9780300205176.Pdf

banned This page intentionally left blank banned A History of Pesticides and the Science of Toxicology Frederick Rowe Davis New Haven & London Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Philip Hamilton McMillan of the Class of 1894, Yale College. Copyright © 2014 by Frederick Rowe Davis. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. offi ce) or [email protected] (U.K. offi ce). Set in Galliard with Poetica Display type by Westchester Book Group. Printed in the United States of America. ISBN: 978-0-300-20517-6 (cloth) Library of Congress Control Number: 2014944393 A cata logue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To my parents Dan Clifford Davis and Judith Rowe Davis . When the public protests, confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of pesticide applications, it is fed little tranquilizing pills of half truth. We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts. —Rachel Carson, Silent Spring . Contents Preface, ix Acknowledgments, xv List of Abbreviations, xix Chapter 1. Toxicology Emerges in Public Health Crises, 1 Chapter 2. DDT and Environmental Toxicology, 38 Chapter 3. The University of Chicago Toxicity Laboratory, 72 Chapter 4. The Toxicity of Organophosphate Chemicals, 91 Chapter 5. What’s the Risk? Legislators and Scientists Evaluate Pesticides, 116 Chapter 6. Rereading Silent Spring, 153 Contents Chapter 7. Pesticides and Toxicology after the DDT Ban, 187 Chapter 8. Roads Taken, 214 Epilogue: Risk, Benefi t, and Uncertainty, 221 Notes, 225 Index, 253 viii preface Late in 1972, William Ruckelshaus, administrator of the U.S. Environ- mental Protection Agency, announced that he was canceling the regis- tration for DDT, in effect banning the use in the United States of one of the most pop u lar insecticides available since its introduction after World War II. Environmentalists hailed the ban on DDT as a crown- ing achievement of the American environmental movement and the cul- mination of a de cade of activism that had coalesced in the wake of the publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson in 1962. Carson’s damn- ing critique of the indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides and the resulting widespread ecological contamination in the United States captured the hearts and minds of Americans as few other books had, and it inspired extensive hearings in the President’s Science Advisory Committee and Congress. The passage of the National Environmental Protection Act in 1970 and the establishment of the Environmental Pro- tection Agency (EPA) that same year signaled to Americans that their concerns had been heard. The DDT ban terminated applications of one of the most notorious and environmentally destructive chemicals in America. Could there be a more perfect conclusion to a dark chapter in the story of American agriculture and public health? In May 1982, several bird- watching friends (retirees) invited me to join them near Rochester, New York, to fi nd as many bird species as we could in a single day. The big day started at about 1:00 a.m. as we headed out to fi nd nocturnal owls and nighthawks. By 4:30, we had arrived at Norway Road, a renowned hotspot for migrating birds west of Roches- ter. In the early morning darkness, we heard an American woodcock, ix preface and just before dawn a veery began singing its ethereal song and a wood thrush soon joined in. By daybreak, dozens of other species— neotropical migrants— could be heard: warblers, vireos, thrushes, tanagers, cuck- oos, fl ycatchers, and sparrows. The phrase “dawn chorus” fails to cap- ture the deafening cacophony of thousands of birds in full breeding song. My ears were still ringing when I arrived back home near mid- night. Even as a teenaged birder I knew that I had witnessed something special that morning. It did not occur to me that I would never again hear anything like the dawn chorus I heard on the May morning so long ago. Fast- forward thirty years to March 12, 2013, the New York Times reported on a study revealing that acutely toxic pesticides correlated to declines in grassland birds in the United States more closely than habitat loss through agricultural intensifi cation. Three days later, a federal judge considered a motion to dismiss a 2011 lawsuit in which the Center for Biological Diversity and the Pesticide Action Network alleged that the EPA has allowed pesticide use without required consultations with federal agencies. What is going on here? More than fi fty years after the publication of Silent Spring and forty years after the ban on DDT, pesticides still account for widespread deaths in birds and other wildlife. Could it be that Carson’s statement in the epigraph applies to the risks of pesticides today? My purpose in writing Banned is to explain one the great ironies of the American environmental movement. Writing this book emerged out of a simple objective. I had read Ra- chel Carson’s Silent Spring, and I wanted to explore her scientifi c and medical sources in building the case against DDT. As I originally un- derstood the story, Silent Spring was a signifi cant catalyst in the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s as well as in the banning of DDT. But I soon discovered that Carson began researching pesticides in earnest during the late 1950s, at a time when American scientists, legislators, and regulators were debating the risks and benefi ts of the still- new chemicals as they revised existing laws. Moreover, concerns about chemical exposures had much deeper roots that signifi cantly predated this period. Inspired by the fi ftieth anniversary of the publication of Carson’s book, Banned examines the development of synthetic pesticides and the science of toxicology over the course of the twentieth century, as well as x preface the legislation that governs exposures to these chemicals— from the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 to the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 and beyond. By studying the larger context of the evolution of pesticides and toxicology, in this book I reveal how environmental science and policy evolved across the twentieth century. Carson published Silent Spring at a critical moment in the history of environmental science. Studying her sources and rereading her careful interpretations of science deepens our appreciation of the achievement of Silent Spring. But an analysis of pesticides policy and usage patterns in the de cades fol- lowing the ban on DDT exposes a tragic irony in the worldwide prolif- eration of the organophosphate pesticides, chemicals that Carson and the toxicologists acknowledged to be far more toxic to wildlife and humans alike. In Silent Spring, Carson cited numerous cases of acute and chronic pesticide poisonings in wildlife, ecosystems, and humans. Throughout her book, she implored people to evaluate evidence and assess threats to environmental and public health, including their own exposures. Car- son exhaustively reviewed the scientifi c and medical literature on how synthetic insecticides affect humans and the environment. To clarify her indictment of the chemical industry and federal agricultural and public health programs, she dramatized scientifi c and medical fi ndings and thus gave them a face. As much as Silent Spring was about toxicity and lethal doses, it was also about the victims of poisonings: farm workers, children, American robins, bald eagles, and Atlantic salmon. Moreover, Carson revealed how pesticides like DDT permeated soil and waterways all across America. In part, Carson blamed overspecialization for the lack of knowledge regarding ecological and health effects: each specialist focused on his or her own problem, oblivious to its larger frame. Carson introduced Americans to an emergent discipline and brought the language of environmental toxicology into the public realm. Phrases and concepts like “acute and chronic toxicity,” “LD50,” “parts per million,” “carcinoge- nicity,” and “reproductive effects” came to dominate the study and reg- ulation of environmental risks of synthetic insecticides. And in so doing, Silent Spring alerted the American public to the problems of indiscriminate use of pesticides and the science that sought to assess the risks they imposed by using the language of toxicology. xi preface Carson’s indictment of pesticides instigated heated debate. Represen- tatives of the chemical industry challenged her authority and the scientifi c legitimacy of the book. Some of the attacks became personal and attempted to dismiss Carson on the basis of her gender. Even among scientists without direct ties to the chemical industry, reviews of Silent Spring were mixed. Certain scientists praised Carson for the breadth and depth of her analysis, but others took issue with details and Car- son’s broad conclusions. President John F. Kennedy directed the Presi- dent’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) to convene hearings and report on the risks and benefi ts of pesticides, and congressional hearings soon followed.

Load more