Word: ddt
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...single most significant development in insect control was the discovery of a compound with the unpronounceable name of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or, as it came to be known, DDT. First synthesized in 1874, the chemical languished in the laboratory until 1939, when Chemist Paul Miiller of Switzerland's J.R. Geigy chemical company discovered its insecticidal properties. The U.S. Army considered the chemical so effective that it classified it "top secret," and first used it against a typhus epidemic in Naples, Italy, in 1943. It worked so well that the military promptly began applying DDT against a wide variety of insects responsible...
...DDT's success prompted the introduction after World War II of a host of similar chlorine derivatives, including chlordane, heptachlor, aldrin, dieldrin, toxaphene and endrin. Wartime research on nerve gases also led to the development of a whole family of phosphorus-based insecticides, such as parathion, malathion and dimethoate, which, unlike DDT and other chlorine-based compounds, tended to break down more quickly into innocuous substances in the soil...
...reasons for the resurgence of malaria are complex. Throughout the '50s and early '60s, the governments of South Asia armed themselves with the newly developed miracle weapon DDT, and waged all-out war on the mosquitoes that carry malaria, spraying ponds, swamps and other breeding areas, and even sending health teams into homes to track down the insects. For a while, the campaign to combat malaria was spectacularly successful. "If you just wrote DDT on the wall, mosquitoes used to die," says Dr. M.I.D. Sharma, commissioner of India's rural health services. The disease that once made...
...Cinchona trees from whose bark the drug is obtained (the malaria parasite is showing a rising resistance to the drug chloroquine, a synthetic substitute for quinine). Furthermore, rising petroleum prices have sent the costs of insecticides soaring, placing another burden on the shaky economics of the region. DDT, which cost India about $500 per ton in 1974, now costs...
Trouble is, man's prospects for winning are not very bright. Ever since the use of DDT was banned in 1967, Maine has had few weapons in its battle against the budworm. Environmentalists have suggested gradually cutting down the spruce and balsam trees to deny the caterpillar its food and replacing them with hardwood varieties immune to attack. But that plan is not practical; spruce and balsam are best adapted to the north woods and, says Fred Holt, director of Maine's bureau of forestry, "they always come back when you plant something else." Biological controls-most notably...