Spraying chemicals began in earnest less than 60 years ago.....

While many of us experience the results of chemical sensitivities, it is quite helpful to recognise how the use of chemicals became part of ‘daily use’ before the negative results became sufficiently evident that specific substances were banned.

DDT recommended in 1950s...

For example, sales of DDT increased substantially as advice and experience of the ‘positive’ results.

When the side-effects began to become public, developers [and their shareholders] first staved off calls for it to be removed from the market for as long as possible through denial. Chasing continuation of the substantial profits, alternative chemical formulae were sought to replace the original chemical when eventually the previous product was banned. And so it goes on.

The writer has DDT poisoning from the 1950s when DDT was used in prolific quantities, in growing food and such activities as powdering it along windowsills to kill flies -- which it certainly did.

The most popular gardeners guide in the 50s was “Yates garden guide”, a book then in nearly every home and as popular as “Edmonds Cook Book”.

The current website for Yates still advises chemical sprays for control of pests but has a “new at Yates” section on Organic gardening with a variety of organic sprays by

See: http://www.yates.co.nz/products/organic-gardening/

First DDT Ban In United states Takes Effect In 1972

See http://organic.com.au/news/1972.12.31/

Other sites: http://organic.com.au/

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0611/S00286.htm

In a Yates Garden Guide not dated but produced in the 1950s [going by photos in it] the gardener receives copious advice on the use of DDT .

Pp 400 SEPTEMBER

“Apply liquid manure….spraying also with Arsenate of Lead, DDT, Lindane or Malathion should catterpillars be noticed.”

Pp 367 PESTS AND DISEASES

“DDT 50 per cent Dispersible powder is a poisonous spray for the control of chewing insects and used in the proportion of one ounce to six gallons of water.

DDT 20 per cent Emulsion… easier mixing.

DDT 2 per cent is used as a powder for dusting cabbages and similar crops to protect against the ravages of white butterfly caterpillars….”

“As an early teen I used this powder on my garden and ate radishes and fresh greens as I did it. I still suffering diarrhoea and depression should I have any form of contact with toxic chemicals.” PER

ALTERNATIVES NOW include..

Nature’s Way, in business since 1969 is an original health food industry pioneers. A family’s desperate need crisis. FounderTom Murdock, sought a solution to help his gravely ill wife. Fresh out of conventional options, he turned to the Native American knowledge of the plants in the Arizona desert. She recovered and lived another 25 years.

Tom formed Nature’s Way and his team found eight simple herbal products initially and expande beyond herbal and nutritional science. They were the first nutritional products manufacturer with a state-of-the-art, pharmaceutically licensed facility and the first major certified organic producer .

See: http://www.naturesway.com/NaturesWay/aboutus.aspx

Dr Ninja Reineke, of the World Wide Fund for Nature’s (WWF) toxics programme, says that training in environmental properties “… is still quite a new science”. The beginning was, she suggested, Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962, which brought to light the effects that the pesticide DDT had in the environment, and on birds in particular.
See Listener http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3495/features/8766/toxic_inheritance,1.html;jsessionid=F72103DD81BC8CECC4566F1AFEFABF6A

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