OT: banned insecticides

We could hear them coming (always after dark)and jump on our bikes and wait for the CLOUD. Then we'd ride back and forth thru the cloud. Great sport and it didn't hurt me a bit....er ah duh duh duh. (Grin)

Get away from the establishment media and you'll find lots of folks (educated healthcare folks and all) agree banning it was a mistake but you can't get the banners to admit to their mistakes.

Mark

Mark

I live on Lake Superior. I can catch all the fish I can eat. Trouble is, the DNR forbids anyone from eating them. My favorite fresh water fish is the walleye. Walleye from the Great lakes are not allowed to be served in any restaurant. So we have to import them from Alberta!

I'm a Viet Nam veteran so I have first had experience with dioxin (agent orange). You might want to research that subject before you form another erroneous conclusion. DOW has admitted in court that it is one of the most poisonous substances on earth and also one of the most persistent in the environment. 40 years after it was used in Viet Nam, many Vietnamese are still dying from it via food grown on the permanently contaminated soil.

Link

You can find out more than you would ever want to know by searching the 'Net.

No need to buy any, I'm still suffering the effects of dioxin exposure... from the mid-sixties.

Just do a google search, and you can find lots of nifty information about dioxin, exposure, etc.

The answer isn't easy, I certainly don't have it, but even if we had fair and impartial testing, who then sets the allowable risk limit? If a chemical helps 100 people but kills 1, it might seem like a fair trade-off, or is it? I guess it depends on whether you are one of the 100... or the 1. In any case, it should be up to us to make the decision, an informed decision, based on facts. As it stands right now, society cannot trust the companies nor the government to provide facts. The only thing that has changed in the last 40 years is that both of them have become much more clever liars.

Regarding your examples... because I am informed, I don't eat fish contaminated by mercury. Because I am informed, I don't drink water contaminated by flouride or chlorine. Those are my informed choices. But I also refuse to drink milk contaminated with BST but for a different reason... no long-term studies have been done. Therefore, I have no facts that it's safe. Again, that is my choice.

Nothing, of course.

We live in a representative democracy. That means we ARE the government. I have nether the time nor inclination to study the thousands of new chemical compounds that industry, with the government's blessing, unleashes on us every year. We have to depend on them for accurate information.

While cigarettes are mostly a voluntary choice, the chemical poisons in out air, water, food, and other products mostly are not. They are placed there without our knowledge or consent and it's only after years of people becoming sick and dying from them that public outrage finally results in full disclosure and occasionally in an outright ban.

Unfortunately, most pesticides are banned because of abuse by consumers.

People seem to go by the theory of "If some is good, more is better". Look at the levels of obesity in our nation before you counter me on that.

Another problem with DDT, like mercury, was that it doesn't break down over time. Once it's there, it's there for good. If the use rates hadn't been so astronomical in the 40s 50s and 60s, we pry could still be using it today. We can't make Argentina or China quit using it but that's no reason to bring it back here.

Atrazine is being slowly banned out existance for the same "more=better" reason. Back in the 60s, farmers around here said "If 4 lb/a is good, 6 lb must be better"

I ain't your mommy and I ain't doing your homework for you!

Maybe that's why you argue & fuss all the time with some others???

Like Hugh said, you have to study the history of each chemical on its own. Some were banned, some were restricted, some were replaced with more effective products, other were abandoned when insects developed resistance to them.

This is not to say that they did not do some damage due to abuse. I believe the final goal of the govt and industry is for liscensed applicators only on all chemicals. More profits and control for the industry and gummit.

I mulch my lawn and it gets watered when it rains, never by me. And yet, everyone remarks about how great my lawn looks. If these "city folks" would just go take a drive out to the country they would see that grass grows just fine all by itself. It self-mulches and gets watered by rain. It's been that way for eons.

BTW, in my area, phosphorus is outlawed in lawn care products. Just started last year... about time.