How many of us have read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring? Kinda scary wasn't it?
but once you started reading it, you should have noticed something. In the case of DDT, she made alot of speculation. "thousand could die of cancer in the future". 40 years later, has anyone died from DDT? no one. what happened to all the people who used it during World War II? I don't see them making any cases on DDT. If anything banning DDT killed many more.
as it turns out, much of her DDT evidence is anecdotal, and real scientific experiments disprooved her findings. Infact, some of the studies that had originally helped condemn DDT turned out to be flawed, the biggest such example is the claim that DDT softened the shells of eagles. the experimenter found that the birds had a calcium deficiency, and when the experiment was redone, the birds and eggs were fine. Testing for the "longevity" of DDT in the wild was also flawed, as the testers had unkowingly been taking samples from an airport right were airplanes tested their spraw equipment at the time (providing fresh DDT at the spot, fooling unkowing scientists).
However, the damage was done. the governmnet wanted a report on DDT and tested DDT on animals, (rats to be specific) The doses were upped to many times over the does a spraymen would recieve in a lifetime before the rat finally grew a cancer, and even though the findings of the report stated that DDT was not a carcinogen, it was banned anyway.
So whats the problem with getting rid of another chemical? Big. DDT, which had successfully eliminated Malaria from the US (Malaria is not a tropical disease by far, there were hundreds of thousands of people dieing every year in the US alone, and many as far north as canada), as well as western europe. It did an excellent job in other areas as well, until they stopped spraying it.
the DDT ban killed thousands of africans. when DDT was banned, the USA was the only major maker and distributor. with it banned, African countrys could not easily get their hands on it. additionally, Africans were reluctant to use a chemical that the americans did not want to use on themselves (thats not as much as an arrogant statement as it sounds). as a result, they stopped using DDT despite its effectiveness and safety for human beings (one of the inventors of DDT swallows a spoonful of it at the beginning of the college classes he teached. he lived to be in his 80s in top shape), and soon the tse tse flies and mosquitoes came back in full force. weaker insecticides failed miserably.
to make things worse, the break in DDT death allowed some mosquitoes to grow immunity, requiring heavier doses. Had DDT spraying been continued, it could have wiped out much of the disease carrying populations of the insects.
today, many countries like China and india are now making DDT because it is so effective. Countries like South Africa are also going back to DDT, but it is to late to stop the deaths of thousands of others who fell to the insect born diseases.
Did the environmentalists go to far? Is all of this worry of chemicals greatly exagerated, as DDT was?
Nuclear Energy is another example of something that is greatly feared but little understood thanks to environmentalists. people see pictures of atomic bomb victims, and read stories about chernobyl. However, few realize that in the case of chernobyl, you had a cheaply built, already dangerous reactor that was fiddled with in dangerous ways, and that only 50 people, mostly those confined to the plant, have ever been proven to die from the effects of chernobyl. A modern US reactor is many times safer than chernobyl.
another thing few people realize is that Nuclear is more green than anything else. In order to produce as much power as your common coal fired plant, windmills would require huge amounts of land, which would devastate the area for a few hundred square miles (not to mention birds fly into them). the same goes for the even less reliable solar power. A nuclear plant however, can fit in a square mile, and produce much more power than a similarly sized coal fired plant, without producing anything but steam, and an occaisional small batch of spent fuel.
however, environmentalists jump on the nukes, claiming that there is no way to get rid of the old fuel, or that the radiation is to much. They say things like "It could take thousands of years for the raditation to die down!". However, this is actually a good thing. The amount of time it takes a radioactive material to decay is it's half life. A long half life of a thousand years (plutonium) is acutally far better than a half life of 50 (Uranium-235). a longer half life materials actually gives off less raditation at a time.
say we had 100 pieces of each element, plutonium and uranium. It would take 1000 years for plutonium to decay completely, which means that a piece would come off once every 10 years. Uranium on the other hand, would give off two pieces of radiation every year. By using nuclear fuels like Plutonium, little radiation is given off, which means when it is stored (in facilities like yucca mountain), if any radiation does escape, it would be so little that no one would be around long enough to be hurt by it. In fact, low doese of radiation are known to be very healthy (its actually healtheir to consume equal parts of plutonium then the ammount of caffiene in a cup of coffee).
yet once again, environmentalists would rather see windmills scare huge swathes of landscape then a single nuclear plant, which could produce far more power while destorying less of the environment.
