DDT still haunts us today
By Rosanna Xia - Los Angeles Times
October 1945: A child crying as she is sprayed with DDT delousing powder at Nikolsburger Platz School in Wilmsdorf, Germany.
circa 1955: A woman sprays a DDT aerosol on a domestic window frame to keep insects at bay.
About 60 barrels of DDT were visually identified by Jason, a remotely operated robot that also collected samples of nearby sediment with large tubes.
When Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” first sounded the alarm on DDT and its devastating effects on birds and fish, our understanding of how this pesticide affected humans was just beginning. Chemicals can take years to reveal their insidious power, and so for decades, scientists have been piecing together — study by study — the reasons why DDT still haunts us today.