Soon DDT production was approaching three million pounds a month by the time it was placed on Army supply lists in May 1943, and on Navy lists in January 1944. It was easy to produce and safe to handle. Department of Agriculture entomologists demonstrated beyond question that this new insecticide had tremendous possibilities not only against lice but also against several other noxious insects, such as mosquitoes and houseflies.5 With the help of the War Production Board, DDT was quickly put into large scale production. War with Japan had cut off the major source of supply just as the demand for pyrethrum soared.4 With growing desperation they had been searching for a substitute for pyrethrum, a contact insecticide extracted from Chrysanthemum flowers that was imported chiefly from Japan. Of immediate concern to them, because of the millions of Allied army and navy personnel deployed around the world, was the possible use of DDT for the control of several insect borne diseases: malaria (carried by Anopheles mosquitoes), typhus (carried by body lice) and dysentery and typhoid fever (both carried by houseflies). He persuaded Geigy to send samples to the United States and England and these were received by the Geigy offices in New York and London in November 1942.īritish and American entomologists reviewed the patents with a mixture of hope and some scepticism. de Jonge, noticed that Neocide shipments were going to Germany. In 1940, Geigy patented the formula as a general insecticide and began marketing the substance in two forms: Gesarol, a spray insecticide principally for use against potato beetles and Neocid a dust insecticide for use as a lousicide.3Ī U.S. These successes, however, convinced Geigy that DDT was a powerful synthetic insecticide - fatal on contact in extremely minute quantities to a wide range of insects, yet apparently wholly nontoxic to humans. Müller soon realized he had a powerful insecticide.Īs World War II began in Europe, DDT was successfully tested in Switzerland initially as a dusting powder against potato beetles and later against lice and fleas. He wiped the container clean with an acetone solvent and added more flies these also died. He took some DDT home with him one day and powdered a small amount into a container and noted that it killed flies. Müller’s research technique was to coat the inside of a glass box with whatever chemical he was testing and fill it with houseflies. In 1939 Müller synthesized the chlorinated hydrocarbon dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. He was looking for an insecticide to protect woollens against moths. In 1936 Müller turned his attention to pesticide research. Geigy as a laboratory technologist, where he developed synthetic tanning substances. Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1948 “for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods.”2Ī chemist, Dr. Though he held no medical degree and had never engaged in medical research, Dr. While DDT was first synthesized in 1874, it was not until the 1930s that scientist Paul Hermann Müller, working for a Swiss chemical company, discovered its insecticidal properties. She then realized she would write about DDT.1ĭichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, DDT, is one of the most effective and best known of all of the synthetic insecticides. She was sickened by what she saw - dead and dying fish everywhere, crayfish and crabs dead or staggering as their nervous systems appeared destroyed. The next morning she went through the estuary with the Huckins in their boat. Not long afterward Carson was a house guest at Powder Point when, late in the afternoon, a spraying plane flew over.
One day in January, 1958, Rachel Carson received a long, angry letter from her friend Olga Huckins, describing the deadly effect of DDT spraying for mosquito control over the Huckins’ private two-acre bird sanctuary at Powder Point, in Duxbury, Massachusetts. DDT, which had been effectively used to eradicate malaria carrying mosquitoes, continues to be a major public health problem and effective treatment and prevention efforts are still necessary.
Fifty years later the book and the issues raised remain controversial.
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The impact of DDT on human health received worldwide attention from the general public, political and scientific communities, with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.1 In Silent Spring, Carson described a series of harmful effects on the environment and wildlife resulting from the use of DDT and other similar compounds.
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