
Beyond Silent Spring: An Alternate History of DDT - Hooke
https://www.chemheritage.org/distillations/magazine/beyond-silent-spring-an-alternate-history-of-ddt
======
cjensen
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
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
Yea, but we also have plenty of pesticides that aren't tainted. Why not use
them?

~~~
gumby
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)

~~~
throwaway91111
I mean, I wasn't trying to refute the parent comment; it is true that we
should know more about DDT.

------
grabcocque
I note its molecular structure looks like MC Hammer

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/DD...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/DDT_to_DDD_and_DDE.svg/1326px-
DDT_to_DDD_and_DDE.svg.png)

DDT: you (shouldn't) touch this

~~~
sooheon
This is a beautiful finding, thank you for this.

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LeifCarrotson
> "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.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
Would you expect to find a chimpanzee poison that doesn't hurt people? What
about a rat poison that doesn't hurt people? An insect poison? A fungus
poison? A bacteria poison?

Biological machinery is remarkably well-conserved, to the point where we can
use fish, worms, etc. as reasonable approximations of human biology. Finding
fungus poisons that don't have terrible side effects is in practice very
difficult, and even antibiotics that don't hurt people are pretty tricky. So
it's not terribly faulty reasoning.

~~~
larsiusprime
> What about a rat poison that doesn't hurt people?

You mean Coumadin (Warfarin), the popular blood thinner?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warfarin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warfarin)

It is literally Rat Poison.

~~~
iak8god
Warfarin is also people poison if you take enough. An appropriate clinical
dose is a few milligrams.

~~~
Banthum
Well, anything is people poison if you take enough. Forced consumption of
sufficient water can kill someone.

Toxicity isn't really yes/no, it's always a matter of dosage.

~~~
iak8god
> Well, anything is people poison if you take enough.

Yes, but that's not interesting or really relevant. As someone else pointed
out, Warfarin is people poison _if you take the same amount that 's normally
used to poison rats_.

------
adamsea
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
_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!

~~~
Spooky23
You have to remember that these big moneied interests are 100% self interested
and are often not accountable to anyone, even corporate boards.

Dead birds don't need sanctuaries!

The left wing people do it too. There are plenty of phoney environmental
marches to stop <X> that are really funded by real estate people or others who
stand to lose something.

------
Animats
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
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.

------
bougiefever
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.

~~~
_sbrk
> 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-d...](https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/15583-ddt-
breeds-death)

~~~
LeifCarrotson
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.

------
rplst8
I've heard people say that banning DDT caused more human death than all of our
wars throughout history combined.

------
Ericson2314
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.

------
borkborkbork
*Alternative

------
scardine
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

~~~
whyenot
> For example, could DDT prevent the hundreds of microcephaly cases in
> Brazilian babies attributed to the recent Zika virus outbreak?

Maybe, but there is no evidence that it would work better than a more targeted
approach. DDT kills a lot of different insects, both the good and the bad.
It's like using a sledgehammer when what you really want is a pair of
tweezers.

~~~
scardine
Seems like it worked for the [USA and Europe][1]:

> Prior to 1950, malaria was common in the southern US, infecting 15,000
> people a year and killing about the same number as scarlet fever.

> Beginning in 1947, 4.6 million houses were sprayed in the United States,
> completely eradicating malaria from the country. Similar sprayings
> eradicated malaria from Europe.

> The Center for Disease Control (CDC) began as an organization to eradicate
> malaria. When malaria was gone, it sought other ways to benefit America.
> That’s why it’s located in Atlanta, GA, in the southern US.
    
    
      [1]: http://scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=309&Itemid=263

~~~
whyenot
These points are unsourced "DDT Trivia" in the position paper (which is being
generous) that you cite.

There is no question that DDT helped with eradicating malaria from the US, but
to give it all the credit to DDT seems a little generous to me. Malaria was
also brought under control in Panama years before DDT was even known to be a
pesticide. Cholorquin and cultural changes were also important.

[https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/](https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/)

~~~
joecool1029
Neat article on eradication of the A. aegypti mosquito in most of South
America. [http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/while-brazil-was-
eradic...](http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/while-brazil-was-eradicating-
zika-mosquitoes-america-made-them-into-weapons)

The awesome effect that DDT had that most other pesticides didn't have is the
excito-repellent effect, recent study on that:
[https://malariajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/14...](https://malariajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2875-13-131)

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TempOSfan
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.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160624150813.htm)

>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.

------
dvdhnt
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.

