9 ms·

My mom tells stories about pesticide trucks driving down the street, spraying entire neighborhoods, when she was a kid. Says it happened pretty often. Kids woul

My mom tells stories about pesticide trucks driving down the street, spraying entire neighborhoods, when she was a kid. Says it happened pretty often. Kids would chase them, playing in the "clouds". Talk about yikes. I do wonder what we interact with regularly that future people would have to be paid very well to even be in the same room with, and will think we were nuts for ever thinking was OK. I'm guessing "basically anything plastic, especially if contact with food" is a likely candidate. Fire retardant chemicals in construction materials and furniture, probably.

sandworm101 6y ago
>>pesticide trucks driving down the street That was DDT. Occassional exposures like that aren't linked to anything horrible in humans. It was banned for its impacts on birds, specifically their eggs. (Google "silent Spring".)
- spanhandler 6y ago
  Yeah, I don't know of any particular harm linked to it, it just seems like something we'd never let kids do these days just in case, since "apply magical chemical, it fixes everything and is entirely safe!" has a history of being wrong about the "entirely safe" part. These days I'd expect any plan that includes "we'll spray clouds of this in neighborhoods" to get shut down before it can even start, for that reason.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    Except cholrine in pools. And soap. Soap has all sorts of chemicals in it. And perfume. The reality is that we soak ourselves in various chemicals every day. What if that truck was spaying hand sanitizer? It is the chemical that matters, not the method of distribution.
    - spanhandler 6y ago
      I think you're thinking I'm in the "ZOMG ban dihydrogen monoxide, it's a chemical!" crowd, and I'm not sure why you think that. Also, yes, I'm pretty sure you'd have a hard time convincing people to let you spray hand sanitizer all over their neighborhood, these days, even if they're OK with rubbing it on their hands.
    - tomjakubowski 6y ago
      > It is the chemical that matters, not the method of distribution. Would you apply hand sanitizer to your hands? Would you drink a bottle of it?
    - smileysteve 6y ago
      > It is the chemical that matters, not the method of distribution Found the person that didn't see Batman Begins; If you think dancing around in aerosol'ed hand sanitizer would be okay, you've clearly never gotten alcohol in your eye, nose, or dare I say throat. Perfume is also a really interesting one, because some of us do sneeze every time we smell Abercrombie or do start anaphylaxis around flowers or other certain plants. Which comes right around to soap, which, yes, people are allergic to dyes and fragrances in, so we make pure and hypoallergenic. Chlorine, in pools; We've made drastic progress on that one in society in the last 30 years; from barrels of chlorine when we didn't understand it, to carefully measuring it, to now we have salt reactors that continuously meter it.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      Soap does not enter your body. There is something called skin barrier.
      - ithkuil 6y ago
        I think the point was that we know it's safe (e.g. due to the skin barrier as you mentioned) and we're not likely to change our opinion about soap safety in a decade. In other words, despite there being many cases of egregious mistakes in safety assumptions due to our bad understanding of science (and/or malice) in the past, we're tempted nowadays to err on the side of caution and probably overestimate the ratio of chemicals we use in our daily life that turned out to be bad, to the ones that we got right. Sizeable parts of the populace nowadays associates the word chemical with unhealthy. Yet, they buy products that have the word "natural" on it, crafted by mixing and processing products of natural origin. But nature is full of chemicals. Mixing them and processing them, grinding them, heating them up, etc, is what chemical processing is about.
      - sandworm101 6y ago
        Does it have a sent? Then it is entering your lungs. This was a big deal a few years ago as sandlewood sents in many soaps were linked to hormonal changes in young males.
        ekianjo 6y ago
        Scent can be created with as little a few ppm to ppb levels of substances in the air. Most of the typical substances that smell are in too low in concentration to do any harm.
    - Larrikin 6y ago
      Perfume/colognes popularity seems to wane around the same age group of people who grew up being ok being doused in pesticide. That age group is of course country dependent, but seems to track together
