Boulder residents fear they'll be blasted with pesticide again
An attempt to deal with a scourge of pine beetles in western Boulder County may have created a threat to humans.
Tens of thousands of trees were doused with a potent, cancer-causing pesticide called EBD, the Daily Camera reports.
Scientists thought it was safe, possibly because it was selectively applied. It wasn’t safe.
These were not simple decisions. Many in the Third World died from malaria when DDT was banned, and became difficult to get ahold of. Proponents of DDT said victims would have to lick the walls to become affected.
“We would literally drench trees until it ran off the branches,” John Oppenlander, who worked for Roosevelt National Forest, told the Camera in 1984, a year after the pesticide — called ethylene dibromide, or EDB — was banned by the Environmental Protection Agency.
“If we had known then what we know now, we would have been the first to abandon it,” added Colorado state forester John Laut. The new pesticide is carbaryl, which Wikipedia says is toxic to humans. Not only are there safey concerns but it has to sprayed individually on each tree.
With the return of a pine beetle scourge foresters are trying to find a way to bring it under control. Residents feel they are going to make the same mistake and endanger humans who live the area.
Because it is expensive it would only be used on high-value trees.
“High-value trees are an extremely small percentage of the entire forest,” said Eldora resident Heidi Anderson, who says several of her neighbors became sick last year after Eldora Mountain Resort sprayed carbaryl. “There will be millions of dead trees, and only a few that are saved by carbaryl. That’s a lot of poisoning for a gain that isn’t that big.”
Carbaryl and EDB are not the same pesticide, and they do not work the same way. Carbaryl is applied on healthy trees to stave off the beetles; EDB was largely sprayed on already infected trees and downed wood to kill the beetles before they could spread.
But there are some similarities between the two pesticides that bother residents and environmental groups, including the Rocky Mountain Environmental Health Association.
EDB and carbaryl both cause tumors in mice. EDB is a “probable” human carcinogen, and carbaryl is a “likely” one, according to the EPA.
And while scientists later changed their minds, they used to believe that EDB broke down into a harmless chemical within a few days. Today, scientists similarly argue that carbaryl breaks down quickly.
Click here for the Daily Camera story.
In the world of Boulder-enviro-nuttism, this one is difficult;
The quick answer is, Bugs first – humans second.
That means letting the bugs live.
However that means killing trees.
Sometimes there are no easy answers.
Are their ways around it. The pesticide probably has a sort of half-life. Close off an area and douse it. In Madagascar, after they were able to find a DDT supplier, they would spray a house and keep people out of it for awhile.
Many in the Third World died when the pharmaceuticals used to treat malaria in humans ceased being effective, when the parasite developed resistance to the drugs. But that was in the 1970s or later, and malaria was already at historic lows. DDT spraying in the outdoors was stopped in the middle 1960s when mosquitoes became resistant to it. Malaria rates continued to drop.
Absence of DDT resulted in very few, if any, additional deaths.
Ultimately, the beetle infestations get worse when trees are ill (global warming? in some cases) or when the weather conspires to make it easier for the beetles to spread (global warming? maybe a double whammy?). Malaria-carrying mosquitoes often benefit from climate change the same way the beetles do.
Recent research indicates bed nets are more effective at preventing malaria than DDT. Successful campaigns to eradicate malaria have never been successful where DDT was the main tool. It’s not enough to simply knock down the mosquitoes temporarily.
But in any case, DDT was not banned in Africa, nor Asia, and has in fact been in constant use in places like Mexico and India since 1946. Interestingly, both India and Mexico have also seen an increase in malaria cases. How can we explain that, if an absence of DDT were the culprit?
So, can we blame a lack of DDT for a rise in malaria in Africa? Is it fair to blame the U.S. ban on DDT in 1972 for the great reduction in DDT use in 1965? Can we blame a rise in malaria in Kenya on the cessation of DDT use in Texas? Is it even logical to do so?
DDT was banned because it supposedly was harming the environment. Ever hear of Rachel Carson, the enviro-Nazi before Algore? It was not banned for rational reasons.
Gene, my challenge to DDT advocates and those who unjustly slam Rachel Carson is this: Do you think she made an error? Tell us what the error was, on which page of Silent Spring, and tell us what research backs your claim.
Carson’s work was deadly accurate, and it remains so. For example, President Kennedy tasked the President’s Science Advisory Council (PSAC) to check out her book. This council included Nobel winners — high powered, non-axe-grinding, accurate bunch of scientists. On May 15, 1963, they reported back that Carson’s book was accurate in everything, with a possible exception — she underestimated the dangers from the pesticides and action was required more urgently than Carson had asked. In 2007, Discover magazine re-examined the DDT issue, and in one finding they noted about 1,200 peer-reviewed studies had been done on DDT effects on birds since she published her book, each and every one of them backing her claims about damage to birds. I have been unable to find a single contrary study.
Yes, I’ve heard of Rachel Carson. I have a copy of Silent Spring on my bookshelf three feet away. I have also heard dozens of false claims, calumny of the most villainous sort directed at Ms. Carson and her work, none of which claims can stand scrutiny.
