DDT sat unused for 65 years, then won a Nobel and lost everything
An Austrian chemist first made DDT in 1874 and nobody noticed what it could do. Only in 1939 did Paul Müller discover it killed insects on contact. Within a decade it was protecting wartime troops from typhus and malaria and had earned him a Nobel Prize; within three it was banned from American farms.
Othmar Zeidler's compound is colourless, nearly odourless and almost insoluble in water, yet dissolves readily in fats and oils, which later proved central to its trouble. In insects it forces sodium channels in nerve cells open, so neurons fire uncontrollably until the animal dies. During the second half of World War II it was used to curb typhus and malaria among soldiers and civilians, and Müller received the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The World Health Organization's malaria campaign of the 1950s and 1960s leaned on it heavily.
Americans could buy it from October 1945, and use exploded. From 1950 to 1980 farms worldwide applied more than 40,000 tonnes a year, and roughly 1.8 million tonnes have been produced since the 1940s. US output peaked in 1963 at 82,000 tonnes, from about 15 manufacturers including Monsanto and Ciba, and more than 600,000 tonnes were sprayed in the country before the ban.
Doubts existed from the start, but Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962 crystallised them, questioning the release of poorly tested chemicals and warning of harm to wildlife, especially birds. Carson never demanded an outright ban, yet the public outcry led to one for agricultural use in the United States in 1972. Together with the Endangered Species Act, that ban is credited with bringing the bald eagle and peregrine falcon back from near-extinction in the lower 48 states.
Heavy farm spraying also bred resistant insects, through altered sodium channel genes or boosted detoxifying enzymes. Since 2004 the Stockholm Convention has barred agricultural use worldwide while exempting malaria control under WHO guidance, which requires resistance to be ruled out first. After China stopped making it in 2007, India became the sole producer and the largest user, and only seven other countries, all in Africa, still apply it.
Source: DDT
