The DDT Eaters And Other Eco-Centrics

The DDT Eaters And Other Eco-Centrics

In the nation's burgeoning concern with its environment, professional ecologists tend to get all the attention with sweeping and frequently apocalyptic visions of a polluted planet. Now other voices are emerging. Some recent, unusual and even eccentric examples of environmental activism:

> In 1958 Francis A. Johnson, a bachelor and retired carpenter from Darwin, Minn., appeared on television's I've Got a Secret and stumped the panel --with good reason. Johnson's secret: a 2,490-lb. ball of twine, the result of eight years' scrounging around his neighborhood. Today the ball weighs close to five tons, is 11 ft. high and is so unwieldy that a railroad jack must be used to wind on new string. Its bulk attests to Johnson's private war on discarded string.

> Instead of a vitamin a day, Pest Control Executive Robert Loibl and his wife Louise start breakfast with a 10-mg. capsule of DDT. After 93 days on DDT, the North Hollywood, Calif., couple figured they had ingested as much of the pesticide (some 300 times more than the average daily intake) as persons consuming food dusted with the chemical would get in 83 years. "We feel better than we used to," crows Loibl. "In fact, I think my appetite has increased since I began taking DDT."

The Loibls' experiment is designed to prove that DDT, which they claim is the most maligned of pesticides, is "harmless." They believe that the environment is better served with spraying. On the surface, their consumption of DDT appears to have caused them no harm. Blood tests and urinalysis conducted by Government physicians, says Loibl, "showed nothing out of the ordinary." But while the Loibls seem safe enough now, they could become ill in the future. More important, even if DDT is not immediately harmful to man, it is destructive to many beneficial insects and to some fish and birds.

>As he stared at his small vegetable garden one day last fall, a Collinsville, Okla., welder and farmer named Charles Baker came to the conclusion that his environment was threatened. The reason was 3 ft. underground: a gas pipeline that Baker was convinced would explode like a "time bomb" and maim his family. In four months Baker ran up $1,000 in telephone bills enlisting support from public officials around the U.S. Armed with photographs and witnesses, he then went to the Oklahoma corporation commission, a state agency that regulates pipelines. His charge: the pipeline, part of a $9 million, 144-mile-long gas network, was poorly welded, had thin walls, was unsafely wrapped and thus made his environment unsafe.

The dustup soon spread to the U.S. Office of Pipeline Safety in Washington, which dutifully sent an investigator to Collinsville. Though the agent found nothing amiss. Baker remains unconvinced. He has now challenged pipeline companies' right to burrow on private property, a move that could have national repercussions for the pipeline industry. If the local hearings go against him, Baker says he will appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. His obstinacy has not come cheap; legal costs already have reached nearly $10,000; a Supreme Court appeal could run $3,000 to $5,000 more. But Baker intends to keep on fighting, even if he has to sell his farm "acre by acre" to get that pipeline out of his garden.

> Long before ecology became fashionable, a Finnish mink breeder named Emil Hoglund began his drive to protect spotted cats. Finding a mutant female mink with pale brown spots on its white fur, he carefully bred it with a normal mink. After nine years of inbreeding, Hoglund had produced a new strain: a deeply spotted mink with a strong resemblance to the jaguar, which has been hunted to near extinction for its luxurious pelt. Manhattan furrier Reiss & Fabrizio has received the first of the "Fin-Jaguar" furs from the Danish firm Keppo, and has the coats on sale (at $5,500 to $9,500 v. $8,000 to $13,000 for real jaguar). Buyers will be able to wear "jaguar" without having to worry about contributing to the cat's extinction.

> Henry Gibson, the diminutive, shaky-voiced poet, late of TV's Laugh-In, has become a full-fledged eco-centric. First it was some pro-ecology statements in the summer issue of Environmental Quality magazine. Last week he delivered his magnum opus, a poem cycle set to Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals, which was played by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl. As the music soared, Henry versed about news-wise kangaroos, pacifist elephants, and hens and roosters who have been brutalized by technology:

. . . egged on artificially, no place to run, Cocks crow at sockets to plug in the sun. If to such an Orwellian life I were fated, I would will myself never to be incubated.

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