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The Excellent Powder: DDT's Political and Scientific History
It is the world's most successful public health insecticide, saving millions upon millions of lives from insect-borne diseases. Yet despite decades of use and thousands of studies on its effects, DDT remains the world's most misunderstood chemical.
Orchestrated, well-financed, earnest, but erroneous campaigns forced most countries to ban DDT without scientific justification. These campaigns created many myths and fears about DDT. This book, The Excellent Powder - DDT's Political and Scientific History, dispels these myths and sets the record straight about this chemical, which continues to save hundred of thousands lives in poor countries today and could save hundreds of thousands more.
Authors Don Roberts and Richard Tren, with the help of Roger Bate and Jennifer Zambone, present the most comprehensive assessment to date of the science, history and public policy of this intriguing and misunderstood chemical.
Despite decades of scientific evidence about how DDT works and the effects it has on human and environmental health, widespread misunderstandings about the nature and function of DDT have fundamental implications for the ongoing use of DDT in malaria control and the development of new and effective replacements.
Roberts and Tren challenge those misunderstandings. Specifically The Excellent Powder delineates how DDT's effectiveness as a public health insecticide lies not how many mosquitoes it kills, but in how many it repels. By keeping malaria-bearing mosquitoes away from the people they could infect, the chemical breaks the cycle of infection and death.
Roberts and Tren refute the popular notion that DDT caused the decline and near extinction of several bird species, such as the bald eagle and peregrine falcon. Reviewing the history of the changing fortunes of these birds in the United States, they find that direct action by man, such as hunting, poisoning and land use changes pushed these bird populations to their nadir. Improved legislation and enforcement of that legislation, along with well-funded programs to reintroduce birds, accounts for their rising abundance in the US. Banning DDT played little or no part in their recovery.
Most importantly, The Excellent Powder reveals that evidence that DDT harms human health is weak, failing the most basic epidemiological criteria required to prove a cause and effect relationship. The evidence that the chemical can save lives however is overwhelming. In spite of this, some activists and researchers continue to undermine the use of DDT in malaria control on the flimsiest and most questionable grounds.
The Excellent Powder provides readers with an absorbing account of the chemical that shaped much of the 20th century and the legacy of which will influence much of the 21st.
Orchestrated, well-financed, earnest, but erroneous campaigns forced most countries to ban DDT without scientific justification. These campaigns created many myths and fears about DDT. This book, The Excellent Powder - DDT's Political and Scientific History, dispels these myths and sets the record straight about this chemical, which continues to save hundred of thousands lives in poor countries today and could save hundreds of thousands more.
Authors Don Roberts and Richard Tren, with the help of Roger Bate and Jennifer Zambone, present the most comprehensive assessment to date of the science, history and public policy of this intriguing and misunderstood chemical.
Despite decades of scientific evidence about how DDT works and the effects it has on human and environmental health, widespread misunderstandings about the nature and function of DDT have fundamental implications for the ongoing use of DDT in malaria control and the development of new and effective replacements.
Roberts and Tren challenge those misunderstandings. Specifically The Excellent Powder delineates how DDT's effectiveness as a public health insecticide lies not how many mosquitoes it kills, but in how many it repels. By keeping malaria-bearing mosquitoes away from the people they could infect, the chemical breaks the cycle of infection and death.
Roberts and Tren refute the popular notion that DDT caused the decline and near extinction of several bird species, such as the bald eagle and peregrine falcon. Reviewing the history of the changing fortunes of these birds in the United States, they find that direct action by man, such as hunting, poisoning and land use changes pushed these bird populations to their nadir. Improved legislation and enforcement of that legislation, along with well-funded programs to reintroduce birds, accounts for their rising abundance in the US. Banning DDT played little or no part in their recovery.
