Environmental Protection Agency: Silent Spring Background Guide Table of Contents

Home , Bradbury Robinson, Pesticide residue, Silent Spring

Letter from the Chair Committee Logistics Introduction to the Committee Introduction to Topic One History of the Problem Past Actions Taken Current Events Questions to Consider Resources to Use Introduction to Topic Two History of the Problem Past Actions Taken Current Events Questions to Consider Resources to Use Bibliography

Staff of the Committee

Chair: Oliver Yin Vice Chair Nico Alfonso Coordinating Crisis Director: Julia Mullert

Under Secretary General Elena Bernstein

Taylor Cowser, Secretary General Neha Iyer, Director General

Letter from the Chair

Hello Delegates!

Welcome to the Environmental Protection Agency: Silent Spring, a Specialized Committee of the 19 th Boston Invitational Model United Nations Conference. My name is Evan Teplensky and I am ecstatic to be your Chair during the conference!

A few words about myself: I am a freshman double majoring in International Relations and Economics with concentrations in Europe and Foreign Policy and Security Studies. At Boston University, I am a part of the BU Student Government representing the College of Arts and Sciences as a Senator. I have been a part of the Boston University International Affairs Association since last semester helping staff BarMUN (our collegiate MUN conference), and a part of the MUN Travel Team, participating in various local simulations.

MUN has been a large part of my life for the past four years and I am excited to foster an engaging and successful committee! This year, the EPA committee will focus on environmental and health impacts caused by DDT, as well as the unintended consequences of pesticide use: pesticides drift. Overall, this committee is tasked to address the controversies surrounding pesticides like DDT and aims to provide a resolution regarding the health and environmental concerns in the US.

I look forward to seeing your ideas and active participation. While reading this background guide is important, please do go beyond it: find up anything you can that will help enrich your position during the conference. Along with my Vice-Chair, I will do my best to make sure every delegate has the opportunity to participate and that everyone can gain an incredible experience during our time together.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to me with any questions or concerns! Evan Teplensky

Committee Logistics

Style of Functioning:

The functioning style of this committee would be similar to the General

Assembly. The committee will open with a speaker list and debate on which of the two topics is to be discussed. After the committee body decides which topic to favor out of the two by a simple majority, delegates would be free to call out motions on the selected topic. Certain motions, such as motioning for a moderated caucus, require a simple majority while other types of motions, such as moving into the voting procedure, requires a 2/3 majority. All the delegates and their votes would be treated as equals, and the chair reserves the right to move stagnated debates forward as well as restoring the order of the committee with discretion.

Documents:

This committee will utilize three types of documents: working papers, resolutions, and amendments. A working paper is any document that vaguely structures out the foundational ideas of a draft resolution. It does not need a set amount of signatories or sponsors. A resolution is a document that systematically lists emphasized ideas and proposed solutions. There are two types of resolutions: draft resolutions and

ﬁnal resolutions. Draft resolutions will be accepted before the resolutions are ﬁnalized.

Ideally, the resolution should have at least three signatories and ﬁve sponsors. An amendment is a document that includes suggested revisions to a proposed.

Committee Logistics

Awards

Awards would speciﬁcally be given to the most active and inﬂuential

participants with factual knowledge in this committee. Such an inﬂuence on the

course of this committee can be established in many ways, both in and outside of

the committee room. For a delegate to be considered a nominee of this award, the

delegate needs to be respectful to the committee chairs and staff as well as other

delegates at all times. The delegate would also need to attend all committee

sessions and submit position papers on time unless noted otherwise by the chairs

after communication.

Introduction to the Committee

Rachel Carson, a marine biologist and conservationist, was no stranger to writing about the environment. The main focus of her earlier books was the aquatic world. In the 1950s, Carson switched her focus to conservation and began an investigation on pesticides, especially DDT. This decision eventually lead to the creation of her most famous work: Silent Spring. The book was published in 1962 and successfully spread awareness about the effects pesticides have on the environment.

This committee was born among the ﬁerce debate about pesticide safety after

Rachel Carson published her book about pesticide overuse. The goal of this committee is to tackle the question of whether the beneﬁts of pesticides such as DDT outweigh its respective negative impacts on the environment and generate a safe solution regarding the future use of pesticides.

