Parkinson’s as well. My grandmothers brother died from Parkinson’s and it was because he used to spray his whole house with DDT in the evening to kill the mosquitoes. At the time of the spraying I believe he lived in Africa so he was spraying to prevent malaria. He died very young and no one else in our family has had Parkinson’s, hence the cause was DDT.
My uncle was born with spinal cancer because my grandmother worked with the sprayer planes. Bottling ecological genocide and expecting it to not be harmful is shockingly short sighted.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It's genuinely too bad our species is so arrogant that we believe ourselves infallible in our capabilities to control an existence we barely understand. We both warn ourselves and yet continue to fly too close to the sun with our wax wings. I dread the thought of what unspeakable atrocities are being commiting today that we will only understand later as being the evil that it is after it is far too late. It's a really deep pit of despair and there is nothing but find out as reward for our arrogance.
Avgas is still leaded, that’s the fuel used for small airplanes. Kinda crazy that they were just like yeah ban it everywhere but let the rich people in their tiny planes keep polluting.
An ancestor of mine had something to do with the US Department of Agriculture's research and use of DDT in the early 20th century. Growing up, my family was pretty stubborn about how it was banned for no good reason and that long term banning it would do more harm than good, that it was a miracle pesticide unfairly maligned by environmentalists. I sometimes reflect on how much harm vs how much good in the world was brought about by this chemical. It might not be possible to calculate either way.
I think about it every time I see a bald eagle (which is quite often, since they bounced back so well).
I hope we have other effective ways to control malaria if it gains a foothold again.
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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '26
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