DDT hoax spreader Walter E Williams has a new anti-environmentalist column where he writes:
In one long-term study, volunteers ate 32 ounces of DDT for a year and a half, and 16 years later, they suffered no increased risk of adverse health effects.
You know, two pounds of DDT is a lot of DDT. It's a bit worrying that Williams felt it plausible that volunteers would chow down on 2 pounds of DDT every day for a year and a half.
This 1979 WHO report on DDT toxicity reports that a single dose of 1500 mg of DDT (1/20 of an ounce) had these effects:
Prickling of tongue and around mouth and nose beginning 2.5 h after dose; disturbance of equilibrium; dizziness; confusion; tremor of extremities; peak reaction (10 h after ingestion) characterized by severe malaise, headache, and fatigue; delayed vomiting; almost complete recovery in 24 h.
Experiments on dogs and monkeys described in the WHO report suggest that volunteers who took 1500 mg every day for a year would likely all die.
The WHO report does tell of an experiment where volunteers ate 35 mg of DDT each day for 18 months. I imagine that was the study Williams was trying to refer to. He just overstated the amount of DDT. By a factor of 25,000.
There's plenty more wrong with Williams' piece. Phila works through the rest of it.
Just to give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he meant they ate 32 ounces over the course of a year and a half. That makes about 1700 milligrams a day, but it would be a rather mangled way of expressing it.
ilari,
I think that is what he must have meant - as Tim has said, two pounds a day is an absurd number.
That said, as Williams later attacks the restrictions on asbestos use despite an ungodly amount of evidence (including, in the UK alone, between 3000 and 5000 deaths a year as a result of exposure) showing it poses a severe health risk, one cannot rule absurdity out.
How do these people get published?
Just to give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he meant they ate 32 ounces over the course of a year and a half. That makes about 1700 milligrams a day, but it would be a rather mangled way of expressing it.
Also, he'd still be off by 1665 mg, assuming we're talking about the study that normally gets cited by DDT apologists.
I'd be more willing to be charitable if I'd ever seen a case where garbled facts and vague language had caused industry shills to overstate the dangers of a pet chemical.
You'd think a "distinguished professor of economics" would be able to provide a citation a little more concrete than "one long-term study"...unless, of course, he intended to make it impossible for people to verify his claim. Of course, the entire article is full of bald claims like that. Does he write his academic papers that misleadingly? I rather doubt it.
I agree with Phila on the buophonia blog. Williams can henceforth begin ingesting 1700 mg DDT daily for a year to prove to the whole world that DDT is harmless. This will be a protest against radical environmentalism and a great grassroots study of the effects of DDT on the human body. Williams is human, right?
One possible problem: getting enough DDT in ingestible form. A year's supply is about 1.4 pounds. I have no idea where one obtains DDT these days, or how to properly store it. Perhaps the Agency for Toxic Substances (www.atsdr.gov) could help here? One needs an accurate scale or balance to weight out the daily dose, too. Shall we start a fund to purchase the equipment for Mr. Williams?
A little searching shows that Williams [got it from John Berlau](http://www.rachelwaswrong.org/ecofreaksexcerpt.pdf), who was referring to the 35 mg per day study.
I will help pay for the material so Williams can start eating.
Tim, perhaps you can help set up a PayPal site so we can all chip in?
Best,
D
You know, what I've been most surprised about is people who say that DDT has no effect on eagles. I donate to the nature conservancy and followed their efforts on Catalina island to get eagles back into their native habitat there. They introduced 100 mating pairs back around the year 2000. They almost gave up in 2005 because of the DDT issues with the eggs. In 2006 they had the first two eagles hatched live in the island in decades.
I just don't see how people could dismiss the fact that DDT clearly effects eagle's ability to reproduce.
(a copy of the original latimes article here):
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/34/11322
(2006 hatching:)
http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/california/featur…
Maybe he meant all the volunteers together over a year and a half ate a total of 32 oz.
32 ounces is about 1 kg and that's about 3 grams per day.
So if he means 35 mg per day when he really says 3 grams per day he is off by a factor of 100. That's quite a lot.
That is an awesome find Tim. Metric, schmetric! :)
I've seen that repeated all over, too.
And I can explain why the pro-DDT folks deny the eagle issue, jemyr. They aren't interested in anything but their agenda.
Despite the fact that I've stated multiple times on my blog that I actually *worked* for a pesticide company in the past, and have sprayed and killed many a bug, I'm still attacked as a environmentalist and a tree hugger for saying anything negative about DDT.
Sigh.
BTW, my (long) dissection of the latest pro-DDT press release from AFM here:
http://membracid.wordpress.com/2007/08/09/an-odd-email-campaign-by-afri…
(Have I pimped that post before? I don't think so... Well, wordpress.com crashed, so I guess it's all academic at the moment anyway :) )
32 ounces is about 1 kg and that's about 3 grams per day.
IanR why would you think Williams has to write his "academic" papers any better?
Williams has a cutout with Berlau, who must be a real piece of work. On the other hand, this egregious fraud is the same one that wretched sot Tinshley/Mallard Drinkmore wanted to run for president.
My prescription: we ask Berlau if Williams got him right! :) Put them both in a no-win situation.
32oz versus 35mg. Kind of up there with degrees versus radians isn't it?!
While it would be amusing to see Williams chow down, of course it misses the point - DDT has been restricted to avoid the further development of resistance (by mass spraying) and because of its well-documented effects on animals.
A couple of days ago Rush Limbaugh was saying that carrots are more deadly than second smoke, cigarettes, and trans fats. Then yesterday I read this post about eating 2 pounds of DDT a day ... I went to Williams home page and it says he'll be hosting the Rush Limbaugh program on Aug 24.
Figures.
Doh! I just remembered where I'd heard Williams name before. Ultra-libertarian, John Birch Society fan Ron Paul has mentioned Williams as a potential vice president.
Son of a....
The WSJ just ran a big editorial on that paper I reviewed in the link above. They swallowed the press report completely, and repeated it.
I am thinking a lot of very angry words right now.
dur.
forgot the link:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118722940723299229.html?mod=todays_us_o…
{The Getting of Political Wisdom clunks onta bug_girl's head} Sorry you had to find out that way bug_girl but yes, things like the promotion in the WSJ are exactly why AFM published that otherwise fairly inconsequential even misguided piece.
#9, z, can't be correct:
35 mg per day for 1.5 years is 20 grams. You'd need 50 volunteers to hit a grand total of 1 kg aka 32 ounces.
But according to http://www.inchem.org/documents/ehc/ehc/ehc009.htm#SubSectionNumber:6.3… the number of samples in both studies was just 6. Six!
So the total amount for all the subjects for the whole time was in the 100 gram range. That is the biggest possible number you can get.
"Fuzzy math! Fuzzy math!"
He was probably being purposely vague about the study. That seems obvious. He may have meant a number of things - many of which have been discussed in the other comments.
What I don't understand, is that if it has been shown (even slightly, but we all know its more than slight) that DDT can have adverse effects (even if it affected only 1% of people) why bother defending it? Unless someone is going to say that 1% of people doesn't really matter? If it has ANY effect on any amount of people, it ought to not be used. Why bother even trying to defend it?