Introduction to Topic One

DDT is a substance that was created in 1874 and used for combating malaria and typhus during WWII. This chemical was released into the commercial market as a pesticide after the war and was also later used to eradicate widespread malaria around the globe. DDT was successful in eliminating many types of pests form harassing crops and in reducing and preventing cases of malaria initially, but some began to have concerns over the impact DDT has on the environment as well as human health as early as 1944. Later studies found that DDT led to the decline in numbers of many life forms: birds, ﬁsh and such as the bald eagle. In addition, studies found that DDT will accumulate in the human body and may cause side effects such as confusion and vomiting if the amount of DDT stored is sufﬁcient.

DDT can also be transferred through breast milk, while the toxicity of DDT led to cases of cancer in rats and dogs. These research results put many scientists and citizens alike on edge.

History of the Problem

Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT, is a chemical synthesized by an

Austrian chemist named Othmar Zeidler. It’s well performance as an insecticide was then later discovered by a Swiss chemist named Paul Hermann Müller in 1939.

DDT was ﬁrst used on a mass scale during World War II by the Allied troops in order to eliminate typhus-spreading body lice. Realizing the effectiveness of the insecticide, DDT was marketed commercially in 1945. The chemical quickly grew in popularity because it was thorough, inexpensive, and remained in the environment for a long time after being sprayed.

Due to these factors, DDT was featured in various malaria eradication campaigns.

The United States Public Health Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the

Rockefeller Foundation all funded malaria eradication programs that implemented large-scale spraying of DDT in the American South, leading to the near eradication of the disease in North America by the 1950s. The World Health Organization decided to use DDT in its global malaria eradication campaign in 1955 and in turn truly introduced it to the world.

History of the Problem

While DDT seemed to be very effective against malaria, experts were growingly worried about the chemical's effects on humans and the environment. A war department bulletin in 1944 warned against spraying DDT on food and kitchen supplies for the health of human beings. Along with similar health concerns, the National

Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration ran a series of tests on DDT and failed to find the exact amount of DDT that would consistently kill members of a species. In fact, test results showed that the liquids DDT usually dissolves into, such as kerosene, were usually more toxic than DDT. Not fully convinced by these findings, several states, including New York, Missouri, California, Minnesota, and New Jersey, issued warnings or restrictions on DDT while waiting for more research revealed the effects of the substance on nature and human bodies. Fueling the growing concern about DDT, in 1947, a physician and nutritionist named Dr. Bradbury Robinson warned that the real victim of DDT use is nature and further claimed that beneficial insects such as bees and aquatic life such as fish would be harmed and killed by DDT. Then, it was revealed that DDT can be transferred to other animals through milk, including breast milk, and is likely a carcinogen that accumulates into fat tissues of mammals, lasting for a long time. Side effects of working with DDT were also discovered, including vomiting, dizziness, confusion, and headaches.

History of the Problem

Among the rising controversies, Rachel Carson, an ecologist born in Springdale,

Pennsylvania, published her book Silent Spring in 1962, which features documented cases of pesticides like DDT causing the population of certain birds, animals, ﬁsh and insects to decline.

Past Actions Taken

In 1910, the Federal Insecticide Act was passed to protect farmers from fraud.

In 1938, The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FDC) Act of 1938 was passed by

Congress, which strengthened food labeling laws and allowed the FDA to set standards of food identities and carry out factory inspections at normal hours.

In 1947, Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), which requires the federal government to register or approve pesticide products before it enters the marketplace, was passed.

In 1954, the Miller Pesticide Amendment, which set the limit of pesticide residue on agricultural products, was passed.

In 1958, the Food Additives Amendment (FAA) was made to the Food, Drugs, and

Cosmetic Act, prohibiting any substances tested to be carcinogenic in animals or humans to be added in food. Around the same time, USDA began to reduce the usage of

DDT from 4.9 million acres.

*It is worth to mention that during the years of DDT application, concerned citizens and scientists did try to warn and notify the federal government about the potential harm of DDT. A lot of these reports were dismissed.

