DDT: A Cautionary Tale

Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane crushed malaria and typhus during World War II and earned the 1948 Nobel Prize for its discoverer Paul Muller. Rachel Carson documented in Silent Spring how it thinned bird eggshells and spread through food webs. Bald eagles and pelicans nearly vanished before the 1972 American ban. DDT remains a lesson about persistent chemicals..

.