FYI …

… sp!ked review of books | The real story of Silent Spring.

Several balanced pieces on the advantages and problematic aspects of DDT were published in the popular press in later years. As the anonymous author of a Time magazine piece would remind his readers in 1949, when DDT ‘was first offered to the general public in 1945, the US Army and Public Health Service warned that the wonder insecticide had better be used cautiously. No one knew much about DDT’s long-range effect on human beings or on the balance of nature.’ Besides, no one ever ‘stepped forward to deny that careless use of DDT is dangerous’. Interestingly, almost a quarter of the 228 articles published on DDT in the New York Times between 1944 and 1961 were ‘largely or wholly devoted to the potential risks associated with the pesticide’s use’.