What are 'persistent pesticides'?
Persistent pesticides' are things like DDT, chlordane. Things that may be, right now, aren't hot button issues, but they were 20, 30 years ago. As a matter of fact, one of the most famous books in environmental toxicology; "Silent Spring" was written exactly about DDT. Why was Rachel Carson writing about a silent spring? The birds were not living anymore because of DDT. It was getting into the earth worms, the birds were eating earth worms, and it was affecting the thickness of the eggshell, they weren't able to reproduce. We know that these kinds of persistent organochlorine pesticides, which are now largely banned, we banned almost all of them, but they're still in our environment because they are so persistent. So, for example, if you applied chlordane around the foundation of your house back in the 1970's, that chlordane is still creating a termite shield around your house, which may be a good thing in terms of keeping termites out of your house, but it's a bad thing in terms of growing any crops, or your children digging or your pets digging in the side yard because that chlordane is so persistent, and it is so toxic that it is a health risk today even though we banned it 30 years ago. These kinds of organochlorine, persistent pesticides can still come at us from the food chain because they cycle through the aquatic environment and do bio accumulate in fish. And I want to add that DDT is still used in certain parts of the world because it is one of the more effective anti-malarial chemicals to kill mosquitoes. And that can come back at us through the fish we eat, and even small amounts can come back into the United States in rainwater.
