Talk:DDT/Archive 4

message: In the section of DDT and cancer, I've removed this study:
*A study from 1967 examined 35 workers exposed to 600 times the average DDT exposure levels over a period of 9 to 19 years. No elevated cancer risk was observed.
since it's a very old study, it's a very small sample size, and it's contradicted by newer studies (see the second bullet point in § 4.2). I also think that whenever possible we should use reviews as sources rather listing every single study (or worse: cherrypicking a few old studies) and a recent review is available and used in the article. However, maybe there is good reason to include it--perspective? I don't know.... If anyone feels strongly that it should stay, then go ahead and put it back in, but please provide justification here. THanks. Yilloslime 09:03, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Older references 

message: This is intended to be a scientific article. As such, "Gordon Edwards' daily consumption of DDT" belongs in the Gordon Edwards article, not in the DDT article. Unless you would also like to 
# provide some evidence that Edwards did consume DDT every day, rather than some third hand reference to somebody who saw him consume a spoonful of something he claimed was DDT, which he claimed to do every day
#list all the people who were exposed to DDT and did die, 
#list everybody who smoked and didn't get cancer in the smoking article
etc.
etc.
etc.
Gzuckier 15:04, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The second time you removed this it was from the "criticism" section. Edwards was a noted critic of restrictions on DDT use, and the material I added here need not be in the form of a peer-reviewed study; it cogently expresses the views of a well-known critic. --Don't lose that number 00:45, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If this anecdote belongs anywhere, it's in the article on J Gordon Edwards, not an encyclopedia entry on DDT. Yilloslime 01:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What you said. As I stated in my edit summary removing that material, the source you provided seems in no way reliable; the author is not a chemist or any kind of scientist for that matter, and the mention of the alleged anecdote is only in passing, with no sources given. It might belong in the article on Edwards, but definitely not here. +ILike2BeAnonymous 01:42, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, he was a scientist -- Professor of Entomology at San Jose State. However, one not need have particular credentials to be a notable critic. Other critics mentioned in the criticism section include journalists, authors, public health officials, and lawyers. And then, one lady who is quoted to rebut the criticism is May Berenbaum, a professor of entomology. Edwards was famous as a critic of the DDT ban, and his DDT-eating stunt was widely discussed. --Don't lose that number 07:23, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: describing it as a "stunt" (though not in those words) isn't the problem, it's describing in terms fitting to some kind of definitive well documented experiment. "According to one rightwing blog, Professor of Entomology J. Gordon Edwards claimed to swallow a spoonful of what he claimed to be DDT every day. He died of heart failure blah blah." would be an accurate statement without interpretation, if you want to go that route, or modify it to reflect several rightwingblogs or the Larouche organization or whatever (I know I'm being a little sarcastic with that wording, but hopefully you get my point). If you can find a reliable source that what he drank was DDT other than his sayso that would be great, but I don't believe that exists anywhere, or even evidence other than his sayso that he actually did it every day. Heck, most people don't even manage to take their prescription medications every single day. But in general, this article creeps towards too many individual opinions, when definitive well-documented well-regarded sources are available, e.g. the EPA. Including a bunch of folks who don't believe the EPA doesn't generate a "fair and balanced" article, it injects bias. Gzuckier 14:30, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Again, I think you are missing the fact that this is part of the "criticism" section. We don't describe in detail the research methodology used by the various journalists and public health officials who say the restrictions on DDT have cause thousands, millions, etc. deaths from Malaria, because it is not being presented as scientific data, it is being presented as criticism. On the other hand, Edwards deserves a certain amount of respect by virtue of being a credentialed expert on entomology, so I think that it is unreasonable to suggest that he was really eating Ovaltine and claiming that it was DDT, or whatever. --Don't lose that number 21:21, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yilloslime, your compromise edit is fine with me. Let me add that I congratulate you on being able to compromise -- some of the other editors I've encountered seem utterly incapable. --Don't lose that number 06:36, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, if it's OK with everybody else, I certainly won't be the skunk at the garden party. compromise is the name of the game! (PS he annually took the spoonful of DDT? For some reason, mostly my own confusion, I was reading it as daily. D'oh!)Gzuckier 14:53, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  no anecdotal evidence 

