9 ms·

Beyond Silent Spring: An Alternate History of DDT

60 points by Hooke 10y ago

bougiefever 10y ago
My husband remembers seeing puddles with dead birds around if after spraying DDT in nearby fields. His father died from a serious lung disease, and his family attributes it to the chemicals he was exposed to while farming. My husband remembers him mixing up the chemicals with his bare arm immersed completely in it.
- omegaham 10y ago
  > My husband remembers him mixing up the chemicals with his bare arm immersed completely in it. I think one of the issues with DDT was that it was perceived as entirely safe. People dumped it on themselves during WWII as an anti-flea treatment. Other insecticides are far more acutely toxic, meaning that mixing the chemicals with your bare arm is going to kill you. This means that people are going to be more careful in applying it rather than just casting it everywhere.
  - bbctol 10y ago
    Kids used to chase DDT trucks and play in the fog they sprayed out. While we may talk these days about how people are too paranoid over "chemicals," before films like Silent Spring people were far too confident that they were safe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2NmuQW8cjE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2NmuQW8cjE
- _sbrk 10y ago
  > His father died from a serious lung disease, and his family attributes it to the chemicals he was exposed to while farming. Was he a smoker? If so, I'm sure that couldn't have been the cause! Silent Spring has caused the unnecessary deaths of millions due to fear and banning of DDT. https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/15583-ddt-breeds-death https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/15583-d...
  - LeifCarrotson 10y ago
    DDT may be unfairly or overly demonized, and could be used carefully in certain limited situations where the benefit is greater than the risk. But a careless attitude like sticking your bare arm in vats of industrial chemicals (or drenching the inside of a house with kerosene and DDT, as the article describes) should not be encouraged. That sort of exposure will cause damage from even relatively safe chemicals. Unfortunately, people are bad at moderation. A binary choice between "perfectly safe" or "silent spring" seems to be the only public policy which works.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    I doubt that's true. Insects evolve around pesticides relatively rapidly, and in the places DDT is still used it's not nearly as effective as it was when it was introduced.
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
> "Any poison strong enough to kill or damage honey bees is surely strong enough to affect people." This doesn't seem reasonable. For one thing, honey bees are smaller and weaker than people, and a poison that affected both uniformly should be more damaging to the weaker species. For another, honey bees are very different from humans, and there may be poisons that attack the bees without attacking any part of humans. I agree and understand that ecological damage is bad, and that many real poisons do too much incidental damage to people to be considered "safe", but it seems foolish to base a persuasive argument like this on such faulty reasoning.
- scardine 10y ago
  I'm not a biologist, but DDT is very effective against larvae (including fish seed), with I think is a good reason to place strong controls on its use (because the DDT sprayed over crops will end up in the rivers). According to [an article in Gismodo][1], In 1971 two people in North Hollywood started eating DDT pills every day. That's right, they willingly swallowed 10mg of poison every single day for three months. In front of witnesses. From the Associated Press: > Robert Loibl and his wife, Louise, hold 10-milligram capsules of DDT which they took in front of witnesses for 93 days at lunch time, June 10, 1971. Loibl said their total dosage was more than the average person consumes in 83 years. He said his wife's dandruff disappeared, their appetites perked up and they feel better. Loibl said they just wanted to call attention to the public that DDT was safe. [1]: https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/12/these-people-took-ddt-pills-in-the-1970s-to-prove-it-was-safe/#R7vW5olFepe1Toz5.99
  - DrScump 10y ago
    This reminds me of CA Conservation Corps director B.T. Collins[0], who drank malathion to reassure those being exposed to spraying in 1981. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malathion#General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malathion#General
- grabcocque 10y ago
  The theobromine in chocolate is highly toxic to dogs, but is what makes humans feel good after eating it. It's an argument which is so demonstrably wrong that it beggars belief he would ever have thought he could get away with it.
dvdhnt 10y ago
Totally thought this was a wrestling article at first glance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT_(professional_wrestling) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT_(professional_wrestling) Oh, my late 90s childhood, how I miss the.
