{Thirty years ago, on June 14, l972, the Environmental Protection Agency's first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, rebuffed the advice of his scientific advisors and announced a ban on virtually all domestic uses of the pesticide DDT. This was done despite the fact that DDT had earlier been hailed as a "miracle" chemical that repelled and killed mosquitoes that carry malaria, a disease that can be fatal to humans.
Ruckelshaus (who later worked with the Environmental Defense Fund, the very activist organization that had urged the ban)cited health concerns in defending his decision. He reported that DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichlorethane) killed many beneficial insects, birds, and aquatic animals — not just malarial mosquitoes — and that it "presents a carcinogenic risk" toh umans, based on laboratory studies showing increased cancer risk in mice fed extremely high doses.
The scientific community was outspoken in opposing such a ban, noting that there was no evidence that DDT posed a hazard to human health. Yet the ban still took effect.Now, thirty years later, it is vividly apparent that DDT was not hazardous to human health and that the banning of its domestic use led to its diminished production in the United States — and less availability of DDT for the developing world.The results were disastrous: at least 1-2 million people continue to die from malaria each year, 30-60 million or more lives needlessly lost since the ban took effect. This is especially tragic since there was hope of eradicating the disease altogether when DDT was first introduced and its potential was recognized.}
