DDT
organochloride known for its insecticidal properties
Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) is an organochloride, first synthesized in 1874 by Othmar Zeidler. In 1939 Paul Hermann Müller discovered that DDT is an effective insecticide. In WW II, from 1943 to 1945, DDT was used to kill mosquitos and lice to effectively limit the spread of malaria and typhus. In the 1950s and 1960s, DDT was widely used to control insects. However, DDT is a persistent organic pollutant — harmful to birds and mammals and readily adsorbed by soils and sediments. During the 1970s and 1980s, many countries banned the agricultural use of DDT.
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Quotes
edit- One of the most sinister features of DDT and related chemicals is the way they are passed on from one organism to another through all the links of the food chains. For example, fields of alfalfa are dusted with DDT; meal is later prepared from the alfalfa and fed to hens, the hens lay eggs which contain DDT. Or the hay, containing residues of 7 to 8 parts per million, may be fed to cows. The DDT will turn up in the milk in the amount of about 3 parts per million, but in butter made from this milk the concentration may run to 65 parts per million. Through such a process of transfer, what started out as a very small amount of DDT may end as a heavy concentration.
- Rachel Carson, Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2002. ISBN 0-618-24906-0. (quote from pp. 22–23) Silent Spring, 1st edition, 1962
- In the late 1960s, two chemists began to argue head to head in newspapers, journals, and courtrooms about a pressing question inspired by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring: ... namely, should the pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) be banned in the U.S.? The protracted debate between Stony Brook University professor Charles Wurster and University of California at Berkeley professor Thomas Jukes initially concerned the pesticide's effects on nontarget wildlife, including robins, hawks, salmon, and crabs. As the debate gained momentum and visibility, however, it became clear that it concerned DDT's effects on another species as well: humans. Jukes argued that few technological breakthroughs had done as much as DDT to save human lives, by protecting millions from malaria, typhus, and starvation. Wurster, on the other hand, maintained that DDT threatened the lives of millions more by destroying the ecosystems on which humanity depended for its well-being. Wurster argued that DDT's effects on wildlife were a harbinger of what was to come for humankind. Significantly, he also denounced the chemical as a pervasive likely carcinogen.
- Elena Conis (2010). "Debating the health effects of DDT: Thomas Jukes, Charles Wurster, and the fate of an environmental pollutant". Public Health Reports 125 (2): 337–342.
- A mosquito was heard to complain
That a chemist had poisoned her brain
The cause of her sorrow
Was para-dichloro-
Diphenyltrichloroethane.- Sir John Cornforth as quoted by Sir Alan R. Battersby and Douglas W. Young in (2015). "Sir John Warcup Cornforth AC CBE. 7 September 1917 – 8 December 2013". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 62: 19–57. ISSN 0080-4606. DOI:10.1098/rsbm.2015.0016. (quote from p. 33)
- As an information specialist, Carson was in daily contact with wildlife biologists in those Fish and Wildlife divisions concerned with predator and pest control. They, along with the biologists at Patuxent Research Refuge in nearby Laurel, Maryland, were alarmed by some of the the early test results of the new synthetic pesticide dichlorodiphenyl-tricholorethane, known as DDT. Carson was particularly well informed on the progress of this research because her government mentor, friend, and former supervisor Elmer Higgins was collaborating with noted biological Clarence Cottam on a series of research reports on the impact of DDT on fish and other wildlife. These reports came to Carson's desk for editing, and their conclusions were the subject of debate and discussion around the office.
- Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2009. ISBN 978-0-547-23823-4. (quote from p. 118)
- The robin was twitching, tremoring, convulsing uncontrollably, and peeping occasionally. The student handed the bird to me, and in a few minutes it was dead in my hands. It was April 23, 1963, and I was in my laboratory at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, when the student walked in with the bird. A week earlier the elm trees of Hanover had been sprayed with the insecticide DDT to control the spread of Dutch elm disease by elm bark beetles.
- Charles F. Wurster, "A New England Town Sprays Its Elm Trees with DDT". DDT Wars: Rescuing Our National Bird, Preventing Cancer, and Creating the Environmental Defense Fund. Oxford University Press. 2015. ISBN 978-0-19-021941-3. (quote from p. 1)
