Reassessing DDTs: Unveiling the Untold Story of a Controversial Chemical

Case of DDTs (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane).

#ddt , the chemical substance that has saved more human lives than any other in history, was prohibited due to widespread fear of its poisonous effects on the environment and human health. One famous book created public pressure, which was maintained through poor or dishonest research. Commonly held beliefs about carcinogenicity, avian toxicity, anti-androgenic effects, and long-term environmental persistence are erroneous or overstated. The global impact of US prohibition has resulted in millions of avoidable lives.

DDTs – are now presented to the #public from only one perspective as harmful, carcinogenic, and overall deadly, poisonous substances, furthermore, their eradication has become a salvation to society. However, nobody says that they became the most effective solution in tackling diseases carried by insects that were devastating nations across the globe.

Paul Muller - the inventor of DDTs in 1948 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery. While awarding the winner, Committee said: “DDT has been used in massive quantities in the evacuation of concentration camps, of prisoners and deportees. Without any doubt, the material has already preserved the life and health of hundreds of thousands.”

After the war, DDT was made available to civilian public health organisations all over the world. They had strong cause to employ it right away considering that more than 80% of infectious diseases that affect humans are carried by insects or other tiny arthropods. Bubonic plague, yellow fever, typhus, dengue, Chagas disease, African sleeping sickness, elephantiasis, trypanosomiasis, viral encephalitis, leishmaniasis, filariasis, and, most deadly of all, malaria is among these afflictions that have killed billions of people. By devouring up to 40% of the food crop and decimating a substantial portion of the livestock in many developing nations, insects have also contributed to or caused widespread famine or malnutrition deaths.

The United States was one of the first countries to profit from the use of DDT for civilian needs. Yearly, between 1.6 million Americans, from the rural South, acquired malaria in the years leading up to World War II. The results were astounding - just two confirmed instances of malaria in the US during the first half of 1952.

Other #nations were keen to notice America's accomplishment, and those who could afford it quickly put DDT into action. #malaria was nearly eliminated in #europe by the mid-1950s, cases in South Africa fell by 80% in a matter of months; #srilanka lowered its malaria occurrence from 2.8 million to just 17 and India eliminated malaria deaths. The United Nations World Health Organization initiated a global effort to use DDT to eradicate malaria in 1955. This approach quickly reduced malaria rates in various nations in Latin America and Asia by 99 percent or more.

However, the celebration did not last long with the appearance of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring. Carson's vehement opposition to pesticides was motivated by a desire to safeguard animals. Carson recounted a striking parable about a town whose residents had been poisoned and whose springtime had been devoid of bird song because chemicals had exterminated all life. Moreover, Rachel wrote that synthetic insecticides affect the human bodies in “sinister and often deadly ways,” and “threat of chronic poisoning and degenerative changes of the liver and other organs is very real.” About DDTs in her chapter on cancer she claimed that one expert “now gives DDT the definite rating of a ‘chemical carcinogen.” ?

The book gained enormous success. Millions of well-meaning individuals flocked to Carson's flag after being affected by her catastrophic vision of a lifeless future. Overnight, ecology evolved from a limited aristocratic cult to a crusading liberal mainstream movement.

Her evidence, however, was subjective and inconclusive. Bird numbers in the United States expanded dramatically during the period of extensive DDT usage because of the pesticide's suppression of their insect disease vectors and parasites. Numerous studies have been made to disprove claims of the cancerogenic nature of DDTs. Study participants in Georgia consumed up to 35 mg per day for almost two years with no adverse effects. Furthermore, it has been discovered that they have the opposite effect in curing this disease. According to this study - some types of DDTs have shrunk sizes and amounts of tumours in mice.

Yet, the spark has been lit, causing global panic with massive and impulsive restriction policies and prohibitions of use in many developing countries. The effects were devastating, to say the least. In Sri Lanka, its ban in 1964 resulted in a comeback of malaria with half a million victims per year by 1969. The consequences were far more severe in many other countries. The consequences were far more severe in any other country.

Drafting this essay was motivated by the nowadays notion of celebrating “victories” that have a dubious origin. My observation is that most of my peers (developing environmental professionals) nowadays have a very one–sided view of past environment-connected events. I do not blame them, the attractiveness to mass media and the loud fuss that always accompanies such vociferous, but dubious “discoveries” get rigidly fixed in the minds of many generations to come. What makes it an irrefutable dogma is the inclusion of theories like the harmfulness of DDTs to the #educational #institutions ' curriculum. That makes students take those concepts as undeniable truths. All textbooks that I have studied with (my own countries, GCSE, and A levels) on chemistry and biology have told us the same story. However, no attention, nor emphasis was drawn to the introduction of the idea that they were societal salvation from malaria and other, insect-transmitted diseases.

But the #phenomenon of unilateral #research , #education and impulsive decisions is precedential. Remember the Ptolemaic system of the world and how the church (alternative to schools at those times) indoctrinated its indisputability? “E Pur si muove!” (“And yet it moves!”) will exclaim Gallileo Gallilei tortured by torments of conscience, stomping his foot in despair from renunciation of his truth.

As you may have already understood, I am a huge supporter of the Hegelian theory of dialectics, because of its applicability in scientific grounds. Where there is a thesis (supporting argument), antithesis (disproving argument) and synthesis (a new truth emerging) that resolves the tension between opposing views. The solution to the problematics of the precedential unidirectionality of presentation of the historical issue lies in the perpetual proposition of antithesis to the declared thesis and the birth of synthesis from this process. Meaning, free, repetitive questioning of the DDTs’ dangerousness and resolution in the common ground of riskiness, but the usefulness of their use.?