So why do we listen to these people? Why do we allow good ideas to fall to silly theories produced by environmental radicals? more importantly, when will someone explain the reality of the subjects, instead of the fears?
but once you started reading it, you should have noticed something. In the case of DDT, she made alot of speculation. "thousand could die of cancer in the future". 40 years later, has anyone died from DDT? no one. what happened to all the people who used it during World War II? I don't see them making any cases on DDT. If anything banning DDT killed many more.
as it turns out, much of her DDT evidence is anecdotal, and real scientific experiments disprooved her findings. Infact, some of the studies that had originally helped condemn DDT turned out to be flawed, the biggest such example is the claim that DDT softened the shells of eagles. the experimenter found that the birds had a calcium deficiency, and when the experiment was redone, the birds and eggs were fine. Testing for the "longevity" of DDT in the wild was also flawed, as the testers had unkowingly been taking samples from an airport right were airplanes tested their spraw equipment at the time (providing fresh DDT at the spot, fooling unkowing scientists).
However, the damage was done. the governmnet wanted a report on DDT and tested DDT on animals, (rats to be specific) The doses were upped to many times over the does a spraymen would recieve in a lifetime before the rat finally grew a cancer, and even though the findings of the report stated that DDT was not a carcinogen, it was banned anyway.
So whats the problem with getting rid of another chemical? Big. DDT, which had successfully eliminated Malaria from the US (Malaria is not a tropical disease by far, there were hundreds of thousands of people dieing every year in the US alone, and many as far north as canada), as well as western europe. It did an excellent job in other areas as well, until they stopped spraying it.
the DDT ban killed thousands of africans. when DDT was banned, the USA was the only major maker and distributor. with it banned, African countrys could not easily get their hands on it. additionally, Africans were reluctant to use a chemical that the americans did not want to use on themselves (thats not as much as an arrogant statement as it sounds). as a result, they stopped using DDT despite its effectiveness and safety for human beings (one of the inventors of DDT swallows a spoonful of it at the beginning of the college classes he teached. he lived to be in his 80s in top shape), and soon the tse tse flies and mosquitoes came back in full force. weaker insecticides failed miserably.
to make things worse, the break in DDT death allowed some mosquitoes to grow immunity, requiring heavier doses. Had DDT spraying been continued, it could have wiped out much of the disease carrying populations of the insects.
today, many countries like China and india are now making DDT because it is so effective. Countries like South Africa are also going back to DDT, but it is to late to stop the deaths of thousands of others who fell to the insect born diseases.
Did the environmentalists go to far? Is all of this worry of chemicals greatly exagerated, as DDT was?
Nuclear Energy is another example of something that is greatly feared but little understood thanks to environmentalists. people see pictures of atomic bomb victims, and read stories about chernobyl. However, few realize that in the case of chernobyl, you had a cheaply built, already dangerous reactor that was fiddled with in dangerous ways, and that only 50 people, mostly those confined to the plant, have ever been proven to die from the effects of chernobyl. A modern US reactor is many times safer than chernobyl.
another thing few people realize is that Nuclear is more green than anything else. In order to produce as much power as your common coal fired plant, windmills would require huge amounts of land, which would devastate the area for a few hundred square miles (not to mention birds fly into them). the same goes for the even less reliable solar power. A nuclear plant however, can fit in a square mile, and produce much more power than a similarly sized coal fired plant, without producing anything but steam, and an occaisional small batch of spent fuel.
however, environmentalists jump on the nukes, claiming that there is no way to get rid of the old fuel, or that the radiation is to much. They say things like "It could take thousands of years for the raditation to die down!". However, this is actually a good thing. The amount of time it takes a radioactive material to decay is it's half life. A long half life of a thousand years (plutonium) is acutally far better than a half life of 50 (Uranium-235). a longer half life materials actually gives off less raditation at a time.
say we had 100 pieces of each element, plutonium and uranium. It would take 1000 years for plutonium to decay completely, which means that a piece would come off once every 10 years. Uranium on the other hand, would give off two pieces of radiation every year. By using nuclear fuels like Plutonium, little radiation is given off, which means when it is stored (in facilities like yucca mountain), if any radiation does escape, it would be so little that no one would be around long enough to be hurt by it. In fact, low doese of radiation are known to be very healthy (its actually healtheir to consume equal parts of plutonium then the ammount of caffiene in a cup of coffee).
yet once again, environmentalists would rather see windmills scare huge swathes of landscape then a single nuclear plant, which could produce far more power while destorying less of the environment.
So why do we listen to these people? Why do we allow good ideas to fall to silly theories produced by environmental radicals? more importantly, when will someone explain the reality of the subjects, instead of the fears?