scardine 10y ago
The 1962 book "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson was instrumental at affecting public opinion against [DDT][1] and other pesticides culminating on [banning DDT all over the world][2]. While Carlson has many detractors, ecology militants would label them as being mercenaries at service of industrial interests. From "[Bring Back DDT, and Science With It!][3]" by Marjorie Mazel Hecht: > The campaign to ban [DDT][6] got its start with the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962. Carson’s popular book was a fraud. She played on people’s emotions, and to do so, she selected and falsified data from scientific studies, as entomologist Dr. J. Gordon Edwards has documented in his analysis of the original scientific studies that Carson cited. From "[DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud][5]" by Dr. J. Gordon Edwards: > The chemical compound that has saved more human lives than any other in history, [DDT][6], was banned by order of one man, the head of the U.S. [Environmental Protection Agency][7] (EPA). Public pressure was generated by one popular book and sustained by faulty or fraudulent research. Widely believed claims of carcinogenicity, toxicity to birds, anti-androgenic properties, and prolonged environmental persistence are false or grossly exaggerated. The worldwide effect of the U.S. ban has been millions of preventable deaths.. All my life I was told [DDT][6] (and pesticides in general) accumulates on the body across the whole food chain with severe consequences to the environment. But is [DDT][6] really significantly less harmful than the current [EPA][8] official position? From [TOXICOLOGICAL PROFILE FOR DDT, DDE, and DDD][9]. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES - Public Health Service - Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry > Numerous studies have been conducted on the effects of DDT and related compounds in a variety of animal species, but the human data are somewhat limited. Most of the information on health effects in humans comes from studies of workers in DDT-manufacturing plants or spray applicators who had occupational exposure to DDT over an extended period and also from some controlled exposure studies with volunteers. Epidemiological studies of the general population are also available. Because of limitations inherent to all epidemiological studies, disease causality cannot be determined from them; however, epidemiological studies have been conducted that allow the evaluation of the potential role of DDT and related compounds in specific health outcomes. My conclusion? There's no doubt that DDT has many negative health effects but I'm not sure the ban is justified and I would like to see more studies on this substance - but as often is the case with recreational drugs, nobody wants to pay the political price for funding studies about "devilish" chemicals. For example, could DDT prevent the hundreds of microcephaly cases in Brazilian babies attributed to the recent Zika virus outbreak? [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Restrictions_on_usage [3]: http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/DDT.html#The%20Silent%20Spring%20Fraud [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT [5]: http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf [6]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT [7]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Protection_Agency [8]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Protection_Agency [9]: http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp35.pdf
cjensen 10y ago
The problem with DDT isn't that it hurt higher animals directly. The problem was that it is a very stable molecule that doesn't decay well over time. It built up in the food chain and killed birds which eat fish and birds which eat other birds. There are plenty of fine pesticides now which work well on mosquitoes. Since the newer pesticides decay, they don't build up in the food chain. Talk of bringing back DDT is silly.
- scardine 10y ago
  These are claims from "Silent Spring" but many sources argue that most of it was entirely made up by Carlson[1], with no scientific basis. Personally I think those are overly broad claims and demand strong studies and proofs. [1]: http://scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=309&Itemid=263
  - throwaway91111 10y ago
    Yea, but we also have plenty of pesticides that aren't tainted. Why not use them?
    - gumby 10y ago
      Your statement may be true but doesn't refute the post you were replying to. Rather it is orthogonal. In addition, if the "taint" is incorrect then DDT could be a wonder. (Actually I am not DDT fan, but I do know how to make an argument)
      - astrodust 10y ago
        That's less an argument and more a "what if?" assertion.
      - throwaway91111 10y ago
        I mean, I wasn't trying to refute the parent comment; it is true that we should know more about DDT.
    - 10y ago
Animats 10y ago
