Thousands of poisonous DDT barrels found off the coast of California

Washington, Apr 28 (Prensa Latina) Over 25,000 barrels of highly toxic, widely banned pesticide DDT from World War II (1939-1945), were found dumped off the southern coast of California, local marine scientists reported.

April 28, 2021
09:03

Researchers from the University of California San Diego´s Scripps Institution of Oceanography captured high-resolution images with marine drones showing barrels 900 meters below the surface, in a dump site that had long been known to have high levels of DDT from WWII.

Scientists suspect these barrels contain dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), a substance widely used in previous decades to kill insects from agricultural crops or even vector-borne diseases such as malaria and typhus.

Although scientists do not have enough evidence to describe DDT´s exact long-term impact on marine life, they did find evidence of DDT in dolphins apparently dead by natural causes.

In addition, there are some studies that found multigenerational marks of DDT in living beings, and it has even been linked to cancer in sea lions.

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