message: This article entirely credits the US restriction on DDT use to Rachel Carson and "the environmental movement."  It completely overlooks over a decade of hard fought battles by the farm labor movement, lead by Cesar Chavez.  No mention is made of the 1960's grape boycott and subsequent and historic contracts signed by Delano growers that specifically -- and for the first time -- restricted the use of DDT.  No mention is made of the UFW march to DC and Chavez's testimony before congress.  This testimony contributed to a more comprehensive nationwide ban on DDT in 1972.
Both the farm labor movement AND the environmental movement lead to the ban of this pesticide.  Almost any Chavez biography or historical text on the farm labor movement will support these facts.  Try, for example:
Susan Ferriss and Ricardo Sandoval, The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement, 1998
71.202.121.218 18:14, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a good point. Somebody with some knowledge would be good to write it... like you......?Gzuckier 19:00, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  DDT Ban and the Farm Labor Movement 

message: would'nt the rise of bedbugs have something  to do with increased travel?
Exactly who is suggesting that the banning of DDT 30 years ago is a factor in the rise of bedbugs in the past few years? I didn't just delete the statement from the article, I actually did a bit of Googling for some such statement, and didn't find any. Now, I did see people suggest that DDT had been of use to eradicate bedbugs, but even that's up against some serious evidence, which I guess I might as well put into the article now that I dug it all up. Anyway, if you get a reference to somebody of some degree of note, either scientific or a rightwing shill regarding the lack of DDT leading to bedbuggery, then please return the statement with citation, but don't feel that I arbitrarily deleted it just because of some kind of partisanship without an attempt to verify. Gzuckier 17:57, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ya, As far as I can tell, a big pest control trade group (perhaps the National Pest Control Association though off I the top of my head I don't remember for sure) has been issuing press releases about bedbugs saying, among other things, that DDT helped eradicate bedbugs in the US. Newspaper articles derived from the press release are the only sources I've ever seen that claim such a thing--I've yet to come across any mention of bedbugs in the medical or scientific literature on DDT, or in EPA/WHO documents about DDT. I don't think DDT was ever even registered for structural pest control in the US--though I haven't looked into that specifically, so I may be wrong. [At any rate, googling DDT bedbugs site:epa.gov yeilds zero hits.]  I could believe that chlordane--which is a now banned organochlorine pesticide that was once used in structural pest control--could have played a role in bedbug elimination, but the DDT claim is pretty shaky and is going to need some serious sourcing. Yilloslime 18:28, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My pooter had it's weekly unscheduled crash, thus eliminating all traces of the sites I had laboriously googled up so I'll have to dig them out again. Stay tuned. Gzuckier 15:04, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok i dun it. Gzuckier 21:28, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  don't let the bedbugs bite. 

message: The court cases were decided in EPA's favor, and appeals got no traction, suggesting that Ruckelshaus's actions were solidly based on science.
I'm confused. Is someone attempting to claim that an action is scientifically valid as a result of being legally vindicated? That's a really, really stupid line of reasoning. --75.58.54.17 16:43, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The whole paragraph, starting "The ban and Carson's book ..." seems rather confused to me. Perhaps someone who knows how these events unfolded can re-write it. Davy p 01:00, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uh? 

message: Under the 'See Also' section, Agent Orange is listed. Agent Orange is a herbicide, and DDT is a pesticide. I suppose the argument could be made that controversy surrounds both DDT and Agent Orange, but perhaps there are better uses for the 'See Also' section than a herbicide. 
Perhaps a link to 'Organochloride' would be better?
:The active ingredient in "Agent Orange" was 2,4-D, a synthetic plant growth regulator used as a defoliant in warfare.  During the era of the Vietnam War the industrial production of 2,4-D was contaminated with Dioxin. It is controversial for a variety of reasons, as is DDT, but I agree that it does not belong in the See Also section of an article about DDT.  The two articles could belong to similar categories of articles, in a number of different ways, including that both insecticides and herbicides are pesticides, as are miticides, avicides, rodenticides and fungicides.Michael J Swassing 18:00, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: For the record, Agent Orange was a mixture of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. (2,4-D is still widely used even today.) We don't need to put to Organochloride in the See Also section since it's already wikilinked in the body of the article itself. Come to think of it, Pesticides is also already wikilinked, so it doesn't need to be in the See Also section either. I do like having Agent Orange in the See Also section, since like DDT it is an iconic pesticide. However, upon search the article for the term, I see it too is already mentioned in the article, so doesn't need to be in the See Also section, per WP:SEEALSO#See_also. I'll just remove the whole section. Yilloslime (t) 18:39, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is Agent Orange here. 