Current Events

Soon after the book Silent Spring was published, it became a bestseller. The book sparked a national discussion about the safe use of pesticides by discussing how unregulated and overuse of pesticides, especially DDT, led to the death of birds, bees,

ﬂowers, as well as many other life forms, which could eventually disrupt the whole ecosystem and cause harm to human beings. The popularity of the book also resulted in the launch of a grassroot movement on the negative impacts humans have on the environment.

Questions to Consider

1. What is DDT and why was it developed? 2. Who is producing DDT and what are their histories? 3. What is DDT used for and how did it spread across the world? 4. How effective is DDT in fulﬁlling its intended purpose and does DDT outweigh its cost? 5. What had been and could be done to combat the growing DDT concern? Resources to Use

"A Nutritionist Ponders the D.D.T. Problem"; Robinson, MD, Brad N.; St. Louis, Michigan, Private Publication, 1947

Berry-Caban, C. S. (n.d.). DDT and Silent Spring: Fifty years after. Retrieved December 24, 2019, from https://jmvh.org/article/ddt-and-silent-spring-fifty-years-after/.

Conis, E. (2017, February 14). Beyond Silent Spring: An Alternate History of DDT. Retrieved December 24, 2019, from https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/beyond-silent-spring-an-alternate-history-of-ddt.

DDT Regulatory History: A Brief Survey (to 1975). (2016, September 14). Retrieved December 24, 2019, from https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/ddt-regulatory-history-brief-survey-1975.html.

Dunlap, T. (1978). Science as a Guide in Regulating Technology: The Case of DDT in the United States. Social Studies of Science,8(3), 265-285. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/284905

Lear, L. (n.d.). Rachel Carson, The Life and Legacy. Retrieved December 26, 2019, from https://www.rachelcarson.org/.

Martin, Ashley K. (2008). The regulation of DDT: A choice between evils. Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, 41(2), 677.

Milestones in U.S. Food Law. (2018, June 28). Retrieved from https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/foodlaw/overview/history/milestones.

National Pesticide Information Center. (1999, December). DDT [Fact Sheet]. Retrieved from http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/ddtgen.pdf

Rice, R. (2017, June 20). DDT. Retrieved December 26, 2019, from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1954/07/17/ddt-2.

Science Museum. Brought to Life: Exploring the History of Medicine. (n.d.). Retrieved December 24, 2019, from http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/techniques/ddt.

Wayland, S., & Crisp, P. F. (2016, March 1). Reducing Pesticide Risks: A Half Century of Progress [Essay]. Retrieved from https://www.epaalumni.org/hcp/pesticides.pdf

Introduction to Topic Two

Pesticide Drift:

Pesticide drift refers to the unintentional diffusion of pesticides and the potential negative effects of pesticide application, including off target contamination due to spray drift as well as runoff from plants or soil. This can lead to environmental, species, and property damage. Pesticide drift can be localized and or wind drifted to locations that are farther away by wind or droplet movement from spraying pesticides. Within this category there are two subcategories know as exo and endo-drift. Exo drift is where the pesticide does not reach its target and instead is blown off course reaching a completely new or unintended piece of land. Endo-drift is when the pesticide has reached the target location, but has failed to attack the intended insects. Instead, it simply absorbs into the ground and causes massive environmental damage.

Since the problem of DDT has been recognized by the public due to the publication of Silent Spring, pesticide drift has become a major concern for many communities. This is because in addition to being carried by the wind, DDT can also contaminate water supplies and those who rely on the water for their drinking sources. Once it is in the water source and or in the groundwater below ﬁelds or other properties, it is hard to get rid of from the environment other than to allow it to run its course.

In addition, the farmers that come into contact with the pesticide during their day-to-day work are at an increased risk of inhaling and or absorbing pesticides in other forms. Illnesses have spread throughout communities of farmers and those who surround them due to over exposure to pesticide droplets and contamination of the area’s resources. Those who are particularly vulnerable are children under the age of 15 and pregnant women both of whom are susceptible to damage due to the consumption of DDT and other pesticides in water, food, and the air.

