Word: ddt
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...DDT, the wonder insecticide (TIME, June 12), was last week credited with the most crushing blitz of its career...
Three months ago Pennsylvania's Department of Agriculture decided to try the deadly chemical on the gypsy-moth cater pillar, one of the worst tree-stripping pests in eastern U.S. forests. From an airplane, entomologists sprayed five pounds of DDT per acre over 20 acres of timberland near Scranton...
...crucial problem was finding a feasible process for producing DDT in the large quantities needed. It was solved last year by a Swiss-born chemist, Dr. Oskar Frey, of the Cincinnati Chemical Works. Cincinnati Chemical still produces 60% of the DDT supply...
...DDT owes its deadliness partly to an almost unique property: on insects it acts as both a contact and stomach poison. It first paralyzes an insect's hind legs, then gives it a violent attack of the jitters, finally brings on complete paralysis and death. Oddly, the pure chemical has little effect; it is good only in an oil solution or when mixed with inert powder. The usual dose is 1% to 5% DDT, dissolved in kerosene or mixed with a dust filler...
...DDT is not a kill-all. Against two of the most common U.S. crop destroyers, the Mexican bean beetle and the cotton boll weevil, DDT has proved disappointing. Man has not yet won his war with the insects...