message: I would like to see a clear distinction between two things - or maybe three things:
#The latest "consensus" (?) of scientists about the benefits and dangers of using DDT as a pesticide.
#A completely neutral and well-balanced (?) section on advocacy for and against DDT use.
If I recall the history of this topic correctly, there was a time before 2006 when DDT was much more unpopular than it is now. I think Scientific American changed its mind (or reported a general scientific or political turnabout) on the issue. 
The biggest issue of concern to human rights activists and advocates for the poor in third world countries is malaria eradication. Their concern sometimes goes up against environmentalist concerns that DDT will hurt fish or birds, or even promote the evolution of DDT-resistant mosquitoes.
Is it possible to write the article so that there is an initial section which is completely uncontroversial? And then can we have another section on advocacy? (Or do we need a DDT advocacy article for the pro and con?) --Uncle Ed (talk) 16:58, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Science and advocacy

message: Sorry to cross post (see also talk:Rachel Carson) but I'm trying to track down rumors of a DDT ban and this (supposed) ban's effect on the malaria malaria epidemic in the Third World. 
*Dr. Pierre Guillet, a medical entomologist who coordinates the WHO Vector Control and Prevention Team, [said] that DDT had been out of the picture for many years, under pressure from environmentalists, who wanted an end to all pesticides. 
Now is this just disinformation from LaRouche? Or did he really say this?
If he did really say this, what did he mean by "out of the picture"? Did some countries restrict the use of DDT for vector control, as some advocates claim? --Uncle Ed 18:43, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Campaigns to ban DDT

message: The Fish and Wildlife Service, along with the EPA, have managed both to confirm and to deny the idea that the US "banned" DDT.
*affirmation:  DDT Ban Takes Effect [EPA press release - December 31, 1972]
*:The general use of the pesticide DDT will no longer be legal in the United States after today ... 
*denial: Common Myths About Rachel Carson and DDT: [that] DDT Has Been Banned in United States. 
Is this a semantic issue, or what? --Uncle Ed 04:03, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The very link you provided explains that "Only the GENERAL use of the pesticide has been banned in the United States.  The EPA’s order did not affect public health and quarantine uses, or exports of DDT.  In addition, the EPA maintains the ability to allow any Federal or State agency to use DDT if emergency conditions exist, including economic emergencies." --Itub 10:12, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Ambiguity about the "ban"

message: Dr. Wayland Hayes performed tests for the U.S. Public Health Service, feeding human volunteers up to 35 milligrams of DDT in their food every day for 18 months. (The average human intake of DDT in the United States at that time was about 0.03 mgs per day, or 0.36 mgs per year.) No adverse effects resulted, either at the time of the study, or during the next 10 years.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.106.1.237 (talk) 14:26, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: 35 mg for an average person is about 0.5 mg/kg. There aren't a lot of things poisonous at that level. Calcium arsenate isn't poisonous at that level. Calcium cyanide isn't poisonous at that level. The most severe WHO classification, Ia "Extremely Hazardous", begins at 20 mg/kg and below for LD50 for rats; and hardly anything even in that classification is poisonous at 0.5 mg/kg. http://www.who.int/ipcs/publications/pesticides_hazard_rev_3.pdf DDT is rated as "Moderately hazardous", 200-2,000 mg/kg. The fact that the average intake of DDT was far lower than any reasonably hazardous level isn't closely related to the question of whether it's dangerous for the people who have a much larger than average exposure, like workers in the manufacturing plant or agricultural workers. Nobody was arguing that the average American had a 50% risk of dying from DDT exposure; if there was that level of toxicity, people would probably have noticed. If you want a valid test to prove how safe DDT is, take 35 grams of DDT per day (a little more than an ounce) and get back to us how you're doing. and btw, wikipedia generally does not rely on fictional novels as sources for article content when there are numerous scientific sources available, even if the author is Michael Crichton.Gzuckier (talk) 16:21, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: What Gzuckier said: Michael Crichton is not a reliable source here, and State of Fear is a fictional book. We don't cite fictional books in encyclopedia articles about anything other than fictional books. Also note that the 35mg/day study is already mentined in article, and despite your claims of no adverse effects, the authers did note  "suggestive evidence of adverse liver effects". I'm also not sure the subjects were followed for very long (if it all) after the dosing stopped. Gzuckier makes a great case for why this study is not even relevant to the article, and I would add that it is perhaps even misleading to include it. Yilloslime (t) 16:51, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: alternately, in the article on drowning, we could add some balance by referencing a study that shows that 53 people bathed daily without adverse effects. Gzuckier (talk) 20:29, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