History of the Problem

Much like the problems associated with DDT, the history of pesticide drift comes in the era of pesticide use. Up until the 1950s, the predominant pesticides that were used were all arsenic, mercury, lead or naturally based. Though they are derived from more carcinogenic chemicals, the fact that they were not as widespread helped reduce their disastrous effects. It is only when pesticides were applied on a massive scale that the problem of pesticide drift became apparent.

Since the beginning of the use of pesticides, sprayers were the most common form of spreading the chemicals onto plants. Advances in technology led to higher intensity streams with farther reach to be more effective and apply pesticides to larger plants and more vast expanses of area. Steam then quickly replaced water as the most effective source of pesticide disbursement. Coinciding with the use of airpower that had been recently developed, air bursts were sprayed onto crops, particularly those with large expanses of land to combat insects. This was the main technique used by citrus farmers in Florida and remains a common practice in pesticide use.

Jets used to spray fields with pesticides must calculate the very specific types of velocities and heights at which they fly at in order to avoid missing their targets. This is all calculated in advance, but the reality is that weather, winds, and other factors that cannot be put into equations can be problematic in terms of landing pesticides onto the proper areas. Sprayers attempt to adjust for these discrepancies, but have problems with tree coverage among the aforementioned issues.

Spray drift, falling into the exo-drift category, is a major concern when it comes to spraying orchards in particular. Droplets that are not absorbed on impact with the canopy are carried several meters into the atmosphere and then brought down into neighboring areas. Not much attention was brought to this phenomena because pesticides were not at ﬁrst thought to be carcinogenic and when they were deemed to be, the main concern that most scientists focused on was point source pollution as discussed in the previous topic.

History of the Problem

In addition to pesticide drift damaging the environment in terms of human and animal problems, it also has to unintended consequence of killing other plants in what is known as herbicide volatilisation. This refers to the evaporation or sublimation of a volatile herbicide. Pesticide incorporation into the soil can cause tremendous damage to the plant life in a given area. This is one of the most noticeable effects of pesticide use and pesticide drift. It causes disease and death to susceptible plants that are not bred to be resistant to the chemicals used in pesticides. Any given form of of chemical use in pesticides will have this noticeable change to plant life. Pesticide drift, however, dramatically demonstrates what pesticides do to a plant population because it attacks an ecosystem of non-resistant plants and wipes them out.

Though pesticides are not designed to damage or cause harm to human beings as well as the environment, they may have a result like such through an unintended consequence called pesticide drift. Pesticide drift, deﬁned as pesticide spreading to unintended areas through the air during or after the application process, exists ever since the invention of pesticides. This process can disrupt local ecosystems by damaging plants and crops and contaminating water, in turn posing a threat to human health. There are two main types of pesticide drift: particle drift and vapor drift. Particle drift, also known as spray drift, happens during or soon after the application of pesticides, and it involves liquid droplets of the pesticide being blown off target by the wind. In contrast, vapor drift, also known as volatilization drift, can happen long after the application process. Vapor drift occurs when ingredients of pesticides evaporate and are shifted off the targeted site.

For more information on the rise of pesticides and the way that they were used in the United States after the Second World War, please see the previous topic.

Past Actions Taken

The main action taken to avoid pesticide drift in the past was to take into account the varying environmental factors that contribute to the movement of pesticides to other areas. This means accounting for factors such as the wind, spray pressure, droplet size, temperature and equipment design.

Though many states created respective laws regarding pesticide drift, there were no ofﬁcially documented federal laws or actions from the US government dedicated to the issue of this issue before 1960. In addition, various states have different state laws regarding pesticide drift and no characteristics of such laws was universal across all states.

Current Events

People are calling for federal actions on the issues of pesticide drift after the publication of Silent Spring. Pesticide drift has become a major concern of the pubic since the reality regarding how pesticides affect humans, other animals and the environment were uncovered. By establishing the EPA, the United States now ofﬁcially had an agency tasked with solely concerns pertaining to the environment.

