with lead arsenate.
No mask no gloves, Hand held high pressure spray gun. He did try to spray into the wind though.
Didn't make it to a long in life, Died just a week shy of his 95 birthday.
Speaking of trichloroethylene. The elementary school I spent 9 years of my life at (K-8th Grade) was located right next door to a commercial dry cleaning factory. They had 3 open lagoons behind the factory next to our playground where they disposed of all of their spent chemicals.
Later environmental testing (after my time at the school) found the drinking water badly contaminated and not fit for even hand washing. The City closed that school and the place next door became a hazardous waste brown site.
I later used trichlor while in the USAF for cleaning aircraft wearing only rain gear. Then worked in a chemical plant for 7 years using it for cleaning out the huge kettle vats and loading the wash in 55 gallon drums. A drum of that stuff sure is HEAVY! I will never forget how it smells either. About all I can say is every BIRTHDAY is a gift!
I spent one summer (1972) working for my friends, father's fiberglass boat yard. He built/repaired canoe's to 40 ft tri-marans.
MEK, trichloroethylene, and acetone used constantly to remove resin from hands, tools and clothing.
No gloves or respirators. We were lucky it was mostly outside work.
chme, speaking of Eglin AFB...
Sometime in the later 70s I was pulling my annual two Reserve weeks as the Public Affairs Chief at Eglin when the 60 Minutes crew came to do a piece on Dioxin and Agent Orange. They wanted to film where drums of the stuff had been dumped.
I took them to the site, which by then was simply a sandy depression in the ground. The cameraman got set up and then complained that the sight was too plain. He asked me where all that dioxin stuff was, and I pointed down. "We're standing in it" I said.
He nearly levitated.
Where I was in Vietnam (right near the Cambodian border) they had extensively sprayed not just Agent Orange, but Agents Blue and White as well. Didn't know there were such things? Yup. Much smaller amounts, but to this day, I doubt anybody knows what was in those other agents. Or will admit to it.
All the chlorinated hydrocarbons were banned from further manufacture and use in the U.S. on April 1, 1972. Non of these compounds, when used at labeled rates, has been shown to increase the incidence of cancers. In fact the more compelling evidence is just the opposite. The reason for the 1972 ban was the increasing evidence that chlorinated hydrocarbons "bio-accumulated" which means as the target insects were consumed by predators, and these predators were, in-turn, consumed by larger predators, the relative amounts of chlorinated hydrocarbons increased as a percentage of predator body weight and wasn't being metabolized quickly. There was also evidence that raptors, as apex predators, were experiencing population decline due to a thinning of eggshells and consequent embryo death caused by broken eggshells. This is now an accepted proven effect of chlorinated hydrocarbons.
Chlorinated hydrocarbons such as DDT, heptachlor, chlordane, etc. are also persistent in the environment and by modern pesticide registration standards take far too long to degrade to relatively inert degradation products. At one time environmental persistence was considered desirable. When I began my career in crop protection products in the late 1970s I consulted with farmers that were experiencing problems, such as corn rootworm damage, for the first time. Their last soil applications of chlorinated hydrocarbons has been in 1971 or 1972 and those applications provided insect protection until 1978 or '79. Switching to organophosphate or carbamate soil insecticides provided corn rootworm control for approximately 12-16 weeks which was sufficient but just barely. The newer products were significantly more acutely toxic than the old but they biodegraded much more quickly.
Agent Orange, and its contemporaries such as Agent Purple and White, are herbicides with a completely different environmental and toxicological profile than the chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticides. Virtually all the issues associated with these products are linked to contaminants present as a result of the manufacturing processes that were perhaps a little lax compared to the same products manufactured for domestic farm use - mostly the presence of polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs. Whole 'nuther subject that is likely to be more political than scientific.
I hold an earned PhD in pesticide biochemistry from a major Land Grant University and have been in the ag business for almost 50 years starting as a tech service rep eventually morphing into a state gov affairs director for the world's largest chemical company. Also did a stint as faculty at a large Land Grant University.
My dad (born in '40) grew up in Tulia, TX. As a young kid he used to flag at the end of fields for the crop dusting planes. Assuredly he got covered in whatever was being sprayed. He died from Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in 1981 at the age of 41. My grandmother believed to her dying day that his cancer was due to chemical exposure.
As a laboratory technician in the Army..........when I was in Panama from '89-'91 we used Xylene, Toluene, and Acetone to clean glassware. We also had a "mosquito truck" that would spray the bases about once a week.
I was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2012.
on one job site many years ago I was given Xylene, Toluene, maybe soe other chemicals to clean up some sealer /calking in the bottom of huge setting concrete tanks at waste treatment plan .. the boss came out and said by the way dave be very care full that stuff is very toxic you should not touch it or breath it .. but never offered any PPE "gee thanks " but he did stand 10 feet back while telling me
It's fascinating that it was possible to get folks to believe that a product designed to kill insects would be safe for human contact.
And fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
And drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain
I don't think very many people actually believed it was harmless they just needed a job and it was either do what they tell you to do or hit the road.
When I was a 12 year old yard-ape, I was playing the outfield one afternoon, in Clairmont Little League in Atlanta. Some kind of big military plane flew over, and this stuff rained down upon the field. Looked like Grape Nuts. I held my glove out, and I got about a little teaspoon of the stuff in the glove. It turned out they were bombing for fire ants.
Didn't work because there are still plenty of fire ants in Georgia.
I think somebody might have flushed the toilet on you.