DDT between beneficial and destructive Throughout the history, humans have faced a lot of problems, but the worst of all of these are the problems made by humans themselves. Every day we try to discover something new to help our society and to help us survive in the environment that we are living in. We use technology and chemicals as an example to come up with anything that can benefit us and realize its purpose. We started to have problems with mosquitoes, so scientists from all over the world collaborated to develop something new and different, and they succeeded.
They created DDT, the most effective weapon they have ever created against insects. It was an amazing invention for the people back then. Once a bug walks on surface with DDT, it seems to paralyze the bug and kills it right after. DDT was first used in WWII to avoid malaria and typhus because more soldiers died because from these diseases than by the actual war. So, if DDT is beneficial, why did it become a problem? Some people are still wondering if DDT is beneficial or destructive, and we cannot really make any assumptions without looking at some data and facts regarding DDT.
We started to use DDT and found it to be helpful for agriculture and stopping some diseases. However we started to abuse using it without knowing the side effects that it has on human beings and how it can affect our society. DDT became a huge problem that faced our environment later on because of how much pollution it was causing. The problem of DDT was its abuse by man, mostly farmers, not by using it. Unfortunately man also used technology to overuse DDT by using planes and cars to spray DDT on all the farms. Although it is beneficial to the agriculture because it kills the insects, overusing it made us realize how toxic it is.
Pesticides weren’t always thought to be harmful. To the contrary; in 1947, Time Magazine carried an advertisement claiming that DDT was good for people, homes, and farms. It took twenty years for the scientists to know how dangerous it was. From 1945 to 1955, annual pesticide use on farms went from 125 million pounds to over 600 million pounds, soon government agencies began treading even the suburbs with DDT. People thought it was a good thing, because they got actions in solving a problem as they conceived it.
They thought also that a little bit of it is good but a lot of it would be even better, while the government was endorsing it and the chemical industry pushing it very aggressively. Public health department stage demonstrations convinced people that it is safe to use. People started to use DDT as an insect killer in their houses and backyards to avoid insects. In 1957, the government started to use plans to spray DDT in public places, whether people liked or not. Then in 1962, Rachel Carson wrote her groundbreaking book ‘Silent Spring’.
It described how DDT entered the food chain and accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals and also in human beings, causing cancer and genetic damages. “(Joseph4) In her book, “she jolted a prosperous post-war America, a country confident that science and technology were leading the way to a future, in which diseases could be overcome. In no small part thanks to a new generation of powerful pesticides, but in her book she warned that this progress had a price. “(Johnson1) Some side effects started to appear that were not in its favor. Birds started to fall down from the sky, after being poisoned by DDT.
Not only that, it made them stop reproducing or caused them to produce thin-shelled eggs. Not only birds, but also fishes; DDT is soluble in water, so the sea water might contain a high concentration of DDT that can cause enough pollution and act as a poison to wildlife under water. Not to mention that it pollutes the air in general. Although it is hard to collect data and be sure that these are the side effects of DDT, because it might be because of some other chemicals that we are exposed to, we discovered that DDT can cause premature birth or low birth weight, cancer, and liver problems.
If someone gets exposed to DTT, it takes 10-20 years to be DDT free, and the only ways to avoid DDT are avoid eating too much animal fat and eat smaller and younger fish. Although, Rachel Carson’s facts were unsupported by experimental evidence, Silent Spring, after becoming the best seller, influenced the environmental movement and started a revolution; the people started to realize how toxic DDT is and started to ask the government to take action to ban it. People started to do riots and press conference to keep their problems alive in the news and they had scientists with them to support them with scientific evidence.
Of course the USDA did not want to agree with Carson because they didn’t want to show how harm DDT is because they were endorsing it. And finally after 10 years from publishing the book, DDT was officially banned from the US. “In 1972, EPA issued a cancellation order for DDT based on its adverse environmental effects, on humans and nature. ” (EPA1) After looking at all the data collected regarding the side effects of DDT, besides the objection of people and Silent Spring, EPA decided to finally ban it from the US. However, some people were afraid that insects might become resistant after banning DDT.
A large population that didn’t get to see the real effects of DDT said that banning it was a bad idea that would cause the increase of malaria in Africa and other countries, supporting that by the fact that 30 to 60 million children died because of malaria after that, and that we would replace it with more toxic chemicals anyway. But if we think about it, DDT was killing people slowly while they didn’t notice it and people wouldn’t decrease its use if the government told them to do so, so the right decision was to ban it. Since 1996, EPA has been participating in international negotiations to control the use of DDT use around the world.
The UN negotiated a treaty to enact global bans or restrictions on persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that includes DDT. The convention includes exemption for the use of DDT to control mosquitoes and malaria. In September 2006, the World Health Organization WHO declared its support for the indoor use of DDT in Africa countries where malaria remains a major health problem, citing that benefits of the pesticide outweigh the health and environmental risks, so they agreed to the idea of banning DDT for all uses except for malaria control. DDT problem is not because of DDT itself, but because of its use by us.
The problem started because people never asked about the side effect, they thought it was a good thing, all their problems were getting solved (mosquitos/ malaria) and that was what they cared about. DDT itself is beneficial. However by using it the way we did and abusing it led us to this whole crisis. If we know how to use it the right way then there is no problem with using it, if its use is only limited to indoor use to make sure it doesn’t affect others. Finally, DDT is banned from the US, however some people are still using it but that doesn’t affect our society since it is used the right way.
