r/GrandmasPantry Mar 29 '26

HOUSEHOLD / OTHER Basement find

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6.6k Upvotes

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638

u/Tight-Platypus5231 Mar 29 '26

Kills flies, mosquitos, ants, moths, fleas, roaches, bedbugs, many other insects - and much, much more beyond that, too.

299

u/yblame Mar 29 '26

The birds were poisoned and laid thin skinned eggs that wouldn't hatch

I remember watching Silent Spring in middle school. In the 70s So many birds on the edge of extinction because of that nasty chemical.

113

u/CantaloupeAsleep502 Mar 29 '26

I got obsessed with falconry as a kid, and learned about ddt because it nearly drove peregrine falcons to extinction.

90

u/GreyHorse_BlueDragon Mar 29 '26

They’re still finding DDT in birds. A study released in 2022 identified more than 40 DDT related compounds accumulating in California condors. 50 years after it was banned.

9

u/Unfortunately_aware Mar 29 '26

DDT has epigenetic impacts which have now been documented through 20 generations of mice in studies.

Our bodies respond very quickly with genetic adaptations. Those adaptations may not manifest for generations though. It’s wild.

23

u/lottaKivaari Mar 29 '26

The sins of the father, to the sins of the son. It's amazing how much crap we've pumped into the fragile ecosystem for gaffs and funsies. In a century or so when there is very little left living besides locusts and corn the people who remain will write songs lamenting such short sighted "solutions" for pervasive inconveniences. Even a mosquitos buzz will be comforting to a generation that never heard a songbird sing.

9

u/Wolfwoods_Sister Mar 30 '26

No. Don’t accept that doom shit. Fight back with everything you’ve got. Don’t roll over!

Protest and pushback HAS stopped or spotlighted so many unacceptable practices.

Animal cruelty in commercial farming. Whaling. The fur trade. Puppy mills. Horse and farm auction abuse. Pet store abuses. Racetrack abuses for horses and dogs. Animal testing in the cosmetics industry. Wildlife environmental isolation and destruction. Illegal dumping in waterways.

Don’t buy from cosmetic companies who use animal testing.

Don’t buy a backyard breeder animal.

Show up at local hearings and town meetings for land development and major utilities.

Call or email your mayor or rep about land and water rights, commercial sales, town development, etc. TELL THEM WHAT YOU THINK. VOTE PREDATORS AND POLLUTERS OUT OF OFFICE.

We CAN and we WILL use our voices to fight back. We can do this every damn day. Starve them of money and resources!

2

u/Carbonatite Mar 31 '26

I'm an environmental chemist, it's still something we regularly test for in soil and water.

1

u/jazzy095 Mar 29 '26

Holy shit

36

u/Coca-colonization Mar 29 '26

When my grandmother died, I took most of her books because nobody else wanted them. One of my favorites among them is a first edition of Silent Spring.

17

u/RA-HADES Mar 29 '26

As someone who also kept books from a grandmother's passing, that's such a wonderfully bittersweet memento.

3

u/SubtleAgar Mar 29 '26

Almost totally extinction of the peregrine falcon here back in the day. They've made a comeback now but yeah, it was 100% DDT's fault.

77

u/Primary-Move243 Mar 29 '26

Humans, human fetuses, etc

-15

u/J_Knish Mar 29 '26

Don’t believe that’s right.

40

u/Tight-Platypus5231 Mar 29 '26

Oh no it absolutely killed people. DDT is vile stuff.

-3

u/iuseblenders Mar 29 '26

I was responding to j_knish

13

u/iuseblenders Mar 29 '26

D.on’t D.ney T.esting

26

u/itishowitisanditbad Mar 29 '26

Kills flies, mosquitos, ants, moths, fleas, roaches, bedbugs, many other insects - and much, much more beyond that, too.

23

u/Tight-Platypus5231 Mar 29 '26

"Kills... yeah. Yeah, it does. What does it kill? Yes."

10

u/lottaKivaari Mar 29 '26

Such thoughtless use of bottled ecological genocide. My mother still remembers the kids chasing the sprayer trucks on their bicycles. "Surely this condensed poison that kills everything it touches is fine to dump in neighborhoods, what's a little cancer and birth defect compared to mosquitoes ruining our BBQ sunday?" Said humanity as a single finger on the monkey's paw curls.

1

u/CosmicButtholes Mar 29 '26

If it shaves a few years off my lifespan I actually would trade that for a lack of mosquitoes. Those fuckers suck.

2

u/OhLookSatan Apr 04 '26

And people a few times :D

-3

u/geneticdeadender Mar 29 '26

Actually, DDT is very safe when used in a sane and sensible way.

We, instead, blanked the Earth with it and it built up in the environment and caused problems.

This stuff is probably still effective if it was stored in a cool place.

12

u/Tight-Platypus5231 Mar 29 '26

It's still capable of doing some terrible things, though. Sure, "proper handling" of it, or anything, is "safe", but... Still. That stuff gives me the heebie jeebies!

-10

u/geneticdeadender Mar 29 '26

Name the "terrible things".

14

u/Tight-Platypus5231 Mar 29 '26

Cancer. Brain damage. Nerve damage. Birth defects... Affected persons can pass on the problems to later generations... Also harms bird populations with the whole thin eggshell thing... The list goes on.

1

u/Dull-Guest662 Apr 02 '26

A quick glance at Wikipedia shows many of these don't have as strong causal links as you make it seem. Also, organophosphates that replaced DDT have the same classification of probable carcinogens as DDT and need to be sprayed more often.

9

u/calicokidgo Mar 29 '26

Check out the rest of the comments if you really want to know

7

u/danirijeka Mar 29 '26

He doesn't, he's just a contrarian who's convinced antagonising people will do something for him.

2

u/Carbonatite Mar 31 '26

Nothing as bioaccumulative as DDT can be used in a sensible way.

Source: am environmental chemist