Old Plantation Brass Plant Duster Green Patina

Bear, we love our eagles here in TN. We have them at Reelfoot lake and Hatchie NWA. From what I've read DDT got a bad rap, especially when used responsibly. Banning it, was the first political victory for environmental groups is the US. DDT's impact on the US wildlife in the final analyst was very minimal. http://dwb.unl.edu/Teacher/NSF/C06/C06Links/www.altgreen.com.au/Chemicals/ddt.html

The impact was severe. I'm heading into Environmental Sciences-- specially targeting Lake Conservation and Restoration. DDT had many impacts just like most pesticides-- I don't know of many that don't kill or cause defect to wildlife (after all, they were meant to kill.) It can have its major affects on people too, especially in that it's a massive endocrine disruptor. Thousands of scientists and global studies will agree with me.

Not to mention colony disruption disorder, that is doing under our bees, which I also think is due to poisons used in farming, along with the millions of butterflies we had here in central Californis back in the fifties, all killed off by poisons........Andy

I've read that a fungus is the main cause of our bees vanishing. Same with our bats.

Bee kill off is a major concern here in the south. Many perished during the "great boll weevil" eradication, a decade ago. Aerial spraying was absolutely overkill during that time. We did in the cotton weevil, but along the way, rabbit , grail, turkeys bee, and song bird populations dropped dramatically. Modern farmers here, use the latest GPS guided , computer metered, sprayers, either owned, mostly third party contractors, but the most beneficial thing is long range weather forecasting. Now spraying is done, at the correct time , to prevent overspray and storm water run off, the main cause of death to vulnerable animals and aquatic animals. Buffer zones near creeks and wet lands have been extended to prevent damage to these sensitive areas. I am state certified in both storm water prevention and wet land mitigation since the 1990's, and can tell you our creeks are clean of mud, silt and sediment, hard bottomed, and only run polluted byproducts in the Wolf River near Memphis area!

Our creeks up here usually end up getting dredged because, after logging and tourism failed, my town went to industry and dumped in the creeks and lakes up into the 1980s-- lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, etc. Our rivers and lakes also have much paper- and logging-wastes from the past. Last year, we blew up one of our worst offenders: The former Paper Mill. The creek behind my house is gravel at the bottom, but little lives in it-- a few fish and microorganisms, once in awhile aquatic insects are seen. Its shallowness also leads to that. My creek leads into a severely eutrophic lake. Good shade over my creek, clear waters, cool temps but rarely freezes over. Slow-moving due to heavy log-fall. The bees on my property do quite well. My city is full of forests and mudbanks-- some forests planted to intake pollutants. Our front, back, and side yards are full of flowers, and some just attract dozens of bees-- multiple species all buzzing around the same plant. Our neighbourhood has many species of birds and also is home to deer and turkey, albeit someone recently gut-shot about 18 deer, I'm afraid. We also have fox and raccoon running around, and recently I had to slam on the brakes when a possum ran in front of my vehicle-- last night, to be exact. Eagles, what look like vultures but are usually too high up to be for sure, hawks, bats, etc. My dogs took care of the rabbits in our yard... Moles are still an issue. Cat fetches us the mice and shrews, too... LOL. As for farms, I'm not usually around when they're doing something other than harvest and the massive irrigation efforts. The farms near my house are small enough to do by hand for pesticides. We had been one of the first cities to ban phosphorus in fertilizers sold in-county, but you can bet correctly that big business took care of that. Now, as the lake fills in and turns green, property value decreases alongside of tourism and biodiversity. We also have issues with toxic algal blooms. Big business is something I usually hate-- from Oil to Genetic Engineering, it's all as evil to me for they get around Environmental Laws and hurt small-businesses like small farms. Not to mention environmental destruction. Worst of all, they have the legal right to claim that they're helping us and the environment. And when the truth is discovered, it's silenced with lawsuits of "slander" and breaches of contract. It makes me hate politics, too, for government officials are usually "owned" by some sort of big business. Al Gore does a great job with his movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

Great post, spirit bear!