text: come to think of it, how would you even get/dispense 35 mg of DDT? it's not like it comes in capsules, like 35 mg of vitamin C. 35 mg would be approximately one "average" size drop of DDT, as a test as to whether the guy who sprays it on the crops for 8 hours a day is at risk. good one. Gzuckier (talk) 20:34, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Dispensing it is no problem at all. Analytical balances have a precision of 0.1 mg. Or you could dilute it and measure the volume of the solution. For example, dissolve 1 g of DDT in 100 mL ethanol and then measure 3.5 mL. --Itub (talk) 16:03, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, but if you're going to that trouble, wouldn't you dispense a dose in the general order of magnitude of biologically significant, rather than 1000X too low? Why go to all the trouble of sapping your experiment of any possibility of results? My take on it, which I freely admit I have no other reason to think is accurate, was this guy just dripping out the smallest drop of DDT he could manage and going, "here, try it, you'll be OK". because frankly and unfortunately, any other scenario makes even less sense as a planned experiment.Gzuckier (talk) 15:57, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It makes sense because it was a study of the long term effect of low doses. The LD50 is irrelevant for two reasons: 1) there are many things that can go significantly wrong with your health over the long term other than dying, but the LD50 is measured for shorter-term/higher dose exposure and only considers death or alive as outcomes; 2) there could be cumulative effects, for example if the substance is not excreted or metabolized. Hence 35 mg/day could be a large dose if you take it for 18 months. Also, seen from the other side, this dose was 1000 times larger than the estimated average exposure (if the numbers given above are correct; I haven't verified), so it was actually erring in the side of caution. Finally, pure DDT is a solid. If you are measuring drops you are already dealing with a dilute solution. For example, the bottle pictured in the article has a 5% solution. That means that, if you were using such a solution, to measure 35 mg of DDT you would need 0.7 mL, which is easy to measure using a pipette or syringe. --Itub (talk) 13:21, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I forgot to add that when you are experimenting with humans you usually don't want 50% of the subjects to die! Hence it makes more sense to start with very low doses and increase them only until you start seeing a significant effect. --Itub (talk) 13:25, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Mmmm... yeah, that makes some sense. I can't believe I missed the part about DDT being a solid at room temp. But good long-term effect studies on humans typically need huge numbers of people for long periods of time, due to not being able to pump toxic doses into them, as you point out. Thus the vast expense of huge Phase III clinical trials, for which drug companies have to mortgage their whole company in order to provide the power required by the FDA. As a result, long term safety studies of most pesticides are pretty sketchy. And so, epidemiological studies following vast populations for 50 years are always popping up new findings, whether true or spurious. Which merely emphasizes the basic point regarding this study that "you can't prove a negative"; i.e., even at face value the study in question merely demonstrates that the risk is low enough that in a limited number of (i'll look it up next time i'm near the library) subjects over a couple of months exposure to 10X the average population dose, over a couple of years of followup nothing significant was found except for some liver anomalies. Quite different from saying "it's safe and harmless", period. Nowadays you would be strongly encouraged to provide a power analysis of your study in the publication, estimating the minimum effect which it would be able to detect. Gzuckier (talk) 18:57, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  DDT was so safe you could eat it. 

