DDT residues on imported cotton textiles (clothing)
DDT was banned for use in the USA, the EU and most of the America's in the 70's. It went off patent and then the governments of India and China ...more »
DDT was banned for use in the USA, the EU and most of the America's in the 70's. It went off patent and then the governments of India and China (among others) began to produce it and give it to their farmers for free so that their raw cotton prices would be lower than ours and Europe's. This was part of the overall strategy to decimate our textile industry (that had been #1 in the world) and take over the world market.
Now our textile industry has been reduced to a minor player in the world and our domestically produced DDT free cotton is imported by China and India to produce textiles to export to the EU where DDT residues on textiles are not allowed. But they ship their DDT residue cotton to us because we don't test it and thus when we wash our clothes out comes this DDT that fills our estuaries and has a half life of 40 years causing feminized birds and goodness knows what else. We already have laws on the books just as the EU has, all we need is some agency to test products and reject them if they have the residue.
So, this costs some money for inspections and testing but it would have a huge impact on the world ecology as the people who live in these countries and their wildlife suffer from the use of DDT and the related compounds.
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