Most importantly, The Excellent Powder reveals that evidence that DDT harms human health is weak, failing the most basic epidemiological criteria required to prove a cause and effect relationship. The evidence that the chemical can save lives however is overwhelming. In spite of this, some activists and researchers continue to undermine the use of DDT in malaria control on the flimsiest and most questionable grounds.
The Excellent Powder provides readers with an absorbing account of the chemical that shaped much of the 20th century and the legacy of which will influence much of the 21st.
- GenresHistory
452 pages, Paperback
First published April 5, 2010
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February 22, 2018
Apparently, DDT isn't the boogeyman we've all been led to believe.
A year or so ago I read a book called Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong. One of the chapters was about DDT, and I was surprised to read that because of the ban on DDT, over a million people die each year from malaria, yellow fever, and other diseases spread by mosquitoes and other biting insects. But wasn't DDT a horrible chemical? Didn't it nearly cause the extinction of birds of prey, like the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon? Apparently not.
The authors explain that DDT is actually a rather tame chemical that had the potential to eliminate diseases such as malaria around the world. It acted NOT by killing the insects, but by repelling them. When sprayed indoors, the mosquitoes that naturally sought food inside homes were repelled even months after the spraying. But surely something so long-lasting was extremely hazardous? Not unless administered in huge doses, and such doses were extremely unlikely to occur. So why was it banned?
Donald Roberts says the war against DDT was initiated primarily by two people: Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring and Paul Ehrlich in his book The Population Bomb. Carson made a number of claims which have since been proven false, and was based mostly on stoking fear. Ehrlich's motivation may have been much more sinister in my opinion. Roberts quotes statements from his book that lowering the death toll from such diseases threatened the world from overpopulation - better to let the poor people in underdeveloped nations die than to have their children live. It's a startling claim, and one that I'd have to research further, but not entirely unbelievable either. And Roberts is quite harsh in his criticism of the environmental movement and its tactics that are heavy on fear-mongering and short on facts.
The book is extensively detailed and quotes many studies to show the effectiveness of DDT in stopping malaria. It goes into extensive detail to show that birds that were claimed to be harmed by DDT were in fact endangered prior to DDT use and that it was not a factor in their declines, nor was the ban a factor in their recoveries. In short, this is an extensively detailed book, and if the information in Pandora's Lab isn't enough for you, take a look at this one.
A year or so ago I read a book called Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong. One of the chapters was about DDT, and I was surprised to read that because of the ban on DDT, over a million people die each year from malaria, yellow fever, and other diseases spread by mosquitoes and other biting insects. But wasn't DDT a horrible chemical? Didn't it nearly cause the extinction of birds of prey, like the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon? Apparently not.
The authors explain that DDT is actually a rather tame chemical that had the potential to eliminate diseases such as malaria around the world. It acted NOT by killing the insects, but by repelling them. When sprayed indoors, the mosquitoes that naturally sought food inside homes were repelled even months after the spraying. But surely something so long-lasting was extremely hazardous? Not unless administered in huge doses, and such doses were extremely unlikely to occur. So why was it banned?
Donald Roberts says the war against DDT was initiated primarily by two people: Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring and Paul Ehrlich in his book The Population Bomb. Carson made a number of claims which have since been proven false, and was based mostly on stoking fear. Ehrlich's motivation may have been much more sinister in my opinion. Roberts quotes statements from his book that lowering the death toll from such diseases threatened the world from overpopulation - better to let the poor people in underdeveloped nations die than to have their children live. It's a startling claim, and one that I'd have to research further, but not entirely unbelievable either. And Roberts is quite harsh in his criticism of the environmental movement and its tactics that are heavy on fear-mongering and short on facts.
The book is extensively detailed and quotes many studies to show the effectiveness of DDT in stopping malaria. It goes into extensive detail to show that birds that were claimed to be harmed by DDT were in fact endangered prior to DDT use and that it was not a factor in their declines, nor was the ban a factor in their recoveries. In short, this is an extensively detailed book, and if the information in Pandora's Lab isn't enough for you, take a look at this one.
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