Questions About DDT – Farm Report – November 23, 1945 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
The years during and immediately after World War 2 saw an unprecedented number of new discoveries in the areas of medicine and technology which would ultimately be of great and lasting benefit to society. Not all were miraculous, and some, touted at first as be-all-end-all answers actually created a more dire threat than was previously realized – even though promises were sworn on stacks of bibles that the products in question were safe, later investigations showed those initial proclamations were false and in some instances, misleading.
Such was the issue with Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane or DDT, a chemical produced as the first of the modern synthetic insecticides in the 1940s. It was initially used with great effect to combat malaria, typhus, and the other insect-borne human diseases among both military and civilian populations. It also was effective for insect control in crop and livestock production, institutions, homes, and gardens. DDT’s quick success as a pesticide and broad use in the United States and other countries led to the development of resistance by many insect pest species.
DDT’s powerful ability to control disease made the pesticide a hero of the war, and its development by American scientists still stands as proof that the United States earned its superpower status in large part through its scientific and technological prowess. The public’s acceptance of the chemical captures American postwar faith in scientific expertise. And its vilification by environmentalists serves as a powerful and lasting illustration of the baby boomer generation’s antiauthoritarian turn. Here, in short, is one chemical whose story illustrates some of the most profound social and cultural shifts in 20th-century U.S. history.
In October 1945 National Geographic ran a feature on the “world of tomorrow,” in which transatlantic rockets would speed mail delivery, stores would sell frozen foods from exotic lands, clothes would be coated in waterproof plastic, and electronic “tubes” and “eyes” would do everything from stacking laundry to catching burglars. Health and medicine would be vastly improved, too, thanks to sterilizing lamps, penicillin, and, of course, DDT. “But scientists are treading with caution in their use of DDT, because it kills many beneficial insects as well,” the authors added. In an accompanying photo—an image that’s now iconic—a truck-mounted fog generator coated a New York beach in DDT as young children played nearby. The pesticide had halted a typhus epidemic in Naples, the caption read, but it “also has a drawback—it kills many beneficial and harmless insects, but it does not kill all insect pests.” Crops, flowers, and trees dependent on pollinators could die off, as could birds and fish.
This radio program, first broadcast on November 23, 1945, featured a discussion aimed at the Rural community and was something of a sales pitch to promote DDT as an easy way of killing off unwanted crop pests while being assured everything was safe and that DDT was the wave of the future.
