How Did Paul Muller Use DDT Harmful In Protecting Crops?

Protecting crops is something that has kept farmers busy for quite some time now. It was no different for the Swiss chemist, Paul Muller, who created dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT, in 1939. He was looking for a way to protect wool from moths and DDT seemed to fit the bill. It was a non-soluble powder, which did not harm plants, but was very effective at destroying nuisance pests. DDT was even used during WWII to ward of malaria that kept soldiers sick, thus shortening the war. Countries then started using DDT to protect the population against diseases and millions of deaths decreased to only several hundred. Muller was even awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1948, and sales continued to soar. Montrose Chemical Corporation

Environmental concerns began to surface and were brought to light in 1962 by Rachel Carson who published a book entitled Silent Spring. This book encased evidence of toxicity to fish and birds. The birds would lay eggs they could not hatch because the shells were too thin and couldn’t survive the incubation period. DDT also began showing up in human breast milk and concerns continue to rise until the Environmental Protection Agency banned it in the United States in 1972. Montrose Chemical Corporation continued to sell DDT overseas, as it had not been banned in other countries, but over the years, they also banned DDT for its environmental effects. Though it has been banned in the United States for nearly forty-four years, there were still traces of DDT in the Great Lakes thirty years after application (Bethel University, 2016). DDT and practices of the Montrose Chemical Corporation definitely have ethical matters

It did save millions of lives. If it had not been for DDT, the malaria epidemic may have continued, wiping out the population. Putting into place a guideline of who could purchase the chemical, what it could be used on, and developing limits on the use may have been a better idea. Due to the lives saved, I do not believe the Nobel Prize should be taken away from Muller. He invented a chemical that was found to be useful, and like many other chemicals and products, we are hasty to put them to use and sometimes overlook the consequences. Many of us are shortsighted when it comes to thinking of the future. I do not agree that we should continue to overlook these things, but this was the first modern synthetic pesticide (Bethel University, 2016). We couldn’t have known what the outcome would be thirty years later. We do know the environment is important for human survival and we have to take care of the environment to take care of ourselves, so I do not believe that human lives or the environment should be put at risk to save the other. We rely on each other and both should be taken into consideration when developing new chemicals and products to introduce to humans and the