60 DDT— Killer of Killers 



hundreds of men and women have been engaged for months 

 in the preparation and testing of DDT sprays and none has 

 suffered injury, one is led, inevitably, to the conclusion that 

 the danger of poisoning f roni^DDT solutions^qn the skin has 

 fen grossly exaggerated. 



Although it is true that a few good experiments are 

 more conclusive than lots of reasoning, let us look at the prob- 

 lem from a different point of view. Although animals differ 

 in their susceptibility to DDT, all the evidence points to the 

 fact that a dose of less than /4o gram of DDT per kilogram 

 of body weight is absolutely harmless, and many animals con- 

 tinue to thrive when much higher doses than that are ad- 

 ministered. Now, /4o gram per kilogram of weight means 

 that our mythical 150-pound man could take at least 6.8 

 grams of DDT — and probably much more — in a single dose 

 without harm. As we pointed out a little while ago, it takes 



(more than a third of a pint of a 5 % DDT solution to furnish 

 that much DDT; and can you imagine a third of a pint of the 

 liquid being absorbed by the skin? Even if you took a bath 

 ; in the stuff — although we don't recommend it — it is highly 

 J^ t unlikely that you would be in any danger. 



The Poor Fish 



Many of our otherwise sane citizens enjoy nothing more 

 than getting up at the break of dawn on a cold spring morn- 

 ing and wading through the cold waters of some favorite 

 stream in the hope of tricking an innocent trout into believing 

 that a bundle of gaudy feathers is good to eat. Other mem- 

 bers of the piscatorial tribe brave swarms of mosquitoes and 

 black flies in their attempts — often futile — to hook a prize- 

 winning trout or salmon. But whether your fisherman pre- 