DDT used to be used in construction, to prevent bedbugs. Sprayed inside walls before the wallboard went on, it killed bedbugs and other insects for decades. Modern insecticides are biodegradable and won't work long-term like that. It's agricultural use that was the problem. That used far larger quantities and put DDT into agricultural runoff.
- whyenot 10y ago
  Imidclopirid is currently used to control bed bugs and also sprayed on animal bedding to kill lice and other insect parasites. While it has other problems (honeybees) it doesn't bioaccumulate like DDT does. Why would we ever want to go back to DDT, knowing what we know now.
TempOSfan 10y ago
Haha, just in the wake of the Monsanto email scandal we get "legalize DDT" thinkpieces. Complete with intellectual-yet-stupid contrarian ycombinator comments about how awesome mass spraying non-biodegradable poisons is. Also: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160624150813.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160624150813.h... >In light of this evidence, NECSI says the cause of microcephaly in Brazil should be reconsidered. One possibility that has been raised is the pesticide pyriproxyfen, which is applied to drinking water in some parts of Brazil to kill the larvae of the mosquitos that transmit Zika. Pyriproxyfen is an analogue for insect juvenile hormone which is cross reactive with retinoic acid, which is known to cause microcephaly. A physicians group in Brazil and Argentina, the Swedish Toxicology Sciences Research Center, and NECSI have called for further studies of the potential link between pyriproxyfen and microcephaly.
grabcocque 10y ago
I note its molecular structure looks like MC Hammer https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/DDT_to_DDD_and_DDE.svg/1326px-DDT_to_DDD_and_DDE.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/DD... DDT: you (shouldn't) touch this
- sooheon 10y ago
  This is a beautiful finding, thank you for this.
- LordKano 10y ago
  I don't know why this isn't already a meme but it should be.
borkborkbork 10y ago
*Alternative
adamsea 10y ago
The article is a strange one, it's not really about DDT, but uses DDT to look at how we tell stories to shape our understanding of the past. From the article: "But the fears didn’t fade away. In the spring of 1949 headlines across the country carried the news that DDT had found its way into the nation’s dairy supply and that the “slow, insidious poison” was building up in human bodies. The following year, and for the rest of the 1950s, DDT became a focus of congressional hearings about the safety of the food supply. FDA scientist Arnold J. Lehman testified that small amounts of DDT were being stored in human fat and accumulating over time and that, unlike with the older poisons, no one knew what the consequences would be. Physician Morton Biskind shared his concern that DDT was behind a new epidemic, so-called virus X (an epidemic later attributed to chlorinated naphthalene, a chemical in farm machinery lubricants). Pesticide-eschewing farmers, such as Louis Bromfield, testified they simply could not meet the demand for spray-free crops from Heinz, Campbell’s, A&P, and other companies—all of which were themselves trying to meet the demands of consumers worried about pesticides generally, and specifically the ubiquitous and well-publicized DDT. By the time Rachel Carson detailed DDT’s harm to falcons, salmon, eagles, and other forms of wildlife in Silent Spring, a good number of Americans had been demanding more information about the insecticide’s ill effects for the better part of two decades. And yet to this day that’s not how we talk about DDT’s past. Instead, we tell the story of a chemical whose powers were so awe-inspiring that no one gave any thought to its downsides—at least not until they were brought to light by one renegade scientist. It’s a narrative that gave Americans a hero for the latter part of the 20th century, a female scientist and writer smart enough and brave enough to take on the establishment and win. It’s a story about the power of social movements to remake society for the better. And it’s a story of a nation reformed, able to set aside hubris for reason."
- HarryHirsch 10y ago
  It’s a narrative that gave Americans a hero for the latter part of the 20th century, a female scientist and writer smart enough and brave enough to take on the establishment and win. It’s a story about the power of social movements to remake society for the better. That was an enlightening sentence. I had been asking myself for years just why DDT would be such a touchstone for the conservative/libertarian faction, even though it's so well known that the compound bioaccumulates and becomes concentrated in fatty tissue as it is moved through the food chain. It's not the action of the compound, it's the fear of citizen action!
Ericson2314 10y ago
Hmm, a nagging concern about DDT that doesn't result in changed behavior sure reminds me of privacy and the internet. Only crisis defeats convenience.
rplst8 10y ago
I've heard people say that banning DDT caused more human death than all of our wars throughout history combined.

