DDT was synthesized in a Swiss laboratory
in 1874 by Othmar Zeidler. For 65
years, nobody found a use for it.
Then in 1939, chemist Paul Muller at JR Geigy Co.
accidentally discoverd that it was a very
effective insecticide. In 1948, he won a
Nobel prize for that discovery.
The US Dept of Agriculture sent it
to their lab in Orlando, FL for testing on bugs.
(That was before Disney World and before
the draining of the everglades) and Orlando
was teeming with mosquitos and other bug
life. They discovered that DDT was very
effective as well as persistent - - one
spray would kill bugs in a given area for months.
Americans in the South Pacific were constantly
being infected with malaria. General
MacArthur found that up to 2/3rds of his
troops on a given day were incapacitated primarily
by malaria and other insect born diseases.
My cousin was on the first troopship to arrive
in Australia in 1942 and spent most of
the war in the South Pacific and was tormented for
the rest of his life by malaria and it's
after effects which probably contributed to his premature
death. typhus is mostly transmitted
by lice and MacArthur and other officers were very
worried about that, remembering typhus
killed thousands of troops in WWI.
Merck was the only company known to have
figured out how to mass produce chloral hydrate,
which contained some of the essential
ingredients in DDT.So, the government went to them
for an emergency production of massive
amounts of DDT.
Joseph Jacobs was a Merck chemist given
the job of retrofitting an old plant to produce the
stuff. In the rush to get DDT to the troops,
a valve was accidentally left open and Jacobs got
a bath in hot DDT. Eyes, ears, nose, mouth
- - all over. In the process, he injested quite a
bit of the stuff.
DDT served a very important role in winning
WWII. When they were about to invade
another island, they bombed not only with
explosives, but with DDT to protect the
troops when they landed. It was
used not only in the South Pacific, but when troops
advancing up the Italian peninsula approached
Naples, they found that there was a Typhus
epidemic in full swing. They hauled
in massive amounts of DDT and dusted the whole town
with it - - stopping the epidemic
in it's tracks, saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of
Italian civilians as well as the troops.
Pesticide critic, Edmund Russell, acknowledged in his
book, War and Nature that it was
the first time a typhus epidemic had been stopped in winter
- - normally, it didn't go away until
warm weather got people bathing and wearing lighter clothes.
In 1944, US Marines invading Saipan, fell
ill with Denge fever - a mosquito-borne disease.
DDT was used to stop that epidemic.
At the end of the war, DDT performed another
very important task. When British troops
liberated the Bergen- Belsen concentration
camp, they found a raging typhus epidemic was
killing 500 people a day. They dusted
each survivor completely with DDT. stopping the
epidemic and saving the lives of many
of them. [Ref: Paul Kemp, The British Army and the
liberation of Bergen-Belsen, April
1945.]
DDT saved the lives of millions of people
all over the world from 1943 to 1972. Then one
woman put a stop to it. Rachel Carson
wrote the book,
Silent Spring in which she told the
lie that DDT was developed "in the course
of developing agents of chemical warfare"
This permanently fixed in the minds of
many people that it was a deadly poison. She said
DDT stood for "double death twice".
As Carson warned, Joseph Jacobs did die
- - Sixty years after his DDT bath, at age 88, after
a very productive and healthy life.
J. Gordon Edwards used to lecture about DDT and to
demonstrate, ate spoonfuls of it publicly.
He, too died - - at age 84 while mountain climbing
in California. Edwards was one of the
witnesses against the ban before the EPA. (Rachael
Carson died in 1964 at age 57 - never
to see the damage her book caused)
In 1972, the EPA held hearings on DDT and
the hearings examiner, Edmund Sweeney,
concluded that, "DDT is not a carcinogenic
hazard to man" and his decision was that
the "evidence presented provide no
basis for banning DDT". However, Ruckelshaus,
then head of the EPA (and former Weyerhaeuser
CEO) made a political decision to ban
it anyway. His aides claim he never
attended a single one of the meetings nor read any
of the transcripts.
DDT was very effective in killing the beetle
which is the actual source of what is called,
"Dutch Elm Disease". After it was
banned, most of the Elms in the US died.
Malaria plagues Aftrica and several hundred
thousand people there die each year from
malaria at the same time, millions are
debilitated by it's effects.
Recently, the UN has decided to support
the use of DDT for indoors irradication of insects
in Afrtica, where malaria and other insect
born diseased have killed millions of people over
the past 30 years, largely due to the
banning of DDT. Unfortunately, in much of Africa,
indoors is outdoors.
Part of the problem is that some African
countries are dependent on sale of agricultural
exports. Some countries refuse to
accept any foodstufs that DDT has been used on while
they were growing. So, another case where
prejudice
trumps science and people die.
You may think of malaria as a "tropical
disease" which we don't have to worry about. While
it is much more common in the tropics,
it is found today in the USA and at one time was
prevalent in most of this country
(As far North as Minnesota). We have learned to use window
screens and have drained swamps
to get rid of mosquitos. But, enironmental laws and
restrictions are rebuilding swamps ( ~
Do you think mosquitos won't hatch in a swamp if it's
called a "wetland"?) and we may,
indeed see a rise in malaria as well as Rocky Mountain
Spotted fever, West Nile disease, Bubonic
plague, Encephalitis, Lyme disease - - - -
- - and perhaps bioterror diseases that
are insect spread. After all, the terrorists will need
a means of spreading their bio-terror.
Just sprinkling a few bits of the stuff around won't do-
but insects will serve their evil intent
just fine.
Mosquitos prey on birds. So, if bird
flu does become a world epidemic, you can thank Carson
and Greenpeace, World Wildllife Fund ,
Sierra Club and various other environmental groups
for that.
Above all, we need to use some real
science in the creation and cancellation of
environmental rules - - - Hysterical
rants just don't cut it.
Some of you are probably thinking that's
just 'Ol' Marv quoting some his Right Wing sources.
So, here is a short reading list for you.:
1- Page 16 of Rachel
Carson's book for the quote
2- Wikipedia, the internet
encyclopedia - they have 15 pages on DDT
3- Read DDT: killer
of killers, by professers O.T.Zimmerman and Irvin Lavine - pp 1-29
[chemical engineering professors at the Universities of New Hampshire and
North Dakota]
4- Read War and
Nature - P127 by anti DDT activist Edmund Russell
5- Malcolm Gladwell,
The Mosquito Killer, - p 42-44
6- Paul Kemp,
the
British Army and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, April 1945
It is quite possible that money has
a role in the banning of DDT. The formula is so old
that even in the 1940s, if was in the
public domain - so no manufacturer had a patent on
it. Other, newer insecticides
were patented and corporate pressure may have had a role.
Also, when Ruckelshaus was CEO of Weyerhauser,
the environmental movement
contributed greatly to their bottom
line and he may have felt obligated to return the favor.