It took until 1972 for DDT to be ofﬁcially outlawed in the United States. DDT of usage began in the 1958s, but the EPA was the main push for the removal of DDT from use. In addition, DDT pesticide use was banned by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2001. Despite this, DDT is still used in some small doses around the world, but the problems that DDT caused on the environment have been mostly alleviated thanks to the work done in association with the research published by Silent Spring. This includes the removal of the bald eagle from the endangered species list. Questions to Consider

The main question of pesticide drift concerns around the problem of who should be responsible for the control and effects of pesticides on areas that they are not intended to effect.

1. What is pesticide drift and what is its relationship to DDT? 2. What damages have speciﬁcally been caused by pesticide drift? 3. How do we combat pesticide drift and how can we improve? 4. Who should be held responsible for pesticide drift and its effects on others?

Resources to Use

Damalas, C. A., & Eleftherohorinos, I. G. (2011). Pesticide exposure, safety issues, and risk assessment indicators. International journal of environmental research and public health, 8(5), 1402–1419. doi:10.3390/ijerph8051402

Feitshans, A. Theodore. (n.d) An Analysis of State Pesticide Drift Laws [PDF]. Retrieved from https://www.sjcl.edu/images/stories/sjalr/volumes/V09N1A2.pdf

Introduction to Pesticide Drift. (2019, June 6). Retrieved December 26, 2019, from https://www.epa.gov/reducing-pesticide-drift/introduction-pesticide-drift#effects.

Ochoa, V., & Maestroni, B. (2018, October 5). Pesticides in Water, Soil, and Sediments. Retrieved December 26, 2019, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128161555000099.

Types of Drift. (n.d.). Retrieved December 26, 2019, from https://pesticidestewardship.org/pesticide-drift/types-of-drift/.

"8 Fate and Transport of Pesticides." National Research Council. 1993. Soil and Water Quality: An Agenda for Agriculture. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2132.

Dossiers

William D. Ruckelshaus: is an attorney with political aspirations. He is very supportive of the environment and conservationist cause. Rachel Carson: is a scientist and the writer of Silent Spring. She is now under fire for her writing by the chemical lobby and the government. She is suffering from early stages of breast cancer at this point as well. Charlie Wurster: is an author and conservationist. He, like Carson, is concerned about the problems of DDT and its effect on the environment. Art Cooley: is a teacher and conservationist who is adamant about the conservation movement. His main interest include birds and bird watching. He has a lot of knowledge of how birds interact in the environment. Victor Yannacone: is an environmental attorney with the goal of getting rid of DDT in the United States. Since the findings by Rachel Carson have been published, he has become more concerned with their effects and would like to see them banned in the United States. Channing Cope: is a radio show host in Georgia. He has been running tests on DDT at home in his own front yard to see if the statements regarding its lethality are true. Arnold J. Lehman: is a pioneer of American toxicology or the study of how chemicals have adverse effects on humans and their environment. Dorothy Colson: also goes by Dottie lived by an area that used to be sprayed by DDT when it was used by the army. She and her family experienced adverse health effects but were never quite certain why nor are they sure what the army has been spraying near their home. Mamie Ella Plyler: lives with her sister Dottie and her family. She and her sister have been noticing the health effects caused by whatever the army is spraying next to their home. They both would like to know what is going and how it can be resolved. Robert Loibl: is a strong supporter of DDT and think it is safe and healthy to use. He and his family all take DDT supplements every day to prove this. They take their DDT by drinking popular drink in the United States known as Mickey Slim. Louise Loibl: is also a strong supporter of DDT who enjoys her Mickey Slim with her husband and their family. Judge Edmund Sweeney: is a judge willing to hear cases on the subject of DDT and environmental issues. Edgar Monsanto Queeny: is a businessman and former chair of the powerful Monsanto Corporation which produces DDT Paul F. Hoffman: is a Canadian geologist. He is best known for his Snowball Earth theory. Orville Lothrop Freeman: is the secretary of USDA, which is the agency in charge of regulating DDT use and output in the United States.