- limomium 6y ago
  Sounds pretty horrible to me...: > DDT is classified as "moderately toxic" by the US National Toxicology Program (NTP) and "moderately hazardous" by WHO > studies document decreases in semen quality among men with high exposures (generally from indoor residual spraying) > Indirect exposure of mothers through workers directly in contact with DDT is associated with an increase in spontaneous abortions > studies found that DDT or DDE interfere with proper thyroid function in pregnancy and childhood > Mothers with high levels of DDT circulating in their blood during pregnancy were found to be more likely to give birth to children who would go on to develop autism
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    Malaria used to be a serious problem in the US.
- pvaldes 6y ago
  Is classified as moderate toxic but in high acute doses can still kill a children. Is bioaccumulative, in fatty tissues, and a probable human carcinogen. Acute exposures in girls are said to increase x5 the probability of developing breast cancer as adult.
- jkinudsjknds 6y ago
  Modeling for long term effects of bioaccumulants is very difficult. The lack of evidence for harm is hardly evidence for long term safety.
mrtksn 6y ago
>I do wonder what we interact with regularly that future people would have to be paid very well to even be in the same room with, and will think we were nuts for ever thinking was OK. I am betting on combustion engines. It is ridiculous that we have hundreds of millions of those on our streets, releasing the fumes straight into the air where we live our whole lives.
- grey-area 6y ago
  Yes. Oil-based cars and trucks kill people in cities and exacerbate many illnesses like asthma. When they are gone people will wonder why they were ever allowed.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    >> When they are gone people will wonder why they were ever allowed. The engine tech may go away. The vehicles wont. CO2 doesn't cause asthma. Most particulates, at least from non-diesel vehicles, comes from things other than the enigne. Brake pads, tires, even the road surface itself. They all wear down, turning into dust, and get inhaled into our lungs. Electrification won't change that. One interesting line of research is carbon fiber fires, and increasing problem as many high-end EVs are using CF to reduce weight. One CF vehicle, on fire after an accident, will release a massive amount of very fine particulates that could drift on the wind for many miles.
    - spanhandler 6y ago
      I'm increasingly convinced that allowing widespread use of automobiles on public roads will be regarded as one of the biggest societal-engineering blunders of all time. Between the health effects (of the cars and roads themselves, plus the secondary effects on physical activity) and the adjustments to city layouts plus extra costs eating most or all of the time-savings anyway, it's hard to see a clear upside. Granted much of that would have been difficult to discern when early decisions on the topic were being made, but that doesn't make it any less an error in its effects.
jchrisa 6y ago
Indoor hydrocarbon fires for cooking.
lostapathy 6y ago
The town my parents lived in until very recently still fogs the whole town regularly for mosquito reduction. It's obviously not DDT now, as asserted down thread, but it definitely still goes on.
davchana 6y ago
We still have mosquito killer smoke sprayed in India in rainy season. I found the similar smell & smoke if I dip a sufficiently heated metal piece in Kerosene.
chapium 6y ago
This is still done in Missouri.
wahern 6y ago
It's still done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka6DZ34MAf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka6DZ34MAf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBIuuDPn7QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBIuuDPn7QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBho7jDKx2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBho7jDKx2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt_uffWKjS0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt_uffWKjS0 I don't know if it's less frequent today or if cities are more discrete about it considering modern paranoia. Growing up in the 90s in Florida I remember the trucks driving by on occasion, usually around dusk. If they did it late at night I'd be asleep and would be less likely to notice, so I couldn't say with any certainty how frequently they sprayed. Also, looking at those videos, the method seems to be different and less noticeable. I remember huge, dense fogs that would envelope the whole neighborhood. In the above videos the spray disappears almost instantly.

