environment DDT
Like meeting an old friend, it's a pleasure to see DDT back in the popular press after all these years, immersed as always in factual errors and mis-drawn conclusions.But its reappearance may help to remind us how threats to the environment were dealt with.
My first recall of DDT was a breathless article about it in the Readers' Digest, (approximately 1947) suggesting we could say good bye to house flies and mosquitoes----just about all our other insect pests. As the war wound down, DDT was indeed an important tool in the Pacific where disease-carrying bugs were readily controlled by this new wonder chemical.
History shows that DDT, discovered in the lab by a Swiss scientist before the War, was indeed a wonder but like all 'miracles'it turned out to be a mixed blessing and an agent for change in the way we thought about the environment. It was also about this time (early 1950's)that poor Rachel Carson, dying of terminal cancer, produced her book, 'The Sea Around Us'--- an effort to alert us to the need for better stewardship of the environment. Ultimately, the EPA was born as we thought better of some of our wasteful, polluting ways.
True, DDT was a potent weapon,first against flies, mosquitoes, and some of our other pests, but soon Nature came forward with a lesson. We learned about insect resistance, and that a broad- spectrum killer like DDT couldn't tell a honeybee from a gypsy moth. Because DDT appeared to be harmless to Man; so promising and profitable for big pesticide companies, it was soon over-used, carelessly dispensed and finally discontinued in many instances.
Some of us have attempted to estimate how many lives were lost (or could have been saved) if malarial mosquitoes could have been controlled were DDT use not been discontined. From there we can go on to estimate how many of Napoleon's troops might not have died of louse-born cholera, if they'd had DDT. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. But DDT had quite a run at the time and even today stands as an important part of our progress toward protecting the environment.
My first recall of DDT was a breathless article about it in the Readers' Digest, (approximately 1947) suggesting we could say good bye to house flies and mosquitoes----just about all our other insect pests. As the war wound down, DDT was indeed an important tool in the Pacific where disease-carrying bugs were readily controlled by this new wonder chemical.
History shows that DDT, discovered in the lab by a Swiss scientist before the War, was indeed a wonder but like all 'miracles'it turned out to be a mixed blessing and an agent for change in the way we thought about the environment. It was also about this time (early 1950's)that poor Rachel Carson, dying of terminal cancer, produced her book, 'The Sea Around Us'--- an effort to alert us to the need for better stewardship of the environment. Ultimately, the EPA was born as we thought better of some of our wasteful, polluting ways.
True, DDT was a potent weapon,first against flies, mosquitoes, and some of our other pests, but soon Nature came forward with a lesson. We learned about insect resistance, and that a broad- spectrum killer like DDT couldn't tell a honeybee from a gypsy moth. Because DDT appeared to be harmless to Man; so promising and profitable for big pesticide companies, it was soon over-used, carelessly dispensed and finally discontinued in many instances.
Some of us have attempted to estimate how many lives were lost (or could have been saved) if malarial mosquitoes could have been controlled were DDT use not been discontined. From there we can go on to estimate how many of Napoleon's troops might not have died of louse-born cholera, if they'd had DDT. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. But DDT had quite a run at the time and even today stands as an important part of our progress toward protecting the environment.
posted by allen at 9:32 AM
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