Do you have the first claim against Carson’s work that can withstand analysis as accurate? Or is it time you hie yourself to your local bookstore or library and get the 40th anniversary verstion of Silent Spring, and really read it for the first time?
C’mon over to my blog and do a search for “Rachel Carson” or “DDT,” and spend a few hours getting the straight scoop.
By the way, Gene, when EPA undertook to speed up their review of the labeling requirements of DDT in 1971, they did so under the threat of action from two different federal courts. In two different trials DDT had been determined to be a very dangerous substance, in fair trials in which the manufacturers of DDT had full chances to make their case. Based on the science, DDT lost. The courts looked at the federal law that required accuracy in labeling of pesticides, and ordered EPA to look at the stuff, or the courts would apply the law as written.
Hard science, and the mountains of evidence backing it, are very much “rational reasons.”
Mr. Darrell,
We know where you stand on Global Warming and DDT;
where do you come down on spraying bugs in Boulder, Colorado?
Gene,
A critical review of Carson, her work, and a suggested alternative reading is found in 2007 from the NY Times of all entities. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/science/earth/05tier.html?pagewanted=print
The NY Times article is worth reading in its entirety yet below are a couple of quotes. The second quote is especially prescient and applicable to the Boulder issue.
“Ms. Carson’s many defenders, ecologists as well as other scientists, often excuse her errors by pointing to the primitive state of environmental and cancer research in her day. They argue that she got the big picture right: without her passion and pioneering work, people wouldn’t have recognized the perils of pesticides. But those arguments are hard to square with Dr. Baldwin’s review”
“While Ms. Carson imagined life in harmony before DDT, Dr. Baldwin saw that civilization depended on farmers and doctors fighting “an unrelenting war” against insects, parasites and disease. He complained that “Silent Spring” was not a scientific balancing of costs and benefits but rather a “prosecuting attorney’s impassioned plea for action.” ”
Sammy
I was not the one that brought up DDT. It is not my fight. However, the claim Mr. Darrell makes, . . ‘the parasite developed resistance’ to DDT was a reason its’ . . use was stopped. I had never heard that. If that is so, couldn’t it again be started up after some 40 plus years? I really don’t think that was the reason.
As Sammy above points out, there is plenty of literature that goes against the enviros on this one.
I covered the demise of DDT in malaria-riddled areas of africa. it was banned because it was killing birds, even bald eagles, in the U.S. That created a problem in Africa because for a time they couldn’t find anyone making it. And nothing else was as effective.
Never did hear back from Ed Darrell, the Rachel Carson apologist. It is a crying shame DDT isn’t used in Africa. Nets over babies beds is now thought to be charity. It is a sick idea. Get rid of the mosquitoes with DDT and forget the silly nets. Enviros killing babies and other people. Just one more example.
rational, i read that link of samms and it seemed to answer those questions. perhaps you are missed that?
art
see here is the problems that bush and cheney left us with
VA Medical System in Shambles, Veterans Say
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/24/va-medical-shambles-veterans-groups-say/
obama can get it cleaned up so we can use it for americans needing health treatments
art
rationle,
perhasp you had no reading experience? youre three questions answered. 1- instenanoeus cancer.,2-0 sense you has problems with words maybe you can find numbers, 3- Mr. I. L. Baldwin. also, mrs carson calls her own writing a fable. perhaps you use aesops’s writigns too? in a kwik looking I find many readings that speak against carson’s work. yet, nones of them are aesops fables.
if you would consentrate on obama helping things you would be better thought of as not a wallnut case. you hurt your own self with wild talk
art
art
art
art
You cannot talk rational-ly with some people! (he had a case of reefer madness last night at 11:11 pm)
Gene
Gene – either answer Ed’s challenge about Rachel Carson and her work or admit that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
You made the accusation. Back it up or take it back.
Gene,
Even another article of so called solutions being a problem, a big problem, themselves.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/ozone-solution-is-growing-climate-threat/
Sammy
Gene you are an outright blowhard. Ed darrel posed three specific questions no one answered so what are you supposed to be waiting on him to return for. Simple questions, what specific error did she make, what page of silent spring does that error occur, and what research backs up the claim.
You mean the new york times article? First off It seems like you have made it clear that you don’t believe anything the ny times writes so it is pretty hypocritical of you to agree with it now. Second off, it answer exactlt zero of the three questions posed. If you want to continue to blowhard on this issue, you ought to do better than that ny times article. Of course you are too old to have had the oppurtunity to read it in school, factual literature in your day all resembled reefer madness, you probably learned that leeches were a medical marvel, and that the earth was the center of the universe.
Where does the ny times article prove that woman didn’t get cancer from ddt. Where does anything prove that. Give me the qoute, oh wait you can’t. What numbers are you speaking of, show me the qoute. Mr baldwin? Show me where he disproves anthing, give me the qoute. And drop the borat routine, getting stale.