Headlines proclaim “Eagles Are Off The Endangered Species List.” Of course the absence of eggshell thinning by DDT gets the credit in all the reports I have seen. What a lie! The real reasons are described partly in my previous Myth Conceptions articles on DDT. No mention is made of decimation of the eagle population that occurred during the decades when bounties were paid to kill eagles, or of the excessive egg collecting by ornithologists. No endangered species laws were in effect during those years.
My bulging DDT file keeps growing as a result of my series of Myth Conceptions articles on DDT. The National Pest Control Association is an excellent source for material. I received an article published in Science News (Volume 153) from Western Exter-minator’s Bill Kolbe that had the best explanation for the thin shell phenomenon that I have seen. It claims that eggshell thinning was an early consequence of a century of excessive pollution from coal combustion. Acid rain caused by decades of belching smokestacks and combustion engines changed the soil and water chemistry enough to reduce the availability of calcium that is so critical in avian diet for eggshell development.
A gold mine of information came from Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, a professor at San Jose State University. He sent me a 50-page dissertation titled, “Pesticides in Medicine and Politics.” He listed 20 things that DDT did NOT do:
1. DDT did NOT have any adverse effect on humans, domestic animals or wildlife, including deliberate poisoning or suicide attempts.
2. DDT did NOT kill birds, mammals, fish or other vertebrate animals when applied in any legally approved manner.
3. DDT did NOT cause breast cancer, prostate cancer, stomach cancer or any other kind of cancer.
4. DDT did NOT cause plummeting sperm counts or other reproductive difficulties in heavily exposed humans.
5. DDT did NOT disrupt the endocrine systems and hormones of humans and other mammals.
6. DDT did NOT adversely influence reproductive processes in humans or other mammals.
7. DDT did NOT harm breast-feeding infants whose mothers contained traces of DDT residues.
8. DDT did NOT harm volunteers who agreed to ingest as much as 36 milligrams of DDT every day for nearly two years. 9. DDT did NOT cause a decline in populations of brown pelicans, bald eagles, peregrine falcons, ospreys or other birds. 10. DDT did NOT kill robins living near elm trees that were sprayed to protect them from Dutch Elm Disease. 11. DDT did NOT cause birds to produce eggs with shells that were too thick for the young to hatch or too thin to protect the eggs from being broken. 12. DDT did NOT kill the honeybees that are important as pollinators of flowers and as producers of commercial honey. 13. DDT did NOT destroy micro-organisms in the soil or water. On the contrary, those microorganisms destroyed the DDT and its residues in soil and water. 14. DDT did NOT inhibit photosynthesis in marine algae, freshwater plants or any terrestrial plants. 15. DDT did NOT persist at any significant levels for long periods of time in aquatic habitats, in soil or in tissues of living animals. 16. DDT did NOT “biomagnify up the food chain,” and thus did not cause concentrations of pesticides to increase in animals higher on the food chain. 17. DDT did NOT pollute the oceans, even along the shores that are teeming with people. 18. DDT did NOT enter falling rainwater, accumulating on roofs in urban areas. 19. DDT did NOT leach out of the soil and get into nearby ground water because it is not soluble enough in water to do that. 20. DDT did NOT “blow around the world,” contaminating Antarctica or the surrounding seas. All the aforementioned statements are carefully substantiated by Dr. Gordon with creditable, valid scientific data, unlike the pseudo-scientific fiction in many popular writings such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and in a more recent book Our Stolen Future, which Vice President Al Gore called a “sequel to Silent Spring.” A disturbing revelation in Edwards’ paper are statements by spokesmen of various environmental groups who were responsible for the demise of DDT. Alexander King in 1990 wrote, “My chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it has greatly added to the population problem.” Prince Philip once stated that malaria, kept in check by DDT use, was controlling population growth. World health authorities in the 1960s believed that there was no alternative to the overpopulation problem but to assure that up to 40% of the children in poor nations would die of malaria. As one officer of the Agency for International Development put it, “Rather dead than alive and riotously reproducing.” These are the same movements that forced the EPA to rule that any toxicant must be cancelled if it could cause more than one death from cancer in a million people who are exposed to the toxicant for 70 years. Silent Spring has become required reading in many schools, thereby assuring the poisoning of the minds of the next generation. It is my hope that at least the baby boomers in the pest control industry can be weaned away from a Silent Spring mindset. Harry Katz, a contributing editor to PCT, may be contacted at Berkshire E-3076, Deerfield Beach FL 33442, 954/427-9716.
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