What does DDT mean?
Definitions for DDT
ddt
This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word DDT.
Princeton's WordNet
dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, DDTnoun
an insecticide that is also toxic to animals and humans; banned in the United States since 1972
Wiktionary
DDTnoun
; an insecticide.
DDTnoun
a move where a wrestler puts another wrestler into a standing front face lock and then falls backwards, driving the recipient's head into the floor.
Wikipedia
DDT
Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline chemical compound, an organochloride. Originally developed as an insecticide, it became infamous for its environmental impacts. DDT was first synthesized in 1874 by the Austrian chemist Othmar Zeidler. DDT's insecticidal action was discovered by the Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller in 1939. DDT was used in the second half of World War II to limit the spread of the insect-borne diseases malaria and typhus among civilians and troops. Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods".By October 1945, DDT was available for public sale in the United States. Although it was promoted by government and industry for use as an agricultural and household pesticide, there were also concerns about its use from the beginning. Opposition to DDT was focused by the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. It talked about environmental impacts that correlated with the widespread use of DDT in agriculture in the United States, and it questioned the logic of broadcasting potentially dangerous chemicals into the environment with little prior investigation of their environmental and health effects. The book cited claims that DDT and other pesticides caused cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds. Although Carson never directly called for an outright ban on the use of DDT, its publication was a seminal event for the environmental movement and resulted in a large public outcry that eventually led, in 1972, to a ban on DDT's agricultural use in the United States.A worldwide ban on agricultural use was formalized under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants which has been in effect since 2004. DDT still has limited use in disease vector control because of its effectiveness in killing mosquitos and thus reducing malarial infections, but that use is controversial due to environmental and health concerns.Along with the passage of the Endangered Species Act, the United States ban on DDT is a major factor in the comeback of the bald eagle (the national bird of the United States) and the peregrine falcon from near-extinction in the contiguous United States.
ChatGPT
ddt
DDT, short for Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane, is a synthetic chemical compound that is colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless, used historically in agriculture as an insecticide. It became infamous for its environmental impacts and was subsequently banned in many countries.
Wikidata
DDT
DDT is an organochlorine insecticide which is a colorless, crystalline solid, tasteless and almost odorless chemical compound. Technical DDT has been formulated in almost every conceivable form including solutions in xylene or petroleum distillates, emulsifiable concentrates, water-wettable powders, granules, aerosols, smoke candles, and charges for vaporisers and lotions. First synthesized in 1873, DDT's insecticidal properties were not discovered until 1939, and it was used with great success in the second half of World War II to control malaria and typhus among civilians and troops. The Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods." After the war, DDT was made available for use as an agricultural insecticide, and soon its production and use skyrocketed. In 1962, Silent Spring by American biologist Rachel Carson was published. The book catalogued the environmental impacts of the indiscriminate spraying of DDT in the US and questioned the logic of releasing large amounts of chemicals into the environment without fully understanding their effects on ecology or human health. The book suggested that DDT and other pesticides may cause cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds. Its publication was one of the signature events in the birth of the environmental movement, and resulted in a large public outcry that eventually led to DDT being banned for agricultural use in the US in 1972. DDT was subsequently banned for agricultural use worldwide under the Stockholm Convention, but its limited use in disease vector control continues to this day and remains controversial.
The New Hacker's Dictionary
DDT
[from the insecticide para-dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethene] 1. Generic term for a program that assists in debugging other programs by showing individual machine instructions in a readable symbolic form and letting the user change them. In this sense the term DDT is now archaic, having been widely displaced by debugger or names of individual programs like adb, sdb, dbx, or gdb. 2. [ITS] Under MIT's fabled ITS operating system, DDT (running under the alias HACTRN, a six-letterism for ‘Hack Translator’) was also used as the shell or top level command language used to execute other programs. 3. Any one of several specific DDTs (sense 1) supported on early DEC hardware and CP/M. The PDP-10 Reference Handbook (1969) contained a footnote on the first page of the documentation for DDT that illuminates the origin of the term:Historical footnote: DDT was developed at MIT for the PDP-1 computer in 1961. At that time DDT stood for “DEC Debugging Tape”. Since then, the idea of an on-line debugging program has propagated throughout the computer industry. DDT programs are now available for all DEC computers. Since media other than tape are now frequently used, the more descriptive name “Dynamic Debugging Technique” has been adopted, retaining the DDT abbreviation. Confusion between DDT-10 and another well known pesticide, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane C14H9Cl5 should be minimal since each attacks a different, and apparently mutually exclusive, class of bugs.(The ‘tape’ referred to was, incidentally, not magnetic but paper.) Sadly, this quotation was removed from later editions of the handbook after the suits took over and DEC became much more ‘businesslike’.The history above is known to many old-time hackers. But there's more: Peter Samson, compiler of the original TMRC lexicon, reports that he named DDT after a similar tool on the TX-0 computer, the direct ancestor of the PDP-1 built at MIT's Lincoln Lab in 1957. The debugger on that ground-breaking machine (the first transistorized computer) rejoiced in the name FLIT (FLexowriter Interrogation Tape). Flit was for many years the trade-name of a popular insecticide.
U.S. National Library of Medicine
DDT
A polychlorinated pesticide that is resistant to destruction by light and oxidation. Its unusual stability has resulted in difficulties in residue removal from water, soil, and foodstuffs. This substance may reasonably be anticipated to be a carcinogen: Fourth Annual Report on Carcinogens (NTP-85-002, 1985). (From Merck Index, 11th ed)
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Song lyrics by ddt -- Explore a large variety of song lyrics performed by ddt on the Lyrics.com website.
DDT
What does DDT stand for? -- Explore the various meanings for the DDT acronym on the Abbreviations.com website.
Matched Categories
Anagrams for DDT »
DTD
TDD
Numerology
Chaldean Numerology
The numerical value of DDT in Chaldean Numerology is: 3
Pythagorean Numerology
The numerical value of DDT in Pythagorean Numerology is: 1
Examples of DDT in a Sentence
This is where science meets policy, we realized, as a society, that a particular human action was threatening this iconic species, so we began to phase out DDT and that, combined with habitat protection and even halting hunting, are the main reasons that bald eagles have done so well.
Once in someone's body, it can take decades to eliminate it, dDT also crosses the placenta and is found in breast milk, so developing fetuses and children will be exposed if their mothers are exposed.
It is unclear whether DDT does cause these issues but current evidence raises concerns.
Using DDT now would result in exposure to local populations for decades, in fact, DDE, a breakdown product from DDT, is still detected in the blood of a majority of Americans even though DDT was banned in the U.S. about 40 years ago.
Although there is some uncertainty, the potential impacts of DDT on human health, wildlife and the ecology are real.
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