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L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground (2020)
- WillPostForFood 4y agofrom 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24894661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24894661
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
- thephyber 4y agoNot a conspiracy theory. DDT was disposed of by dropping 27,000 barrels of the substance in the Pacific off the coast of Catalina Islands. Is your complaint that actual harm to a human has not been proven by this incident? I’m kinda curious (not really) where you stand on mRNA based COVID-19 vaccines given your phrasing of your dismissal of harm.
- version_five 4y agoThis comment is so stupid. It starts with some facts, or corrections to a misconception in the grandparent post. That's reasonable. Then what, some weird jump to covid and the idea they the GP may also have an unorthodox view about it, presumably something that's viewed as a mortal sin? GP may have been quick to push back on the DDT thing, but suddenly it's been taken into religious inquisition territory. This is pretty fucked up.
- thephyber 4y agoI’m not sure there was a misconception in the GP. That author obviously knew what this article/title was in reference to and rejected it with high confidence. Too high confidence, in my estimation. So high as to be hubris. His description of the popular narrative and describing it as a “conspiracy theory” puts him into what I would describe as reactionary politics. Hence, my mention that I could likely predict this reactionary stance on mRNA vaccines. Not for sure, but with relatively high confidence. Unorthodox view is one thing, and is defensible. GP’s attitude was more derisive than that. You are right to the extent that my comment didn’t benefit from mention of vaccines. But yours doesn’t benefit from the hyperbole of mortal sin or religious inquisition.
- daniel-cussen 4y agoSaying it was a conspiracy theory is not in this case accusing them of lying. I agree it's true. True conspiracy theory, it was totally immoral and they did it as a team. Theorization is generally the only sure-fire way of detecting conspiracies, some conspiracy theories are true, there's conspiracies, Julius Caesar's death of course. Officially declared a conspiracy by Rome.
- thephyber 4y ago> Saying it was a conspiracy theory is not in this case accusing them of lying. The bottom of GP seemed to deny it happened or at least denied it caused harm to the nearby human population. You are defending a position opposing that of the author’s likely intent.
- daniel-cussen 4y agoYeah that is what I say when I reread it, wow. The intent of my post was did they actually dig deep into scandals and get fresh scandals? Like maybe there's plutonium mixed in with the DDT, which I agree is there. I mean did they corroborate it, see for themselves? Rake mud?
- linsomniac 4y agoIt's pretty well documented. - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/29/californias-legacy-of-ddt-waste-underwater-dump-site-uncovers-a-toxic-history - https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2021-04-26/ddt-waste-barrels-off-la-coast-shock-california-scientists - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/us/ddt-barrels-california.html
- Justin_K 4y agoRtfa
- daniel-cussen 4y agoNo because then I get a cookies consent form, obviously I will, I have the right to stay out of it. I have the right not to consent to tracking cookies, so I have the right to go off the title and the other comments rather than read the article. I wanted to read the article, that was my intent. But come on, fucking consent forms everywhere? I'm not obliged to consent!
- Rebelgecko 4y agoIf you have JS disabled, you might have missed the photos and videos in the article showing corroded punctured barrels in the ocean. However the text of the article does mention that tests show dangerously high levels of DDT near the leaking barrels (actually orders of magnitude above the "dangerous" threshold)
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
- thephyber 4y agoThat is part of one side of the ledger, yes. But DDT is also has lots of direct negative health effects on humans: likely carcinogen (multiple types of cancer), can cause damage to the nervous system, hormonal+reproductive+developmental effects. Worth pointing out that there are multiple ways to fight mosquitos and malaria. DDT was only one.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- solarengineer 4y agoSeems like Silent Spring got us moving on not being entitled to pollute indiscriminately. The US had lost a lot of insect population due to excessive insecticides and pesticides - note the recent discussions on the disappearance of fireflies, the diseases in bees, the reduction of butterflies.
- jacobolus 4y agoDDT causes significant health problems for humans, including infertility, birth defects, cancer, and brain damage to children. It also wreaks havoc on various wild animals. It should be reserved as a last resort and not used indiscriminately. While killing mosquitos has saved many lives, DDT has also ruined many lives. Pretty much everyone involved in selling the virtues of DDT has their own questionable motives, and one of the biggest funders of pro-DDT messaging has been the tobacco industry (because they thought this message could undermine public support for environmentalism and government regulation).
- Spooky23 4y agoFor some reason it has become a thing for reactionary conservatives. I was at a school board meeting and one of the parent rights robots was reading some petition to use DDT in the fields, because he was bit by a horsefly while watching a baseball game.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Sundog 4y ago.....wait, we've known this for 20 years
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y agoWait till you read about carbon dioxide!
- fulafel 4y agoIt seems to take about 50 years of headlines (2 generations) for environmental concerns to get through to the public enough to make an impact. This is actually a really underappreciated thing. What's the next environmental catastrophe in 50 years? (optimistically assuming we somehow start acting on and survive the current global warming disaster that was discovered in 70sa/80s)
- refurb 4y agoI mean the US government itself was dumping mustard gas and other toxic chemicals into this area for decades. Not sure the DDT ranks that high of concern.
- Aloha 4y agoDDT has a long persistence in the environment, longer than mustard.
- refurb 4y agoSure but mustard kills you dead real quick. And is slowly leaking even decades later. It hasn’t gone away.
- mftb 4y agoAgreed mustard is terrible. We should get that cleaned up immediately as well.
- trash_goblin 4y agoWeird that you think this is some sort of completion, weirder that you picked a side.
- refurb 4y agoIf your goal is just to cluck your tongue on the internet, then yeah, it's not a competition. If you're looking to spend limited resources addressing it, spending it on the worse situation is just smart.
- joecool1029 4y ago>Not sure the DDT ranks that high of concern. The studies linking aquatic harm are actually better than the studies linking terrestrial or avian harm. As it's poorly soluble in water it just sorta hangs around and kills fish. This was known all the way back in the 1940's https://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy-pdfs/CIRC11.pdf https://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy-pdfs/CI...
- Kina 4y agoAnother unfortunate environmental disaster in the LA area is the Stringfellow Acid Pits, one of the first EPA superfund sites.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoIs there a human-readable version of this page?
- hoppyhoppy2 4y agoYou could use your browser's Reader Mode. Firefox and Safari users already have it, and Chrome users can enable Reader Mode in chrome://flags (and then restart the browser for the new feature to be available)