When I was a kid visiting family in Biloxi, Mississippi, the fogger truck would drive up and down the streets on summer nights - we didn't play in the fog but it soon dissipated, I think the droplets were heavy and fell to the ground. But I remember it smelling like regular bug spray.
Chris is home today, he has a Master's degree in Environmental Health Science. I just asked him if that could have been DDT, and he started lecturing me about how DDT isn't harmful to humans. But of course the real problem with DDT was that it kept bird shells from hardening.
You're right, mosquitoes do carry disease. I remember reading about yellow fever epidemics in New Orleans, thousands of people died.
I didn't think about the connection between sod farms and herbicides. We bought 120 rolls of sod last year, 1 ft x 9 ft each, and the grass is so beautiful, so thick and green. You have to seed lawns around here if you don't let them go to seed (and of course one doesn't) because they don't spread by sending out runners or from the roots, like the grass I am used to in Louisiana. The lady who used to live here didn't seed, and the grass was very patchy and there was a lot of erosion, so we put down sod to keep the back yard from washing away.
I know insecticides are made from the same chemicals that we use to make nerve gas, and is harmful to humans, but Chris doesn't know what herbicides are made from. He says plants don't have nervous systems, so it shouldn't be the same as insecticides. |
