
What Spreads Faster Than Bedbugs? Stigma - timr
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/nyregion/21bedbugs.html?src=me&ref=homepage
======
patio11
The DDT angle is fantastic news. Bird eggshells trump African kids, but I am
pretty sure Upper East side embarrassment trumps eggshells. Quick, someone
introduce them to a safe, nonpolluting chemical solution to the bedbugs
problem.

~~~
hga
You know, if you spread a fair amount of DDT _inside_ a bunch of buildings I
suspect precious little will escape outside, especially as measured by the
putative egg shell problem. We're not talking about massive outdoor spraying
to suppress mosquitoes, nor is that the solution for African kids (instead
it's twice yearly spraying of dwelling interiors).

It would be nice to see some balance on these sorts of issues, but at the very
least I expect that soon enough we'll see some hypocrisy. At the moment it is
most delicious to watch, so to speak.

~~~
gamble
DDT hasn't been effective against bedbugs since the '40s - long before the
ban. Use any pesticide long enough and the target will tend to develop a
resistance. Now it just agitates bedbugs and makes them more active.

~~~
hga
Has this been tested on the _current_ bed bug population?

Such resistance tend to come at a cost that makes the organism otherwise less
fit and removal of the selection pressure can change the population. Also, how
much of the current population started from ... imports, as it were?

Anyway, as I understand it, the EPA has outlawed the use of _all_ pesticides
that really work on bed bugs, so the problem's a lot wider than DDT. It's just
that our insane fixation on the eeeevils of DDT make it the iconic pesticide
we've managed to ban (at the mere cost of 10s of millions of lives).

