74 DDT— Killer of Killers 



facturers and distributors have agreed to accept this standard, 

 and it probably won't be very long before every bottle of 

 household space spray you buy will bear the sign of distinc- 

 tion — Grade AA. 



100% Active 



The bottle of insea spray that you buy probably also 

 carries the words: 100% Active Ingredients. Since the ma- 

 jor part of the material in the bottle is kerosene, this can 

 only mean that kerosene itself is an insect killer. That is 

 correal Petroleum solvents — ^gasoline, kerosene, naphtha, 

 fuel oil, etc. — as well as lots of other organic solvents do have 

 lethal properties as far as insects are concerned. When your 

 suit comes back from the dry cleaner, it is hee from moth 

 larvae, for they cannot survive their naphtha bath. Obvi- 

 ously, kerosene in itself is not sufficiently satisf aaory for use 

 alone as a fly spray, for if it were no one would bother to put 

 in some pyrethrum, thiocyanates, or DDT. Nevertheless, 

 the kerosene does contribute to the killing power of the 



mixture. 



«-•"■-■ 



Oil to You 



Kerosene, or as some people erroneously call it, coal 

 oil, is probably known to you as the material that was used 

 to furnish the light of the world in the days before Thomas 

 Edison found out that a piece of charred cotton inside of an 

 evacuated glass bulb could transform elearicity into light. 

 Yet, even today the kerosene lamp is a familiar sight in many 

 places where the elearic wires have yet to reach. Tech- 

 nically, kerosene is just a petroleum fraaion that boils over 

 the temperature range of about 400 to 500°F. 



