While sitting in the OB/GYN’s office about two weeks ago, I picked up a recent copy of The New Yorker magazine (1-2 months old). In the letters to the editors section, there was a letter from a man who said he was the son of the man who invented DDT. He stated that his father “proved” that DDT was not dangerous by eating a walnut-size piece of it in front of witnesses on several occasions. The son also claimed to have partaken of DDT many times in his youth. Allegedly, neither of them suffered any ill effects, and the son says that he still believes DDT to be harmless, holding himself up as proof. He concluded his letter by stating that he works with the government agencies cleaning up DDT, but only because the gov’t pays him to and because people want it done, but not because there is any danger posed by DDT.
Really? Any science or toxicology types want to comment?
Um I doubt it seriously , but in University i did read that DDT was liposoluble so if it was consumed or maybe absorbed then it would stay in your fatty layers and only cause a problem if you started to burn that fat off .But I don’t think it would be DDT unless the person is dumb or intends to stay fat.
I remember flipping through a friend’s toxicology text and if I’ve got it right, DDT is thought to be a cancer promoter, but not terribly toxic in itself. In other words, it makes it easier for animals to get cancer when combined with carcinogens – e.g. if you smoke a pack a day while spraying your garden with the stuff, you might get lung cancer sooner. (Actually, I have no idea whether those specific factors will combine or how they will combine.)
“Acute Toxicity: DDT is moderately to slightly toxic to studied mammalian species via the oral route. Reported oral LD50s range from 113 to 800 mg/kg in rats (79,73); 150-300 mg/kg in mice (79); 300 mg/kg in guinea pigs (73); 400 mg/kg in rabbits (73) ; 500-750 mg/kg in dogs (79) and greater than 1,000 mg/kg in sheep and goats (79). Toxicity will vary according to formulation (79). DDT is readily absorbed through the gastrointestinal tract…”
That makes me doubt the story about eating a walnut-sized piece. Even assuming people are more resistant than goats, that still means eating a couple of ounces would have a good chance of killing an adult human, let alone causing lesser illness (LD50 is the dose required to kill half the test subjects.) The link ** don’t ask ** provided does back it up, though, in fact it says the ingestion of DDT was done on a continuing basis.
The reason this story could be true is the effects that DDT can cause might not affect the first generation. Did the person eating the DDT have any children after ingesting? A lot of the effects seen in test animals are mutagenic/tetragenic. Basically it screws up your offspring. Maybe you could eat some safely, but any children you have later in your life may be the ones to suffer.
In terms of 3rd World use, there’s no question that DDT is a very effective insecticide. I think a lot of times it boils down to a choice between using a cheap, effective, but potentially dangerous chemical that provides a food supply, or not using it and starving. That’s a much different choice than we have in the US.
Toxicity is measured in two ways: acute and chronic. Acute toxicity measurements involve injecting mice with increasingly large doses until they start to do. The acute toxicity of DDT is lower than that of table salt or Coca-Cola. In other words if you swallowed half a kg/kg body weight of salt or Coke, you’d die. If you swallowed that amount of DDT you live. So there’s no reason to doubt the story on those grounds. No one has dies from acute DDT poisoning in the history of the world.
Chronic poisoning is far harder to measure. It involves the accumulated long term affects of constant exposure, and as has alraedy been mentioned DDT is stored in the fat so long term exposure is unavaoidable. Slat and Coke are both excreted or digested within 24 hours. DDT has been linked to cancer and to nerve damage with long term exposure, but AFAIK the results have been less than conclusive. DDT was banned for environmental reason, not health. For all intents and purposes it is harmless to mammals. Ironically the chemicals that replaced it were hundreds or thousands of times more poisonous than DDT, being nerve poisons.
I would doubt the varacity of the story based on the fact that he claimed the bloke was eating chunks of the stuff. DDT is a chlorinated hyrdocarbon. It’s liquid at STP so the man could have eaten DDT combined with something, or he could have drunk DDT, but he couldn’t eat DDT peices unless they were frozen.