do any other glper's remember this..?.

I remember it being done constantly when I was in Alabama 30 years ago. I hated that fucking truck, dumping huge clouds of pesticide throughout the neighborhood.

Sure do... We'd run inside and our parents would shut the windows. After the truck left. There would be a whie liquid on the road and the smell of whatever they sprayed lingered.

Yes! St. Louis here. They were spraying for mosquitos! When we were kids we used to run behind the "smoke truck".
We thought is was cool. I am mortified today realizing what we did, inhaling in that pesticide at close range like that! But....those were the days you were able to roam free as a kid and just show back up at dark!

When I was in Cuba last summer, the hotel staff used the same technique every morning. They were spraying DDT... a very dangerous carcenogenic insect repellent. It was banned in the US and Canada around 1950.

They're great population control in the third world. I wonder who benefits from that. Makes me see why DDT was banned. It saved too many lives.

I don't think DDT is carcinogenic.
The problem with DDT is that it thins bird shells.
Our national bird is still recovering from DDT spraying.

.
... am blocked by BING!!! ...
.
... but do some searching ... DDT was NOT what the gov said it was in danger ...
.

It's strange seeing how the world progressed.

That damn truck, always made misquetos worse I thought.
It was like quarantine for a whole day after they sprayed.
Makes you wonder what they actually sprayed.

They do it here still. Just that now they do it at 3 in the morning when most folks are asleep.

Pisses me off. I smell it for days after--super sensitive sense of smell.

I rememeber it was In the evenings here.
Wonder what made them change to mornings?..

Ahh...the old VBC (vehicle-borne chemtrails)

I live in Brazil.. when I was younger, around 1999, I remember those trucks spraying "pesticide" aroud my region..
Strange stuff..

OP - You're probably remembering when they were spraying due to the outbreak of West Nile. Around here, they only did it for 2 years, and then stopped.

I would assume they still spray in the south and west? Places that don't get freezing winter?

It was back in the 90's. When I was like 6-7 maybe?.
Say roughly 1998ish?. Vaguely remember the past.
But I distinctly remember this occurrence.

Yep, grew up in a small town east of I95 in NC and they sprayed every year until the late 1990's or so then just stopped.

Just seems really really odd to me.
Maybe it's just me being paranoid. But just seems strange

No one's around. As one poster pointed out... no kids to follow the truck around and suck in some pesticides, lol.

Plus, all those Conspiracy Theory nutballs. Just imagine if they saw a truck going around spraying something...

west coast here - 30 years older than you.
I recall night-time helicopter spraying of malathione ostensibly for mosquito abatement (?)
the helicopters would fly low and slowly criss-cross the horizon - they were creepy looking with their spray-rigs and blinking lights in the gathering darkness (I only recall it being an evening event)

It seems almost experimental to me..
But ehh who knows.
One can only speculate.

True.. lol.
Seems logical.
But still odd they spray(ed) the stuff.

Well, on the one hand, I have to say honestly that I don't trust it, either. Not at all.

But I will acknowledge this... mosquitoes are actually one of the most dangerous insects for human beings. As carriers of blood-borne pathogens, they can infect numerous people after just one simple bite.

So I guess I will say that it's not a terrible thing that they spray for them... but I do believe there are a lot of far better ways to deal with the problem.

However, our bats are dying off, and our dragonflies are dying off thanks to pesticides and the like used in growing our food, etc...

It's a vicious cycle, and I just don't know what or how it'll stop. I fear it won't end well, though.

Malathion - Lovely stuff.

Makes you question a lot.
What to believe and not believe

I remember that when I was a kid (Missouri too). We used to run behind the trucks in the smoke. They also used to hang out these thinks on poles with a jar and a wick inside for Japanese beetles. I remember I took a jar out of the enclosure and put it in my pocket one time. I got a big nasty welt on my leg that took awhile to go away.

I never remember those.