A Brief History
On October 28, 1948, Swiss chemist Paul Muller was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology for his work in 1939 demonstrating the effectiveness of DDT as an insecticide.
Digging Deeper
As you can tell by the date of the research, World War II interfered with normal international scientific intercourse, resulting in the delay in recognition for Muller. The DDT itself did not wait for the end of the war to make itself useful, and was put to widespread use, mainly by the United States, to greatly reduce the incidence of insect borne diseases in war torn lands, especially malaria, one of the world’s great killers.
Millions of lives were saved during the war, and afterwards DDT became a common insecticide used on food crops as well as for mosquito control. Between 1950 and 1980 and average of over 40,000 metric tons of the stuff was used worldwide, with about 600,000 metric tons used in the US between World War II and 1972, including the record year of 1963 when 82,000 metric tons were used in the US.
Obviously, dumping so much toxic chemical on the environment would have to have some impact on people, plants, and animals, and little was done to research these effects prior to the massive use of the infamous insecticide. In 1962 the Rachel Carson book, Silent Spring, was printed and the miracle compound was given a new perspective by which to be viewed. Carson claimed DDT caused cancer in people and damaged animals and bird, especially as DDT is not particularly water soluble and does not readily break down (half life up to 30 years) in the environment. It has a tendency to accumulate in animals and birds that ingest it, and Carson blamed it for weakening the egg shells of predatory birds such as eagles and falcons, resulting in species threatening reduction in numbers of those birds. Of course, broadcasting insecticide indiscriminately also has the tendency to kill helpful and beneficial insects (such as bees and butterflies) as well as harmful ones such as mosquitoes and locusts. On top of these problems, DDT was losing some of its effectiveness as over reliance on it was allowing certain insects to develop resistance to its deadly effects.
Largely as a result of Carson’s book, in 1972 the use of DDT in the US was banned, and in 2001 the Stockholm Convention was signed by many nations banning the use of DDT and several other chemicals worldwide, effective as of 2004. Today, only India continues to manufacture and widely use the stuff. Elsewhere, it can only be used on a limited basis for disease control, but not for agriculture. DDT is considered a toxin to humans, but not severely so. It concentrates in fat and in the endocrine system, including gonads, and hinders testosterone production and disrupts normal hormone production. It is considered something of a carcinogen, but not to an extreme, and its defenders claim no connection to cancer has been proven.
Advocates of the use of DDT point to the millions of lives already saved, and the possible millions of lives lost (20 million by some claims) because of banning its use. They claim the effects on humans and the environment are minimal, and in any case are outweighed by the positive benefits of using the chemical. They also point out that substitute insecticides also have environmental impact.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: What do you think? Should DDT be banned, or just used more carefully? What is your opinion on this life and death matter?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Carson, Rachel, Linda Lear, et al. Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.