60 points by Hooke 10y ago

My husband remembers seeing puddles with dead birds around if after spraying DDT in nearby fields. His father died from a serious lung disease, and his family attributes it to the chemicals he was exposed to while farming. My husband remembers him mixing up the chemicals with his bare arm immersed completely in it.

omegaham 10y ago
> My husband remembers him mixing up the chemicals with his bare arm immersed completely in it. I think one of the issues with DDT was that it was perceived as entirely safe. People dumped it on themselves during WWII as an anti-flea treatment. Other insecticides are far more acutely toxic, meaning that mixing the chemicals with your bare arm is going to kill you. This means that people are going to be more careful in applying it rather than just casting it everywhere.
- bbctol 10y ago
  Kids used to chase DDT trucks and play in the fog they sprayed out. While we may talk these days about how people are too paranoid over "chemicals," before films like Silent Spring people were far too confident that they were safe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2NmuQW8cjE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2NmuQW8cjE
_sbrk 10y ago
> His father died from a serious lung disease, and his family attributes it to the chemicals he was exposed to while farming. Was he a smoker? If so, I'm sure that couldn't have been the cause! Silent Spring has caused the unnecessary deaths of millions due to fear and banning of DDT. https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/15583-ddt-breeds-death https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/15583-d...
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  DDT may be unfairly or overly demonized, and could be used carefully in certain limited situations where the benefit is greater than the risk. But a careless attitude like sticking your bare arm in vats of industrial chemicals (or drenching the inside of a house with kerosene and DDT, as the article describes) should not be encouraged. That sort of exposure will cause damage from even relatively safe chemicals. Unfortunately, people are bad at moderation. A binary choice between "perfectly safe" or "silent spring" seems to be the only public policy which works.
- gozur88 10y ago
  I doubt that's true. Insects evolve around pesticides relatively rapidly, and in the places DDT is still used it's not nearly as effective as it was when it was introduced.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago

> "Any poison strong enough to kill or damage honey bees is surely strong enough to affect people." This doesn't seem reasonable. For one thing, honey bees are smaller and weaker than people, and a poison that affected both uniformly should be more damaging to the weaker species. For another, honey bees are very different from humans, and there may be poisons that attack the bees without attacking any part of humans. I agree and understand that ecological damage is bad, and that many real poisons do too much incidental damage to people to be considered "safe", but it seems foolish to base a persuasive argument like this on such faulty reasoning.

scardine 10y ago
I'm not a biologist, but DDT is very effective against larvae (including fish seed), with I think is a good reason to place strong controls on its use (because the DDT sprayed over crops will end up in the rivers). According to [an article in Gismodo][1], In 1971 two people in North Hollywood started eating DDT pills every day. That's right, they willingly swallowed 10mg of poison every single day for three months. In front of witnesses. From the Associated Press: > Robert Loibl and his wife, Louise, hold 10-milligram capsules of DDT which they took in front of witnesses for 93 days at lunch time, June 10, 1971. Loibl said their total dosage was more than the average person consumes in 83 years. He said his wife's dandruff disappeared, their appetites perked up and they feel better. Loibl said they just wanted to call attention to the public that DDT was safe. [1]: https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/12/these-people-took-ddt-pills-in-the-1970s-to-prove-it-was-safe/#R7vW5olFepe1Toz5.99
- DrScump 10y ago
  This reminds me of CA Conservation Corps director B.T. Collins[0], who drank malathion to reassure those being exposed to spraying in 1981. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malathion#General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malathion#General
grabcocque 10y ago
The theobromine in chocolate is highly toxic to dogs, but is what makes humans feel good after eating it. It's an argument which is so demonstrably wrong that it beggars belief he would ever have thought he could get away with it.

dvdhnt 10y ago

Totally thought this was a wrestling article at first glance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT_(professional_wrestling) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT_(professional_wrestling) Oh, my late 90s childhood, how I miss the.

