Question

What is DDT among the following?
(a)- An organic fertilizer
(b)- A fertilizer
(c)- Biodegradable pollutant
(d)- Non-biodegradable pollutant

Answer 1

Hint:The expanded form of DDT is Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. It is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline organochlorine chemical compound. Its chemical formula is $$C_{14}{H}_{9}C{l}_5$$.

Complete step by step answer:
Fertilizer is a material which is applied to soil or to plant tissues to supply one or more essential plant nutrients, intake of which enhance the growth of the plants. It can be natural or synthetic.
Natural fertilizer or organic fertilizers are fertilizers that have been manufactured by using animal excreta, human excreta, vegetable wastes, peat, manure, slurry, and guano.

Pollutants are the agents which contaminate the quality of air, water and soil. These pollutants can be of two types-biodegradable and non-biodegradables. Biodegradable pollutants are those pollutants which can be easily broken down into simpler substances, which don’t have any adverse effect in nature, in due course of time by the action of microbes like certain bacteria. For example: Domestic wastes as vegetable peels and food, paper, wood, cloth, cattle dung, animal bones, leather.

In contrast, those pollutants which cannot be broken down into simpler, harmless substances in nature, are called non-biodegradable pollutants. For examples: Metal articles like aluminum cans plastics, polythene bags, insecticides, pesticides, DDT.

So, the correct option is (D).

Note: DDT was first synthesized in 1874 by the Austrian chemist Othmar Zeidler. It was developed originally as an insecticide, but later it became infamous because of its ill environmental impacts.