Which president banned ddt

However, exports have shown a marked decrease in recent years dropping from approximately 70 million pounds in to 35 million in Certain characteristics of DDT which contributed to the early popularity of the chemical, particularly its persistence, later became the basis for public concern over possible hazards involved in the pesticide's use.

Although warnings against such hazards were voiced by scientists as early as the mids, it was the publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring in that stimulated widespread public concern over use of the chemical. After Carson's alert to the public concerning the dangers of improper pesticide use and the need for better pesticide controls, it was only natural that DDT, as one of the most widely used pesticides of the time, should come under intensive investigation.

Throughout the last decade, proponents and opponents of DDT have faced one another in a growing series of confrontations. Proponents argue that DDT has a good human health record and that alternatives to DDT are more hazardous to the user and more costly. Opponents to DDT, admitting that there may be little evidence of direct harm to man, emphasize other hazards connected with its use.

They argue that DDT is a persistent, toxic chemical which easily collects in the food chain posing a proven hazard to non-target organisms such as fish and wildlife and otherwise upsetting the natural ecological balance.

All four reports recommended an orderly phasing out of the pesticide over a limited period of time. Public concern further manifested itself through the activities of various environmental organizations. Beginning in , the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, the Izaak Walton League and other environmental groups became increasingly active in initiating court proceedings leading to the restriction of DDT use at both local and Federal levels.

Although the remaining States have provisions for the "restricted use" classification of pesticides, no specific mention is made of DDT. The Federal Government has not been oblivious to the hazards of DDT use as is indicated by various Government studies and actions undertaken since the late 50s.

In , as a matter of policy, the Forest Service, U. They reduced spraying of DDT from 4. The development of alternative pesticides such as Zectran, which was in operation in , contributed to further reduction in DDT use by the Department.

In , the Secretary of the Interior issued a directive stating that the use of chlorinated hydrocarbons on Interior lands should be avoided unless no other substitutes were available. This regulatory measure, as well as others which followed, was reaffirmed and extended in June , when the Secretary issued an order banning use of 16 types of pesticides, including DDT, on any lands or in any programs managed by the Department's bureaus and agencies.

Between November and April , USDA canceled DDT registrations for use against house flies and roaches, on foliage of more than 17 crops, in milk rooms, and on cabbage and lettuce. In August , DDT usage was sharply reduced in certain areas of USDA's cooperative Federal-State pest control programs following a review of these programs in relation to environmental contamination.

In November , USDA initiated action to cancel all DDT registrations for use against pests of shade trees, aquatic areas, the house and garden and tobacco. The insecticide also proved to be relatively inexpensive to manufacture and stayed in the environment for a long time, effectively killing any insects that came within a certain range. Between and , cases of malaria fell from approximately , to practically none because of the use of DDT.

DDT is still used today in parts of South America, Asia, and Africa with the aim of controlling malaria in places that may not be able to afford more expensive and potentially safer alternatives.

Because of the ban on DDT in the United States in , restrictions have been applied to its use; DDT can legally be produced in the United States but may only be sold to or used by foreign countries. Two of the major reasons behind the ban of DDT were the scientific evidence that exhibited buildup in the fatty tissues of wildlife while persisting in the natural environment and proved the existence of an evolutionary resistance that insects began to develop towards the chemical.

Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that can be found primarily in tropical and impoverished areas of the Earth. It can cause fevers, headaches, and may even lead to death. In , the first stages of spraying were carried out upon nearly , houses, with the goal of reaching nearly three million households by In South America, malaria was the leading health problem in Ecuador, with about half of the population infected by the disease.

Malaria contributed to the three leading causes of infant mortality in Venezuela, which became the first country to begin a national DDT program in Eradication of malaria in Venezuela was reported to have covered , square miles within a population of 2. After Cuba partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation in using DDT to spray the houses, malaria was no longer a major health problem in some of its rural provinces. Russell of the Rockefeller Foundation.

However, in , an increase in anophelism was attributed to the end of DDT application a few years earlier. These case studies of the effectiveness of DDT in controlling malaria show how important international governments considered the insecticide in the fight against infant deaths and rapid population decline. During the s, rice cultivation in Greece was restricted because of malaria but permitted again in because of the anti-malaria campaign, making rice an export crop for Greece. Daniel E.

Wright was considered the pioneer in the use of DDT to control malaria in Greece and became the Lieutenant Colonel of the Public Health Service in as a malariologist. In a letter to Dr. The first such use came in by the United States to control a typhus outbreak in Naples.

The chemical was sprayed carelessly throughout the slums without regard to possible side effects for about three million people, as the full extent of its toxicology was not known. The typhus outbreak was brought under almost immediate control in only three weeks, as 73, people were sprayed per day and 1,, people were treated, demonstrating the awesome power that the new chemical had on infectious diseases.

During the s, about twenty years before the introduction of DDT, the Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agriculture set standards for residues on food from insecticides. During the s, scientific research, the emergence of other health problems, such as asbestos, and the creation of public interest groups all led to challenges to the use of DDT. The Public Health Service concluded that if people exposed to abnormal amounts of residues were healthy, then the general public would be too.

They also decided that the burden of proof be laid upon those that would ban a chemical and not those who produced it. This meant that they supported placing the burden of proof upon those who produce the chemicals and therefore expose the public to danger.

Unfortunately, the conflict was heavily in favor of the producers, which shows the value of political power and the associated lack of public interest in the issue. Their concern was not as much about the preservation of public health and safety as much as it aimed to help the chemical industry avoid difficulty and therefore receive annual funds. In , the Department of Agriculture temporarily banned DDT while Congress called for a national embargo on the chemical.