sandworm101 6y ago

>>pesticide trucks driving down the street That was DDT. Occassional exposures like that aren't linked to anything horrible in humans. It was banned for its impacts on birds, specifically their eggs. (Google "silent Spring".)

spanhandler 6y ago
Yeah, I don't know of any particular harm linked to it, it just seems like something we'd never let kids do these days just in case, since "apply magical chemical, it fixes everything and is entirely safe!" has a history of being wrong about the "entirely safe" part. These days I'd expect any plan that includes "we'll spray clouds of this in neighborhoods" to get shut down before it can even start, for that reason.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  Except cholrine in pools. And soap. Soap has all sorts of chemicals in it. And perfume. The reality is that we soak ourselves in various chemicals every day. What if that truck was spaying hand sanitizer? It is the chemical that matters, not the method of distribution.
  - spanhandler 6y ago
    I think you're thinking I'm in the "ZOMG ban dihydrogen monoxide, it's a chemical!" crowd, and I'm not sure why you think that. Also, yes, I'm pretty sure you'd have a hard time convincing people to let you spray hand sanitizer all over their neighborhood, these days, even if they're OK with rubbing it on their hands.
  - tomjakubowski 6y ago
    > It is the chemical that matters, not the method of distribution. Would you apply hand sanitizer to your hands? Would you drink a bottle of it?
  - smileysteve 6y ago
    > It is the chemical that matters, not the method of distribution Found the person that didn't see Batman Begins; If you think dancing around in aerosol'ed hand sanitizer would be okay, you've clearly never gotten alcohol in your eye, nose, or dare I say throat. Perfume is also a really interesting one, because some of us do sneeze every time we smell Abercrombie or do start anaphylaxis around flowers or other certain plants. Which comes right around to soap, which, yes, people are allergic to dyes and fragrances in, so we make pure and hypoallergenic. Chlorine, in pools; We've made drastic progress on that one in society in the last 30 years; from barrels of chlorine when we didn't understand it, to carefully measuring it, to now we have salt reactors that continuously meter it.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    Soap does not enter your body. There is something called skin barrier.
    - ithkuil 6y ago
      I think the point was that we know it's safe (e.g. due to the skin barrier as you mentioned) and we're not likely to change our opinion about soap safety in a decade. In other words, despite there being many cases of egregious mistakes in safety assumptions due to our bad understanding of science (and/or malice) in the past, we're tempted nowadays to err on the side of caution and probably overestimate the ratio of chemicals we use in our daily life that turned out to be bad, to the ones that we got right. Sizeable parts of the populace nowadays associates the word chemical with unhealthy. Yet, they buy products that have the word "natural" on it, crafted by mixing and processing products of natural origin. But nature is full of chemicals. Mixing them and processing them, grinding them, heating them up, etc, is what chemical processing is about.
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      Does it have a sent? Then it is entering your lungs. This was a big deal a few years ago as sandlewood sents in many soaps were linked to hormonal changes in young males.
      - ekianjo 6y ago
        Scent can be created with as little a few ppm to ppb levels of substances in the air. Most of the typical substances that smell are in too low in concentration to do any harm.
  - Larrikin 6y ago
    Perfume/colognes popularity seems to wane around the same age group of people who grew up being ok being doused in pesticide. That age group is of course country dependent, but seems to track together
limomium 6y ago
Sounds pretty horrible to me...: > DDT is classified as "moderately toxic" by the US National Toxicology Program (NTP) and "moderately hazardous" by WHO > studies document decreases in semen quality among men with high exposures (generally from indoor residual spraying) > Indirect exposure of mothers through workers directly in contact with DDT is associated with an increase in spontaneous abortions > studies found that DDT or DDE interfere with proper thyroid function in pregnancy and childhood > Mothers with high levels of DDT circulating in their blood during pregnancy were found to be more likely to give birth to children who would go on to develop autism
- perl4ever 6y ago
  Malaria used to be a serious problem in the US.
pvaldes 6y ago
Is classified as moderate toxic but in high acute doses can still kill a children. Is bioaccumulative, in fatty tissues, and a probable human carcinogen. Acute exposures in girls are said to increase x5 the probability of developing breast cancer as adult.
jkinudsjknds 6y ago
Modeling for long term effects of bioaccumulants is very difficult. The lack of evidence for harm is hardly evidence for long term safety.

mrtksn 6y ago

>I do wonder what we interact with regularly that future people would have to be paid very well to even be in the same room with, and will think we were nuts for ever thinking was OK. I am betting on combustion engines. It is ridiculous that we have hundreds of millions of those on our streets, releasing the fumes straight into the air where we live our whole lives.

grey-area 6y ago
Yes. Oil-based cars and trucks kill people in cities and exacerbate many illnesses like asthma. When they are gone people will wonder why they were ever allowed.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  >> When they are gone people will wonder why they were ever allowed. The engine tech may go away. The vehicles wont. CO2 doesn't cause asthma. Most particulates, at least from non-diesel vehicles, comes from things other than the enigne. Brake pads, tires, even the road surface itself. They all wear down, turning into dust, and get inhaled into our lungs. Electrification won't change that. One interesting line of research is carbon fiber fires, and increasing problem as many high-end EVs are using CF to reduce weight. One CF vehicle, on fire after an accident, will release a massive amount of very fine particulates that could drift on the wind for many miles.
  - spanhandler 6y ago
    I'm increasingly convinced that allowing widespread use of automobiles on public roads will be regarded as one of the biggest societal-engineering blunders of all time. Between the health effects (of the cars and roads themselves, plus the secondary effects on physical activity) and the adjustments to city layouts plus extra costs eating most or all of the time-savings anyway, it's hard to see a clear upside. Granted much of that would have been difficult to discern when early decisions on the topic were being made, but that doesn't make it any less an error in its effects.

jchrisa 6y ago

Indoor hydrocarbon fires for cooking.

lostapathy 6y ago

The town my parents lived in until very recently still fogs the whole town regularly for mosquito reduction. It's obviously not DDT now, as asserted down thread, but it definitely still goes on.

davchana 6y ago

We still have mosquito killer smoke sprayed in India in rainy season. I found the similar smell & smoke if I dip a sufficiently heated metal piece in Kerosene.

chapium 6y ago

This is still done in Missouri.

wahern 6y ago

It's still done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka6DZ34MAf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka6DZ34MAf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBIuuDPn7QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBIuuDPn7QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBho7jDKx2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBho7jDKx2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt_uffWKjS0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt_uffWKjS0 I don't know if it's less frequent today or if cities are more discrete about it considering modern paranoia. Growing up in the 90s in Florida I remember the trucks driving by on occasion, usually around dusk. If they did it late at night I'd be asleep and would be less likely to notice, so I couldn't say with any certainty how frequently they sprayed. Also, looking at those videos, the method seems to be different and less noticeable. I remember huge, dense fogs that would envelope the whole neighborhood. In the above videos the spray disappears almost instantly.