Word: ddt
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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...
...pesticides proved to be a mixed blessing. Beginning in the late '40s, researchers began to discover traces of DDT ?which degrades, or breaks down, very slowly?in the tissue of fish, wildlife and humans. At about the same time, scientists began to report that the chemical was causing some species of birds to lay eggs with abnormally thin shells that broke during brooding; as a result, the numbers of ospreys, peregrine falcons, bald eagles and brown pelicans were declining. These revelations were followed by the publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, which began to crystallize...
...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...