DDT & Lyme disease

[fishheadbob]

Nothing is all good or all bad. DDT was the best answer at the time for controlling various nasty bugs, it probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives in malarial areas. Then we found out that it carries a heavy environmental price so its' use was banned most places although not everywhere. New and undoubtedly more expensive poisons were developed to replace DDT, no doubt in a few years laboratory rats (and humans) will start croaking left and right from heavy doses of whatever is then in vogue so something else will be cooked up.
Atrazine was very popular for a long time and while still legal it's been turning up in human breast milk so Roundup ready plants were schemed up; less atrazine = more glyphosate which is quickly developing a suspicious following among many. And on and on. We aren't as smart as we like to think. Remember when 4 out of 5 doctors recommended Chesterfield Kings, or Camel cigarettes, "Not a cough in a carton."

 

[FarmWrench]

Lets get off DDT and talk Lyme disease.

Lyme needs,
1. infected host to live in. It can't live out in the environment without a host. Sorry but you can't get it from a toilet seat.

Known hosts are white footed mice that only live in oak based environments, deer tick and people. Deer themselves are not a host.

2. Wake up and look at other changes in the environment. Go watch "Caddy shack". The trees are all small and have 16' of clear wood (no branches). There is very little shrub like plants. The golf course was built recently. Probably 10 years before people weren't walking around that area. Ten years later there was probably plenty of shrubs and the trees would have bushy young trees nearby.

Ticks, and deer wouldn't do well at the Caddy shack short grass and telephone pole trees.

Today there are so many deer living everywhere. Grandfather would have shot ever one first chance he had for the meat and to be free of the pest. Now they graze the yard and look in the house windows.

There are a lot more oak trees. (Remember that the dominant species was chestnut in many areas now covered with oak. Cities had Elm and when they died they were replaced with oak.)

The ticks are probably the hardest part of the people, deer, mouse, oak, Lyme bacteria, tick vector cycle to kill.

 

[Steppenwolfe]

Thinking about Lyme disease. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, as I read, was written on junk science. Have a good friend who was infected with Lyme 10 yrs ago. Hurt him bad. So DDT came up lately and I concluded back in the 60s or even 70s I don't remember Lyme? Among other things DDT killed, I'm thinking, if we still used DDT on regular basis Lyme disease
wouldn't be a big worry today. The ticks would be mostly dead. Of course, one always has to be vigilant.

Checking with the "GROUP". Just wonder how on track I am???

Cheers...........Coffeeman

Jeez, dude... you are way off course. What agenda are you trying to peddle???

 

[Steppenwolfe]

I don't know your age, but the spraying may have been for the Mediterranean fruit fly. I recall a major outbreak some years ago. An image that sticks in my mind is news coverage of the Florida Ag. Commissioner drinking a glass of malathion to prove its safety in the campaign against the fruit fly.

Steve

Malathion was a cure all back in the 70's. My mentor, a soils extension agent for Rutgers University was a huge fan of it. And, much to his credit, wouldn't allow spraying of it 2 days or so before a rain, and never on plants actively flowering so as not to harm the bees. Oh... he also said it was ok to drink, but it sure smelled horrible.

 

[ruffdog]

Malathion was used in x-mas tree farms to kill the saw fly worms.

If you get rid of the mice, many of the ticks disappear too. I trap them year round now and my dogs seldom get ticks.

I try to limit any spraying so my natural bug control works. With all the rain we had, it was horrible to be outside. Now I have well fed Wrens, Phoebes, toads, frogs, and spiders. If they eat mosquitos, they are my friends!

 

[ultrarunner]

The effects on humans seem to be superficial...

Unfortunately that is me and repeated exposure as kids on bikes following the truck through the neighborhood... just didn't know better.

Later got doused often with Malathion for a couple of years... the cars would be coated and anything outside.

 

[stuckmotor]

When I was a kid dad kept a bag of DDT in the converted chicken house where his dogs slept. A litter of puppys was infested with fleas so I dusted then extremely well with DDT from the bag. A short while later some of the puppys could walk just fine but two of the little guys couldn't get all the way up on their front legs. To this day I don't know whether the DDT caused their deformity. For those who wonder Dad gave the litter to someone who wanted hunting dogs. I suspect the cripple ones were killed. I hope it was quick and painless.