scardine 10y ago

The 1962 book "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson was instrumental at affecting public opinion against [DDT][1] and other pesticides culminating on [banning DDT all over the world][2]. While Carlson has many detractors, ecology militants would label them as being mercenaries at service of industrial interests. From "[Bring Back DDT, and Science With It!][3]" by Marjorie Mazel Hecht: > The campaign to ban [DDT][6] got its start with the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962. Carson’s popular book was a fraud. She played on people’s emotions, and to do so, she selected and falsified data from scientific studies, as entomologist Dr. J. Gordon Edwards has documented in his analysis of the original scientific studies that Carson cited. From "[DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud][5]" by Dr. J. Gordon Edwards: > The chemical compound that has saved more human lives than any other in history, [DDT][6], was banned by order of one man, the head of the U.S. [Environmental Protection Agency][7] (EPA). Public pressure was generated by one popular book and sustained by faulty or fraudulent research. Widely believed claims of carcinogenicity, toxicity to birds, anti-androgenic properties, and prolonged environmental persistence are false or grossly exaggerated. The worldwide effect of the U.S. ban has been millions of preventable deaths.. All my life I was told [DDT][6] (and pesticides in general) accumulates on the body across the whole food chain with severe consequences to the environment. But is [DDT][6] really significantly less harmful than the current [EPA][8] official position? From [TOXICOLOGICAL PROFILE FOR DDT, DDE, and DDD][9]. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES - Public Health Service - Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry > Numerous studies have been conducted on the effects of DDT and related compounds in a variety of animal species, but the human data are somewhat limited. Most of the information on health effects in humans comes from studies of workers in DDT-manufacturing plants or spray applicators who had occupational exposure to DDT over an extended period and also from some controlled exposure studies with volunteers. Epidemiological studies of the general population are also available. Because of limitations inherent to all epidemiological studies, disease causality cannot be determined from them; however, epidemiological studies have been conducted that allow the evaluation of the potential role of DDT and related compounds in specific health outcomes. My conclusion? There's no doubt that DDT has many negative health effects but I'm not sure the ban is justified and I would like to see more studies on this substance - but as often is the case with recreational drugs, nobody wants to pay the political price for funding studies about "devilish" chemicals. For example, could DDT prevent the hundreds of microcephaly cases in Brazilian babies attributed to the recent Zika virus outbreak? [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Restrictions_on_usage [3]: http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/DDT.html#The%20Silent%20Spring%20Fraud [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT [5]: http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf [6]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT [7]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Protection_Agency [8]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Protection_Agency [9]: http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp35.pdf

cjensen 10y ago

The problem with DDT isn't that it hurt higher animals directly. The problem was that it is a very stable molecule that doesn't decay well over time. It built up in the food chain and killed birds which eat fish and birds which eat other birds. There are plenty of fine pesticides now which work well on mosquitoes. Since the newer pesticides decay, they don't build up in the food chain. Talk of bringing back DDT is silly.

scardine 10y ago
These are claims from "Silent Spring" but many sources argue that most of it was entirely made up by Carlson[1], with no scientific basis. Personally I think those are overly broad claims and demand strong studies and proofs. [1]: http://scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=309&Itemid=263
- throwaway91111 10y ago
  Yea, but we also have plenty of pesticides that aren't tainted. Why not use them?
  - gumby 10y ago
    Your statement may be true but doesn't refute the post you were replying to. Rather it is orthogonal. In addition, if the "taint" is incorrect then DDT could be a wonder. (Actually I am not DDT fan, but I do know how to make an argument)
    - astrodust 10y ago
      That's less an argument and more a "what if?" assertion.
    - throwaway91111 10y ago
      I mean, I wasn't trying to refute the parent comment; it is true that we should know more about DDT.
  - 10y ago

Animats 10y ago

DDT used to be used in construction, to prevent bedbugs. Sprayed inside walls before the wallboard went on, it killed bedbugs and other insects for decades. Modern insecticides are biodegradable and won't work long-term like that. It's agricultural use that was the problem. That used far larger quantities and put DDT into agricultural runoff.

whyenot 10y ago
Imidclopirid is currently used to control bed bugs and also sprayed on animal bedding to kill lice and other insect parasites. While it has other problems (honeybees) it doesn't bioaccumulate like DDT does. Why would we ever want to go back to DDT, knowing what we know now.

