DDT
One of the first widespread use of pesticides was DDT in the 1940s (PAN). DDT was sprayed in a gas-like form around towns via trucks (PAN). At the time this pesticide was quite favorable among citizens, but in the 1970s, people began to realize its drastic effects on the environment (PAN). Today, almost 40 years after DDT was banned, society continues to live with its long-lasting effects (PAN). Some of these effects include traces of DDT breakdown products found in food, body burdens, and health impacts (PAN). A study by the USDA found traces of DDT breakdown products in 60% of heavy cream samples, 42% of kale greens, 28% of carrots, and lower traces in many other samples of food. These percentages of DDT breakdown significantly affect humans; DDT traces were found in the blood of 99% of people tested by the CDC (PAN). Girls who were exposed to DDT before puberty are 5x more likely to develop breast cancer when they reached their middle ages (PAN).
Rachel Carson, a proponent of DDT and advocate for the banning of DDT, claims that DDT has both detrimental effects on humans and birds, particularly, bald eagles (PAN). In her book, titled, “Silent Spring”, Carson argues that DDT causes humans breast cancer, male infertility, miscarriages, developmental delays, and nervous/liver damage (PAN). She claims that society unknowingly ignores the danger of the potential side effects of pesticides because they think the effects will only occur if they exposed to DDT over long periods of time. She quotes medical research during the 1960s, “A change at one point, in one molecule even, may reverberate throughout the entire system to initiate changes in seemingly unrelated organs and tissues,” (Carson 189). Carson puts emphasis on the impact slight pesticide exposure can do to humans. Carson relates the potential problems that could arise from DDT by focusing on what can happen to animals when she states, “Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song” (Carson 104). In her book, Carson claims that the chemicals in DDT affected the worms that bald eagles were eating. The DDT from the effected worms the eagles ingested went into their bloodstream, resulting in softer egg shells. The soft egg shells cracked easily, thus killing the baby eagles prematurely.