 

[TomSeller]

", "global warming is a hoax", "The ocean's a big place and full of unlimited fish". At some point, we need to realize that our existence is directly linked to the world around us.

There are some who think humans don't impact the earth and that we don't need to worry. I think they should colonize Mars.

 

[coffeeman]

Nothing is all good or all bad. DDT was the best answer at the time for controlling various nasty bugs, it probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives in malarial areas. Then we found out that it carries a heavy environmental price so its' use was banned most places although not everywhere. New and undoubtedly more expensive poisons were developed to replace DDT, no doubt in a few years laboratory rats (and humans) will start croaking left and right from heavy doses of whatever is then in vogue so something else will be cooked up.
Atrazine was very popular for a long time and while still legal it's been turning up in human breast milk so Roundup ready plants were schemed up; less atrazine = more glyphosate which is quickly developing a suspicious following among many. And on and on. We aren't as smart as we like to think. Remember when 4 out of 5 doctors recommended Chesterfield Kings, or Camel cigarettes, "Not a cough in a carton."

Hi fish,

U remember ciggs at 27 cents a pack in vending machines? The vend ciggs had 3 pennies slid in the pack. Remember "A penny saved is a penny earned."??
Doesn't apply today..

I remember walking thru sweetcorn field spraying corn silk with poison for ear worms. Don't know what the poison was. It killed the worms. Had the sprayer
tank on my back, spraying in front of me. Walk every row right thru the spray after spraying ears. I got very little ear worms. Every season from Jr high till
graduation I planted 10 to 12 acres of sweetcorn and sold on highway. Of course tomatoes peppers etc. too. I often wondered if that spray was DDT.

So now I'm thinking, was there Lyme back in the 50s - 60s? I don'y remember it. Many more folks were outdoors then. More rural living.
Did it show up late 60s to 70s? Search up ... The New Atlantis ... The Truth about DDT and Silent Spring. I know there are strong feelings
against these things. It's a think piece, in my opinion. I had to read Silent Spring for college, "back in the day". That sparked my interest today.
I have been seeing different stories lately on DDT suggesting it ain't so bad????

A very close friend of mine was devastated by Lyme. He got it about 20 yrs ago. Many doctors didn't know anything about Lyme then .
Friends Lyme was gone too far to cure and he lives with it. Forced to early retire. So, I wonder if it't a new disease , if yes why?

Cheers.....Coffeeman

 

[dmccarty]

So, I wonder if it't a new disease , if yes why?[/B]

Cheers.....Coffeeman

I don't think it is a new disease but I suspect we now have the science to isolate the cause and give it a name. My guess is that Lyme has expanded with the explosion of the deer population in the last 50/100 years.

Back in the 90's I read an article about land use in Wake County, NC. Wake is where the state capital, Raleigh is located. The article was talking about the percentage of land in farm use, forest, and city/town. Around 1900, the vast majority of Wake county was farm use and followed by city/town. There was very little forest and I suspect what existed was along the creeks, rivers and swamps. This would not make for a large deer population much less support many ticks. But by the 1990's the land use had gone to quite a bit of forest from unused farm fields. Town/City use had greatly increased and farm use was way down. With more suburbs and woods the deer population exploded and I think the ticks followed.

Flip side is that the deer population on our land has dropped sharply. We used to see 7-9 does during the summer, then it went to 2-3, and this summer I have only seen one. My best guess is that the coyotes are picking off the fawns and that some of the deer are moving to subdivision with 2-3 acre lots. Having said that, I see fewer deer there as well. Where we see lots of deer is in town! :shocked::shocked::shocked: There are at least two deer herds in our local town, one on the east side of town and the other on the west. You can see them crossing a major road in the middle of the day! :confused3: THAT did not happen 50 or 100 years ago.

The deer around our house are covered in ticks during the summer. It is quite horrifying to see and makes my stomach turn. Really disgusting to see the thousands of ticks on these deer. :shocked::shocked::shocked:

Later,
Dan