Two primary fears that resulted in the stricter regulation of DDT were possible bans on other chemicals and the higher costs of alternatives. There were also many who did not agree with what Carson had to say about DDT in her book. New typhus cases in the city approached sixty a day and people were dying by the score.

Dusting involved having people tie their garments at the ankles and wrists, and then using a dust gun similar to that used in gardening, the DDT powder was blown down the collar, creating a balloon effect. While a tedious procedure, Neapolitans were dusted as they exited the railway stations and dusted in the grottoes that served as bomb shelters beneath the streets.

New cases began declining; by mid-February there were no new cases at all. For the first time in history, typhus, which thrives in cold, filthy, overcrowded conditions, was not only arrested but totally eliminated.

In August , DDT was first tried against mosquitoes that carried malaria. Until the s, malaria was widespread in Europe and North America, and epidemics were even recorded above the Arctic Circle. In , Ronald Ross, a physician stationed with the British army in India, discovered that mosquitoes transmit malaria.

For this discovery Ross was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in Elsewhere, Giovanni Battista Grassi, a leading Italian zoologist, identified the specific genus of mosquito Anopheles responsible for transmitting the malaria-causing parasite.

Soon public health officials were targeting mosquitoes. Insecticides, notably pyrethrum, had been used in malaria control prior to DDT. This was sprayed on the inside walls of houses where the Anopheles mosquito rests after feeding.

The mosquito takes up the insecticide while resting on walls and its toxicity kills her. In August , the Army began spraying the interior of buildings and found the procedure effective.

DDT lasted for over six months and as a result a malaria control team could cover many more houses and protect far more people. In the spring of , they began spraying in the town of Castel Volturno, north of Naples and later in the Tiber River Delta area. Soon, soldiers and sailors by the millions were carrying small cans of DDT powder to protect themselves from bedbugs, lice and mosquitoes. They came to love the stuff, especially in the tropics.

Millions of DDT aerosol bombs were used to spray the interiors of tents, barracks and mess halls. Throughout European refugee camps, along the span of the Burma Road, across jungle battlefields of Southeast Asia, on Saipan and dozens of South Sea islands infested by stinging, biting insects, DDT spread its beneficent mist.

As DDT supplies became more abundant, other clinical trials were conducted in and While DDT no doubt would eventually have found its place in malaria control, war requirements greatly accelerated its acceptance and use.

Even before the war and the advent of DDT, malaria had been declining in the United States because of improved standards of living, proliferation of window screens and other methods of protection from mosquitoes. In urban areas, better drainage and larviciding improved mosquito control that in turn led to fewer cases of malaria. Mosquito control officers in the United States used DDT in two ways: as a residual insecticide on the walls of houses and as a larvicide.

The results were dramatic. By , there were only cases of malaria transmitted domestically, in contrast to the million of cases just a few years earlier. Between and , morbidity was more than halved from Similarly spectacular decreases in malaria cases and deaths were seen everywhere DDT was used.

By the s DDT had become the most publicised synthetic chemical in the world. One American newspaper clipping service accumulated nearly 21, items about it in an eighteen-month period between and Ninety percent of all insects are good, and if they are killed, things go out of kilter right away.

Fish and Wildlife Service. A native of rural Pennsylvania, she had grown up with an enthusiasm for nature matched only by her love of writing. In , the Bureau of Fisheries now the U. Fish and Wildlife Service hired her as a full-time biologist and over the next 15 years, she rose in the ranks, becoming chief editor for all publications.

The educational brochures she wrote for the Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as her published books and magazine articles, were characterised by meticulous research and a poetic evocation of her subject. Silent Spring took Carson four years to complete.

In it she detailed how DDT entered the food chain. A single application on a crop, she wrote, killed insects for weeks and months, not only the targeted insects but countless more, and remained toxic in the environment even after it was diluted by rainwater.

Carson recognized that the direct kills were by no means the worst effect of DDT. More widespread and disastrous by far, were the delayed kills, coupled with the inhibition of reproductive processes. Entire species of birds were threatened with extinction. Silent Spring describes an early instance that occurred on the campus of Michigan State University. Annual spraying of elm trees with DDT began there in to control the beetle that spreads Dutch Elm disease.

For the first year or so, there were little visible side effects, but people began noticing that robins had disappeared from the campus. The cyclic silencing that Carson had described was occurring: earthworms feeding on elm leaves contaminated with tiny amounts of DDT accumulated the chemical in their body fat until a level toxic to robins was reached.

Robins that ate contaminated worms died, even robins unfortunate enough to visit the campus two years after spraying ceased.

Carson argued that the widespread use of DDT as an agricultural pesticide was harmful for three reasons:. First, its indiscriminate application had repercussions on the ecosystems that range far beyond the intended effect, resulting in the death of fish and birds, and population drops in species that depend on specific insects.

Additionally, the deaths of predators cause population explosions in other pests. Second, allowing DDT to soak into the soil, the drinking water and the skin has health repercussions for humans. Carson sounded an initial alarm in Silent Spring, but at that time little was known about cancer, its causes and it relationship with DDT and other similar pesticides. Third, overuse of DDT in agriculture allows malaria-spreading mosquitoes to develop resistance to DDT and other pesticides.

Once this happens, small-scale malaria spraying becomes useless and the problem worsens, forcing public health officials to resort to more dangerous pesticides that often have worse health effects on humans and their ecosystems. Resistance to insecticides by mosquitoes…has surged upward at an astounding rate, being created by the thoroughness of the very house-spraying programs designed to eliminate malaria.

In , only 5 species of these mosquitoes displayed resistance; by early the number had risen from 5 to 28! But this cannot go on indefinitely. A huge counterattack was led by Monsanto, Velsicol, and American Cyanamid, supported by her former employer the U. Department of Agriculture. In their heated campaign to silence Carson, the chemical industry only increased public awareness.