Posted by Larry Hoover on March 10, 2009, at 7:14:26
In reply to Re: How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue » Larry Hoover, posted by Garnet71 on March 9, 2009, at 23:36:47
> What could be interesting though Lar is that DDT is still used in other parts of the world. Couldn't the wind carry the particles here anyway--especially if its sprayed through aerial means-crop dusters?
It was used in California up until something like ten years ago. They were exploiting a loophole in pesticide legislation that permitted some percentage of unidentified compounds in the pesticide spray, so they put DDT in it. DDT does spread through the air and water. It has non-zero vapour pressure. It does get in the air from spraying, but it would get there anyway by evaporation. We computer model that transfer in the environment. The name for that is fugacity modelling. The bottom line from that modelling is that we know that the very same process that leads to DDT being bioaccumulated in organisms also leads to it partitioning (preferentially absorbing) into soil and sediments. If we just stopped using it altogether, most of it would disappear from the biosphere in just a few years. PCBs, and the brominated fire retardants you mentioned, and similar compounds are also like that, more or less. That partitioning into soil and sediment is the main mechanism that cleans up after us.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:883457
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090304/msgs/884708.html