message: Apparent half the size of this article is given over to references (ie 42kb of refs in a 93kb sized article).  This would suggest to me that there is insufficient prose or too many references. What should we do increase the amount of prose are cull the number of references? Just as WP is not a collection of external links WP should not be a collection of citations. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 01:52, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes this is problem I noticed too. I think some of the references could be used more, and in place of other refs. In other words, lets say the article makes statements: A B C D E & F; and each is referenced to a different source: a b c d e & f. It might be the case, however, that f supports both F and, say, E, and b supports statement C in addition to B. Therefore we could lose sources e and b, and use cite f to support F and E and b to support C and B. (Maybe that we even more confusing) Anyways, I suspect a lot of this type of thing is going on in this article, and by sticking to a fewer but more comprehensive sources, we could reduce the page size. Yilloslime (t) 05:20, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: For example, this edit. Everything that should be referenced still is, but I made the page ~150b smaller and reduced the number of cited references by one. (And corrected the erroneous bp information to boot!) I imagine there are plenty of similar edits that could be made. Yilloslime (t) 05:36, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Amount of prose vs amount of references 

message: The amount of detail in this section is not really appropriate for an article about a chemical. It would be a good addition to Pesticide use in the United States or perhaps DDT in the United States ....  -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 01:36, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm skeptical, though open to the possibility that it could work. What would be left behind here? The reason I'm skeptical is that Silent Spring, the US ban, and egg shell thinning are central to the history of DDT and to the continued controversy surrounding DDT in the media today, and not just in the US. The section nicely covers all those bases, and I wouldn't want to lose that. But I'm open to suggestions. Yilloslime (t) 05:20, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I see you were rather quick in reverting my split. Egg shell thinning, bald eagles and all the US specific stuff  deserves its own article. Should I add the DDT in New Zealand article to the main DDT article? No, I shouldn't because it will make a long article even longer and it is info only relevant to NZ.  The same goes for the US stuff. Can you please let other editors work on this article. Your unilateral approach is preventing the article from being improved. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 21:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The US experience is central to understanding the history of DDT and the modern controversy around. The New Zealand experience is not. Anyone is free to work the article, but unilateral action against consensus is most unwelcome. Yilloslime (t) 22:17, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split out ''Silent Spring'' and the U.S. ban 

message: The DDT article soulhd be about the chemical.  The ecological aspects of the effect of DDT on an eagle in the US, issues with it in New Zealand and the US, how it became banned in the US, etc are all aspects that SHOULD be treated (pun??!!) elsewhere. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 22:15, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I respectfully disagree. My guess is that people who come to wikipedia.org and type "DDT" into the search menu don't care much about the molecular weight and solubility properties of DDT or its synthesis. They care about bald eagles, Rachel Carson, whether or not it's banned for malaria control, etc. Yilloslime (t) 22:21, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You cannot make any assumption about what people do a  search for on DDT. We have to assume that all manner of searches will be done. If some one does a search on "DDT" they should get a page that is a summary of everything about DDT. That is what I am trying to achieve with my suggestion to split out the sub articles.  If someone is interested in "DDT in New Zealand" and enter that as a search string they will go to the DDT in New Zealand page. If they are are interested in the "Environmental impact of DDT" and enter that phrase as a search string they should go to Environmental impact of DDT. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 04:13, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

text: Here's a thought; I'm not sure why it hasn't occurred to either of us before. Why don't we split out a DDT (molecule) page, not unlike the water (molecule) page. DDT would still point here, but there'd be a header at the top of page directing people to the molecule page for the physical and chemical properties.The molecule page could be the chembox, and Properties and chemistry section from this page, and could perhaps even be expanded to include the mechanism for the DDT-->DDE --> DDD breakdown pathway, as well as any other relevant chemical reactions. I don't think there's anything controversial about that material, nor does it provide context that's essential for understanding the rest of the material in this article. Unlike the other sections that have been proposed for spin-off article, I think this material could work on it's own. Yilloslime (t) 22:30, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've taken a stab at creating DDT (molecule). I think material stands on it's own well, and removing it from this article would not adversely affect the remaining sections. Does anyone object to removal of sections 1.0-1.3? and the chembox from this article? Maybe not the whole chembox, I think it'd be nice keep the top section with the structures. I have proposed some additional ideas from improving DDT (molecule) (assuming this split proposal flies) at User_talk:Alan_Liefting#DDT_.28molecule.29. Yilloslime (t) 00:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't agree with splitting out DDT (molecule). I prefer the arrangement as at carbon dioxide. The basic chemical should be on the main page.  Any lengthy information the starts taking over the main page should be split out as sibling article. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 04:13, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with splitting DDT (molecule), and simplifying the chembox in the main article. For most readers, the detailed chemistry is marginal. The crucial fact about DDT is its use as a pesticide, and the consequences, good and bad.JQ (talk) 01:38, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  This is an article about a chemical