Dossiers

Othmar Zeidler: is the original creator of DDT. He is an Austrian born scientist. Though he has passed at the time of the publishing of Silent Spring, he and his findings are still present for this committee. Paul Hermann Müller: is the scientist who first came up with the idea of using DDT to fight Malaria carrying bugs. Lyndon B. Johnson: is the current Vice President of the United States and is also learning new information as it comes out about DDT. His biggest asset is having the president’s ear. John Fitzgerald Kennedy: is the current president of the United States. He is the one who must deal with the issues of DDT as they come along. Since the publication of the book Silent Spring, he has not known what to do about the effects of DDT. Clifford Morris Hardin: is an environmentalist and is concerned with food production for the United States and countries across the globe. John McCormack: is the current Speaker of the House and a democrat from Boston who served under President JFK. Olga Owens: is a friend of Rachel Carson’s and writer for the Boston Herald who first noticed birds dying off in her yard. William O’Douglas: is a Supreme Court justice and strong advocate for issues pertaining to the environment. He received a special copy of the book Silent Spring from Carson herself as the book was being published. Thomas Jukes: is a biologist and strong advocate of DDT. He is known for his denials of science. Marjorie Spock: is an environmentalist whose farm helped fuel the research that started Silent Spring. Everett Dirksen: is the current minority leader in the U.S. Senate under JFK. He is a republic and key figure in the party and in American politics at this time. Frank Elger: is an American plant ecologist. He worked with Rachel Carson to prepare the scientific data in Silent Spring. After, he stood by her to defend the work when it got backlash from the chemical lobby. Joseph Regenstein: is the founder and CEO of Velsicol Chemical Company. Though he dies slightly before the publication of the book, he is defender of the company and of the main product it produces, which is DDT.

Dossiers

Ezra Taft Benson: is the former Secretary of Agriculture and an important political figure from the Eisenhower administration. He helped bring about the rise of DDT in the United States. Gordon James Fraser MacDonald: is a member of the President’s Science advisory committee. He is also a prominent geophysicist and environmental scientist. Jerome Wiesner: is the chair of President Kennedy’s Science Advisory Committee. Rachel Carson is set to speak in front of this committee to advise the president. Frank Press: is another member of the Science advisory committee and a geophysicist. He has experience in government and administration as well as science. James Killian: was the former head of the Science Advisory Committee during the Eisenhower administration. He was then moved to the President’s intelligence board under the Kennedy administration meaning he has very large influence in the government. References

Brush, M. (2014, December 19). TIMELINE: Velsicol Chemical leaves large toxic footprint in the "Middle of the Mitten". Retrieved December 24, 2019, from https://www.michiganradio.org/post/timeline-velsicol-chemical-leaves-large-toxic-footprint-middle- mitten.

Conis, E. (2016, October 28). DDT Disbelievers: Health and the New Economic Poisons in Georgia after World War II. Retrieved December 24, 2019, from https://southernspaces.org/2016/ddt-disbelievers-health-and-new-economic-poisons-georgia-after-wo rld-war-ii/.

DDT Ban Takes Effect. (2016, August 5). Retrieved December 24, 2019, from https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/ddt-ban-takes-effect.html.

Hayes, W. J., Simmons, S. W., & Knipling, E. F. (1970, January 1). Toxicity of DDT to Man. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-0348-6809-9_7#citeas.

Haberman, C. (2017, January 22). Rachel Carson, DDT and the Fight Against Malaria. Retrieved December 24, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/22/us/rachel-carson-ddt-malaria-retro-report.html.

Megan, G. (2007, December 27). Paul F. Hoffman: 1923 - 2007. Retrieved December 24, 2019, from https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2007-12-27-0712260692-story.html.

Novak, M. (2015, December 7). These People Took DDT Pills In the 1970s to Prove it Was Safe. Retrieved December 24, 2019, from https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/these-people-took-ddt-pills-in-the-1970s-to-prove-it-wa-167838557 8.

The Case of DDT: Revisiting the Impairment. (2018, April 2). Retrieved December 24, 2019, from https://www.epa.gov/caddis-vol1/case-ddt-revisiting-impairment.

ToxicSites. (n.d.). Retrieved December 24, 2019, from http://www.toxicsites.us/index.php.

Toxic Substances Portal - DDT, DDE, DDD. (n.d.). Retrieved December 24, 2019, from https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/ToxProfiles/tp.asp?id=81&tid=20.