TempOSfan 10y ago

Haha, just in the wake of the Monsanto email scandal we get "legalize DDT" thinkpieces. Complete with intellectual-yet-stupid contrarian ycombinator comments about how awesome mass spraying non-biodegradable poisons is. Also: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160624150813.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160624150813.h... >In light of this evidence, NECSI says the cause of microcephaly in Brazil should be reconsidered. One possibility that has been raised is the pesticide pyriproxyfen, which is applied to drinking water in some parts of Brazil to kill the larvae of the mosquitos that transmit Zika. Pyriproxyfen is an analogue for insect juvenile hormone which is cross reactive with retinoic acid, which is known to cause microcephaly. A physicians group in Brazil and Argentina, the Swedish Toxicology Sciences Research Center, and NECSI have called for further studies of the potential link between pyriproxyfen and microcephaly.

grabcocque 10y ago

I note its molecular structure looks like MC Hammer https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/DDT_to_DDD_and_DDE.svg/1326px-DDT_to_DDD_and_DDE.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/DD... DDT: you (shouldn't) touch this

sooheon 10y ago
This is a beautiful finding, thank you for this.
LordKano 10y ago
I don't know why this isn't already a meme but it should be.

borkborkbork 10y ago

*Alternative

adamsea 10y ago

The article is a strange one, it's not really about DDT, but uses DDT to look at how we tell stories to shape our understanding of the past. From the article: "But the fears didn’t fade away. In the spring of 1949 headlines across the country carried the news that DDT had found its way into the nation’s dairy supply and that the “slow, insidious poison” was building up in human bodies. The following year, and for the rest of the 1950s, DDT became a focus of congressional hearings about the safety of the food supply. FDA scientist Arnold J. Lehman testified that small amounts of DDT were being stored in human fat and accumulating over time and that, unlike with the older poisons, no one knew what the consequences would be. Physician Morton Biskind shared his concern that DDT was behind a new epidemic, so-called virus X (an epidemic later attributed to chlorinated naphthalene, a chemical in farm machinery lubricants). Pesticide-eschewing farmers, such as Louis Bromfield, testified they simply could not meet the demand for spray-free crops from Heinz, Campbell’s, A&P, and other companies—all of which were themselves trying to meet the demands of consumers worried about pesticides generally, and specifically the ubiquitous and well-publicized DDT. By the time Rachel Carson detailed DDT’s harm to falcons, salmon, eagles, and other forms of wildlife in Silent Spring, a good number of Americans had been demanding more information about the insecticide’s ill effects for the better part of two decades. And yet to this day that’s not how we talk about DDT’s past. Instead, we tell the story of a chemical whose powers were so awe-inspiring that no one gave any thought to its downsides—at least not until they were brought to light by one renegade scientist. It’s a narrative that gave Americans a hero for the latter part of the 20th century, a female scientist and writer smart enough and brave enough to take on the establishment and win. It’s a story about the power of social movements to remake society for the better. And it’s a story of a nation reformed, able to set aside hubris for reason."

HarryHirsch 10y ago
It’s a narrative that gave Americans a hero for the latter part of the 20th century, a female scientist and writer smart enough and brave enough to take on the establishment and win. It’s a story about the power of social movements to remake society for the better. That was an enlightening sentence. I had been asking myself for years just why DDT would be such a touchstone for the conservative/libertarian faction, even though it's so well known that the compound bioaccumulates and becomes concentrated in fatty tissue as it is moved through the food chain. It's not the action of the compound, it's the fear of citizen action!

Ericson2314 10y ago

Hmm, a nagging concern about DDT that doesn't result in changed behavior sure reminds me of privacy and the internet. Only crisis defeats convenience.

rplst8 10y ago

I've heard people say that banning DDT caused more human death than all of our wars throughout history combined.