DDT Wars: Rescuing Our National Bird, Preventing Cancer, and Creating the Environmental Defense Fund

by Charles F. Wurster

During the early weeks of the hearing there was objection by McLean to the term “biocide” when used by several scientists in reference to DDT.

Taft Pierce of the Orkin Exterminating Company, who testified that DDT is especially useful for killing mice and bats.

We didn’t bother to point out that mice and bats are mammals, not insects, proving that DDT is a biocide as well as an insecticide. The DDT defenders had shot themselves in the foot.

“the most abundant synthetic pollutant in the global ecosystem

The reproduction of predatory birds became a major issue in the presentations in Madison, overshadowing the direct mortality of smaller songbirds.

Peregrine Falcon Populations: Their Biology and Decline, documenting the widespread and severe decline of predatory birds.

. Even more startling was the coincidence that DDT had been introduced on a large scale into the world environment shortly after World War II, in 1946–1947. DDT use was immediately followed by eggshell thinning on two continents.

“Our American bald eagle—national emblem of this country—is a very sick bird.”

Benjamin Franklin described it as “a bird of bad moral character,”

1940 the Bald Eagle Protection Act became law, protecting both the Bald and Golden Eagles because the immature birds of both species are similar and not immediately identifiable

The Bald Eagle does not have a white head and tail until it is five years old.

Capital Times read “Scientist Warns of DDT Peril to Sex Life.” One never knows how the media will handle a story, but that headline certainly got some attention.

Stickel reported the controlled experiments that established the cause-and-effect relationship between DDT and/or dieldrin and thin-shelled eggs.

Stickel’s testimony was brief but crucial, proving conclusively that DDT and DDE caused thin-shelled eggs and reproductive failure.

With assistance from Carter, the photo of a Bald Eagle nest with a single chick and one unhatched, thin-shelled egg that Hickey had introduced into evidence appeared on the cover of Science on February 7, 1969

Our case was getting more and more media attention. Public education was an important part of our strategy.

On April 17, 1969, Michigan became the first state to ban all sales of DDT. Our legally unsuccessful suit in late 1967 had set in motion a chain reaction, and the dominoes continued to fall.

We dreamed that maybe, someday, we would win by winning in court, but that was destined to be a few years in the future.

“one cannot conclude that DDT is absolutely safe for human use.”

if one can extrapolate data from animals to man, then one would say that a change in these liver enzymes probably does occur in man.”

“should not be done on the worldwide population.”

He indicated that women excrete a higher proportion of ingested DDT into their milk than do cows and that nursing infants receive about twice the maximum daily intake of DDT compounds recommended by the World Health Organization.

Lofroth’s testimony we gained the impression that European countries had recognized the scientific case against DDT and were taking measures to control it, which had not happened in the United States.

They concluded that although PCBs were powerful enzyme inducers in the birds, they did not correlate with shell thinning of White Pelican eggs.

Of 114 million pounds made in 1968, about two thirds was exported. In large lots DDT cost at that time about 17 cents per pound; its total value in 1968 in the United States was $20 million.

He described DDT as an “ecologically crude material … developed by chemists and toxicologists … with no ecological thought whatsoever” and “exploited largely by people who were thinking in terms of their economics…

DeBach (1964) described DDT as a highly disruptive material in an agro-ecosystem and told how it causes outbreaks of mites and scale insects by killing their natural enemies.

“The pest control operator, once the applications have been made, pretty well forgets the problem…. The ecologist, on the other hand, is concerned with entire … ecosystems. He has no particular restrictions.”

This interdisciplinary systems analysis and model became a major paper published in Science a year later (Harrison et al., 1970). Since then this modeling technique has been expanded to make projections of the distribution, uptake, and metabolism of many different pollutants, metals, and radioactive isotopes in the United States and around the world.

Seeking to ban or reduce sales of a profitable product is not a good way to make friends with its maker.

Farm Chemicals (January 1969) said we were a “parade of beards” (several of us did have beards), “a strange assortment of characters,” and an “arrogant collection of lawyers and pseudo-scientists … [who] would abolish a great system and offer nothing in return [except] chaos.

EDF knows that in a scientific hearing, their so-called scientists would be laughed out of the room. That’s why they resort to legal hocus pocus!”

they [EDF] succeed, their triumph will be shared not only by the gypsy moth, but also by the rednecked cane borer, climbing cutworm, carrot weevil, cabbage looper, onion maggot, darkling beetle, white grub and the rest of the estimated 210 insect pests for which, in most cases, DDT is the sole known means of control.

What the environmentalists are seeking would be a major disaster, both at home and abroad. To deny the product to such nations as India would constitute, in the words of one scientist, ‘an act of genocide.’”

Dr. Wurster … one of the master minds behind the disgraceful Wisconsin DDT Hearings, … is well-known within the scientific community for his vitriolic attacks on biologists who disagree with him…. [Wurster was] instrumental in founding the now extremely powerful and wealthy Environmental Defense Fund.

Character assassination works that way.

EDF came away from it with the sense that we were going to win in Wisconsin—that is, that DDT would be declared a pollutant of the state’s waters.

The general tone of this publicity was that we were a group of well-prepared and competent scientists versus a poorly prepared industry with weak excuses for their product.

The characterization rankles many of the scientists involved here [in Madison], leading some to suggest that the industry this time has underestimated its opposition. Indeed, [EDF] spearheaded the case against DDT with expert testimony from reputable scientists brought in from all over the country.

Vic Yannacone demonstrated a substantial grasp of the science behind our case, and he was brutally effective at nullifying incorrect or deceptive statements by opposing witnesses.

Van Susteren ruled that “DDT and its analogs are … environmental pollutants within the definition of … Wisconsin statutes, … contaminating and rendering unclean and impure the air, land and waters of the state and making the same injurious to public health and deleterious to fish, bird and animal life.

zero-tolerance level in the environment as the only safe level for the protection of human health and wildlife resources.

EDF submitted this ruling to the USDA, to the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and to the pending EDF litigation on DDT in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in Washington, DC, to supplement the already extensive documentation it had provided.

Environmental awareness and concerns were rapidly increasing. Air and water pollution were increasingly severe.

People were apprehensive about pesticides. The Bald Eagle, national symbol, was disappearing. The first Earth Day was launched in 1970.

the National Environmental Policy Act passed Congress almost unanimously and became law on January 1, 1970; the Clean Air Act became law in 1970, the Clean Water Act in 1972, and the Endangered Species Act in 1973; and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act was rewritten in 1972.

Most of those trustees were going about their normal lives with EDF concerns more like a hobby than a profession.

We needed new actions to keep the DDT issue and EDF alive or all our gains could be lost. Trustees were scattered, and I was frustrated.

The committee numbered more than 200 scientists by then.

It would have been more accurate to call EDF a “group,” as the media often did. Our board of trustees had shrunk to nine with the resignation of Tony Taormina, but it went back to ten with the addition of Roland C. Clement, the vice president of the National Audubon Society.