Chasing the mosquito man’s truck
Remember chasing the mosquito man’s truck?
silive.com, Cassy Sommer
During the fifties and sixties, it was not unusual to see trucks spraying DDT near heavily wooded and swampy areas. I certainly do not recall kids running behind truck spraying the areas. Some claim this was a common practice. My aunts and mom would have had a fit is we did such.
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture was the federal agency with responsibility for regulating pesticides before the formation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. The USDA, began regulatory actions in the late 1950s and 1960s to prohibit many of DDT’s uses because of mounting evidence of the pesticide’s declining benefits due to over usage and its environmental and toxicological effects. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 stimulated widespread public concern over the dangers of improper pesticide use and the need for better pesticide controls.
Ten years after Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the new federal department Environmental Protectional Agency (EPA) issued a cancellation order for DDT based on its adverse environmental effects, such as those to wildlife, as well as its potential human health risks. A relationship between DDT exposure and reproductive effects in humans is suspected mostly based on studies in animals. In addition, some animals exposed to DDT in studies developed liver tumors. As a result, DDT is classified as a probable human carcinogen by U.S. and international authorities.
Additional information and interesting reading on Rachel Carson can be found here: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson.
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Some Common Practices . . .
Chasing the mosquito man spraying DDT. Although, you do not see kids here, it was a practice in some areas to do so.
Mosquito man hits the drive-in
This 1949 Advance file photo shows the mosquito man spraying at a drive-in theater on Staten Island to get rid of the mosquitoes before showtime.
Staten Island fog machine in 1949
In this 1949 Advance file photo, officials watch a fog machine operating during an effort to control Staten Island mosquitoes.
Spraying after DDT
This 1999 Advance file photo shows a truck spraying resmithrin on trees along Hylan Boulevard as it travels through Tottenville. The use of DDT was banned in 1972.
Brookfield Landfill
This Advance photo, taken in 1971, shows Sanitation Department workers handling some of the 400 drums of DDT moved from a shed at the department’s Tompkinsville depot to the Brookfield Landfill.
Dumping DDT in the Ocean
A massive toxic dump site that was discovered on the ocean floor between Long Beach and Catalina Island might be even bigger than originally believed.
High concentrations of DDT found across vast swath of California seafloor | California, The Guardian
DDT – A Brief History and Status, US EPA
I remember the smell, was sweet. Just reading about it I can smell that smell.
G’ma kept us inside …
I remember it that way, too. We weren’t kept inside. Life was cheap back then.
Of course, everybody smoked back then too, and lead was in paint and in the air from gasoline.
common in Florida 1964
on the other hand, it was worth your life to go outside at night where it was not sprayed. i have no idea what they are doing now. i live 3000 miles away in a place where bugs are rare. including bees.
i remember staying up at night to kill mosquitoes (mechanically) before they could eat my baby. house was not air-tight.
this may be another one of those forces of history. in order not to die of one thing we kill ourselves with the way we defend ourselves.
thinking about glyphosate and gmo’s. not sure we could feed ourselves without them, so what’s a few million extra deaths from unintended consequences?
note: i am not endorsing this; just wondering if it is inevitable.
of course with global warming and other pollution and habitat loss we may have discovered the final solution.
I have commented in the past about our need to grow thicker skin. Not just in dealing with those requiring thicker skin to deal with but for the suffering billions, quite possibly we amongst them, are going to undergo. The world as we know it is changing ~ ending ~ and it could kill us all
We are fleas ~ planet lice ~ agitating the hide of a far greater organism
I don’t think it will kill us all, hence the need for thicker skin …
Ten
you might be right when it comes to it,
but those with thick skins may find the other has meanwhile grown a thicker skin.
better to try to negotiate while we still can.
i keep advocating slower cheaper cars and better birth control, the other guy wants a faster car and his country is advocating more babies “for the economy” not to mention for more soldiers.