DoomsdaysCW
Duckbilled Plattypus.My quiet mother read the Silent Spring the year it was published. DDT fog trucks were a regular dusk thing in Hawai'i. Unlike all the other kids, we were forbidden from running behind it and playing in the poison. We watched the other teens and kids laughing and cavorting while we stood behind closed windows inside peering out at the fun. Mom was po'e akamai. The land is a living being.
@pattykimura Wow. That's terrible. I mean, especially given the unique and beautiful diversity in Hawai'i.
@DoomsdaysCW DDT was considered safe, and fear of mosquito borne illness was high. I grew up in a plantation town with lots of irrigation channels for sugar cane. It's why Carson's book was so earth-shattering.
@pattykimura Ugh. Yeah. That's what the chemical companies wanted folks to believe.
What the Story of #DDT, America’s Most Notorious Chemical, Can Teach Us Today
By Gosia Wozniacka
July 6, 2022
"In How to Sell a Poison, historian of medicine Elena Conis traces the history of DDT, its impacts, and the implications of the shifting science. In a masterful narrative style that reads like a novel, Conis tells the stories of ordinary people and the nascent #EnvironmentalMovement that sought to expose the chemical’s harms. Her book offers insights about the mechanisms of #ScienceDenial, #DisinformationCampaigns, and the role of politics and other social forces in shaping a nation’s approach to regulating a toxic substance."
@pattykimura And irrigation channel for sugar cane. Geesh. That sounds a lot like some parts of Florida I've been through. And lots of mozzies there.