Price of Alarmism

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To the Editor:

An Aug. 29 Week in Review article reports that the efforts by some environmentalists to clean up ''brownfield'' industrial sites have worsened the economic woes of the mostly poor areas where they are located. Similarly, an Aug. 29 front-page article describes the resurgence of malaria because of the ban on the use of the insecticide DDT (front page, Aug. 29).

These situations have this in common: dogmatic environmentalists who would have the poor and disadvantaged suffer the harsh consequences of their policies even though the benefits to humans are negligible, hypothetical or nonexistent.