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  • From: "Ernest Plutko" <ernestplutko@wiktel.com>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] OT: DDT (was glyphosate 41)
  • Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2010 19:05:34 -0500

All of the many many mosquito eggs I have seen were floating rafts
not jelly blobs. I used to raise many mosquito larva to feed
tropical fish.

---- Original Message ----
From: holycow@frontiernet.net
To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: RE: [NAFEX] OT: DDT (was glyphosate 41)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2010 16:50:04 -0500

>Ya'll who aren't all that interested can skip the DDT comments and go
>down
>to some herbicide stories that might interest you.
>
>DDT is interesting in how it transformed the world. It was very
>effective
>in killing lice when dusted on people and their clothes, and so was
>used to
>stop typhus. Do you remember in school they had diagrams of
>mosquitoes
>laying their eggs on water where they floated like little rafts? I
>was
>puzzled by this for many years as all the mosquito eggs I have ever
>seen
>were in little jellylike blobs that stuck to the sides of containers
>till
>they hatched. Finally I figured out that the rafts of eggs were
>specifically a malaria carrying species and that's why those
>mosquitoes were
>more susceptible to DDT than other species. There was malaria in the
>USA,
>brought in with slaves, and there were the right kind of mosquitoes
>to carry
>it, I guess brought along in water in the same ships. From what I
>read
>these days, DDT is still the best thing for dusting around houses to
>control
>malaria. But there is another factor that is not being mentioned,
>and that
>is that corn in Africa really helps the malaria mosquitoes. Corn
>pollen is
>high in protein and has been shown to produce extra large strong
>mosquito
>specimans that can fly further than the average. Someone just
>happened to
>note that farmers had a lot more malaria in areas that grew a lot of
>maize.
>So a return to more traditional crops or keeping corn away from ponds
>could
>also help.
> There are some other oddities out there. Someone was selling an
>interesting product that is not too different from household bleach,
>they
>called it MMS. My husband ordered some a year or so back, and found
>he can
>get rid of sinus infections in short order with it. The company he
>ordered
>it from recently sent him a note saying the FDA was making them stop
>sales
>of the product and that he could return the unused portion for a
>refund. No
>way are they getting their hands on his remaining supply! The guy
>who
>originally came up with it said you could cure malaria in 3 days with
>it.
>He had gone to Africa and the people were pestering him for medical
>supplies, he had nothing except his water purification drops, so he
>gave
>them to people, and they got better. He did a good bit of testing
>and
>apparently it really does work on malaria. Certainly there is no
>evidence
>that the guy was into any get rich quick scheme.
> I'm not necessarily a paranoid person, but I do notice things,
>like that
>the guy who just showed that CCD has nothing to do with Bayer's
>neo-nicotinoids had taken money from Bayer. And that the FDA always
>seems
>to be on the side of the big companies and against the little people.
> There
>is money being made in treating malaria. It would hurt someone's
>income
>flow to stop malaria through cheap means, whether it be DDT or MMS.
>
> But back to our notions of producing food. There are some nasty
>herbicides out there that you or your neighbors might be using or
>thinking
>of using. When I visited where my middle son is staying, he said
>that the
>guy who owns the field across the road sprayed his pasture with
>something,
>and immediately all their free ranging hens began laying shell-less
>eggs.
>They got rid of the hens and waited months to get more, at which time
>
>everything seemed to be back to normal, which it probably isn't
>really. I
>couldn't tell that the field is used for hay, there were no cattle on
>it.
>My son was baffled as to why the guy sprayed it at all, he thought it
>was
>for looks.
> Any of you who use hay, straw, or manure on your gardens or use
>compost
>made from any of these 3 need to know about persistent herbicides.
>See
>various websites to learn more, this is probably the most useful:
>http://www.natureswayresources.com/resource/infosheets/killercompost.
>html.
>Four years ago we got some manure from a local stable and it seemed
>that the
>more we used the less well our plants did. Weeds refused to grow on
>the
>leftover manure pile, even the following year. I was told that there
>was an
>herbicide that you couldn't buy in our county but which was sold in
>nearby
>counties, and that it could persist in the soil. So we avoided that
>stable
>but 2 years later we got horse manure from a different stable and had
>
>abnormal twisted growth in our pepper plants, which were the plants
>I'd been
>most generous to. Still don't know if it might have been a pH thing
>and the
>old boron deficiency bugaboo again, but we decided to get some little
>
>fainting goats to serve as brush control and compost producers. So
>the
>very first thing I had to do is buy a couple bales of hay. Oops.
>All 3
>feed stores in town carry only nice clean, weed free grass hay. I
>couldn't
>find weedy hay, or hay with clover or red clover or lespedeza or
>alfalfa,
>just grass. I poked at the bales and could not find one broadleaved
>plant
>in them. Now I am careful to keep stocked up from farmers that I
>know who
>either have weeds in their hay or use only 2,4-D to control weeds.
>(Yeah,
>who would have thought I'd prefer 2,4-D to anything?!) I figure that
>the
>manure we are getting from our own goats is safer to use on the
>garden than
>anything else. Donna
>
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