Can a Maligned Pesticide Save Lives?

DDT, formerly one of the most common industrial chemicals, was banned in the United States three decades ago, in no small part due to the work of one woman: Rachel Carson. Born a century ago this year, Carson published Silent Spring, a haunting book that has been credited with helping to found the modern environmental movement in 1962. In her landmark book, she documented a litany of evils observed after DDT and other organochlorine insecticides were sprayed on landscapes, rivers, and lawns: dead birds and paralyzed birds, pigeons dropping from the sky, bird nests without eggs and eggs that did not hatch, dead fish and fish swimming in circles, cancers in humans, and a buildup of DDT in the fat of animals and people.