Pesticides and Health

Abstract

It had taken us some 20 years to recognize that certain pesticides, such as DDT, could be harmful to the continued existence of wildlife; but we still knew very little about its effects upon human health. Slowly, as the evidence began to collect, we learned about environmental changes going on around us—but the connection of these changes to the health and safety of human beings was barely understood. By the time the damaging potential of pesticides like DDT was publicly acknowledged, some irreversible harm had already occurred. These kinds of organo-chlorine pesticides, the earliest-used synthetic compounds with extraordinary insecticidal properties, were found to persist almost indefinitely in the environment, moving up through the food chain, from plants to animals to humans. Though not the earliest scientist to make this observation (the first records of human fat storage of DDT were published in 1950¹), Rachel Carson alluded to the proposed risks of DDT.