Thanks, but I could go into detail about presidents owned by oil and gas companies, how they worked to let oil and gas not have to follow any EPA laws for protecting our environments, how oil and gas companies are allowed to destroy National Parks and basically kill people because they are allowed to pollute groundwater and air with toxins that cause birth-defects, cancer, respiratory problems, etc. They leave in the ground most of the toxins used in fracking. The rest is left to "off-gas" into the air. One retaining pond for off-gassing is located next to a school full of children. They can drill wherever they want-- on your property too if you don't own the mineral-rights. And you cannot do anything about it. Trying to sue them will have you ended up being sued. And you'll lose. And you cannot stay if you don't want to lose your life to toxins. It was found that many of the workers for frack-pads don't even know the chemicals are hazardous. I was too shocked to believe it until I talked to one myself. They have them believing so strongly that it's all safe, and it's sickening. Then men and their future kids will suffer so many health-issues because of their line of work, and they cannot do anything either. As for genetic engineering, it's nearly impossible to not find modified corn now days. And if modified corn is found in a farmer's field-- mind you, pollen from modified plants can travel for miles, and birds scatter seeds-- from legal testing under 'warranted concerns of theft,' the farmer must either pay for the over-priced right to use the corn and always use it, or he must destroy everything. He can not do much except cave and, usually, crash as he cannot afford the issues.Companies like Monsanto drive small business down and create monopolies for money. They also destroy biodiversity by making it all one type of corn, and they contaminate every corn that comes in contact with the pollen.It's not just corn, either.

It looks like an old fire extinguisher to me, the kind that used Carbon Tet which actually is some nasty stuff.

Spirit Bear said:

Thousands of scientists and global studies will agree with me.

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Consensus has nothing to do with the scientific method. Careful application of DDT causes minimal harm, and to humans it was practically nontoxic. I keep a bottle of it around and have no problem using it, and if brainwashed commies have a problem with it then Molon Labe. It was the finest known controller of Mosquito populations and caused the effective disappearance of Malaria in poor 2nd and 3rd world regions where the disease is endemic. Environmentalists (who hate humanity) scored a huge win when they banned the use of DDT in many countries and the death rate from Malaria skyrocketed again. Contrary to popular mainstream liberal belief, human beings are actually more important than other organisms.

Spirit Bear said:

Al Gore does a great job with his movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

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Think about what a pesticide does: It kills. Contrary to what big business tells people (mind you, I used to think that everything on the news and in ads was the truth,) DDT is an endocrine disruptor. It screws with hormones quite badly. That's my only main concern on it. Also, people are not more important than other organisms. We need them to survive. Without Environmentalists, millions more people would already be dead. We're all interconnected by the food-web and the functions each of us play in the environment. And if we would work harder toward saving species and stop messing with nature, perhaps Malaria would be less of an issue.A single bat will eat 1,000 mosquitoes in an hour (mosquitoes often carry Malaria, for those who don't know,) so why do we not work harder toward saving them as they die off? And here we sit complaining about malaria. Do something other than talk about it. Perhaps, if we must continue screwing with nature, we should genetically engineer mosquitoes to have non-fertile offspring. Release the males with the gene into the population. Likely won't work, but hey! Let's further waste money on things like that. Maybe engineer some gene to kill off all female mosquitoes after X amount of days of life as an adult.Or maybe stop killing good "pests" like spiders, and increase the number of predatory insects like some wasps and ladybugs, and you'll have much less need for pesticides which do cause health-damage. No matter how you try and spin it, humans cannot play God and try to alter ecosystems without severe repercussions. As for your unwarranted comment on how we environmentalists hate humanity, pray tell why as a writer I try to provide healing and understanding to those in emotional need? I know no one here could possibly know that, but it's what I do. I write to impact, and I write quite well.