664
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] thrawn@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

Yeah I unironically hold this stance. My original comment is usually followed by a brief rant about how we (as a species) almost did it but banned DDT a little too early. Might be a dumb take but I feel very strongly about bed bugs.

I suspect part of it is cynicism about climate change now, where things are so bad that it feels like using DDT for a few more years wouldn’t have hurt that much. I’m not versed enough about the effects on human health, but there is truly a level of increased health risk I would accept to exterminate bed bugs. They are a blight upon humanity and a return en massé would probably cause ecological/health damage of its own.

Plus high density housing is much more appealing if you can’t get a neighbor’s bed bugs or German roaches. That’s a massive and unavoidable downside to shared buildings. I am thankful to have avoided them so far but the likelihood only grows.

[-] dlatch@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

DDT wreaked absolute havoc on bird of prey populations. A LOT of species were on the verge of extinction due to being at the top of the food pyramid, where the DDT levels of all their prey animals added up. Banning DDT when we did was one of the biggest wins ever in bird protection.

[-] thrawn@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Hm yeah, that’s fair. I wonder if limiting it to indoors pests, specifically the big two invasive species, would have prevented that. To my (very limited) knowledge, bed bugs aren’t eaten by many things. Bats? German roaches eat them but we don’t want them either.

I’m not overly attached to DDT though, a public health program of Alpine spraying indoors would probably do the trick. I doubt anyone has the political capital to get it done, but the return of bed bugs will be disastrous

this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
664 points (98.8% liked)

World News

38979 readers
2581 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS