More than 40 years after Rachel Carson's Silent Spring indicted DDT with harming eagles,and 30 years after the insecticide was banned in North America,historic residues in soil remain the largest source of contamination to the air worldwide.For the first time,research published in this issue of ES&T(pp 4578-4585)measures the evaporation of DDT from farmland where it was last applied >3 decades ago.The study shows that DDT,a persistent organic pollutant,will linger in some highly organic soils for more than a generation.
展开▼
