DDT (DichlorodiphenylTrichloroethane) is a difficult to degrade insecticide. An insecticide is a pesticide to destroy insects. The drug has been banned in our country since 1973 but is still used elsewhere in the world. Where the agent is still used, it is also very effective. Once applied, DDT has an effect of up to 300 days in some situations.
DDT has been banned since 1973
DDT is the first modern pesticide developed in the early 1940s. It is also a notorious pesticide due to adverse properties such as resistance and its difficult degradability. DDT was already used successfully in the 1940s to combat malaria and typhoid. It was also used on a large scale and worldwide as an insecticide in agriculture and horticulture until the early 1970s. Despite widespread use, attempts have been made since the 1960s to prevent use by various legal measures. The use of DDT has been banned in the Netherlands since 1973, but it is still used in the tropics due to the lack of an effective alternative to combat malaria. Attempts by the WWF to ban DDT worldwide have failed.
Chlorine, alcohol and sulfuric acid
DDT was discovered before the actual effect of the product was known. The discoverer was a German student and pharmacist’s son Othmar Zeidler who discovered the product in 1874 but was unaware of its insecticidal properties. It was not until 1939 that the chemist Paul Muller discovered that the substance, whose main constituents chlorine, alcohol and sulfuric acid, could kill insects. The agent killed all beetles from a potato beetle infestation in Switzerland in 1939.
Large amounts of DDT
In America, DDT was subjected to all kinds of rigorous tests from 1942 by the Department of Agriculture. The results were so sensational that the study was taken over by the Military Medical Service and the Bureau of Scientific Study and Development. In 1943 Dr. Oskar Frey at the Cincinnati Chemical Plant in DDT to manufacture large quantities, and hundreds of chemists in major US labs were now conducting all kinds of research.
Typhoid epidemic combated with DDT
DDT achieved its most impressive success in Naples, Italy, when typhus was widespread there. While in October 1943 only 25 cases were known, the number of victims in January 1944 increased per day with 60 new cases. But rescue was near. All who had come into contact with tufus sufferers were treated with DDT and all rooms were dusted with DDT. On a peak day, 73,000 people were treated in 43 delousing stations. By mid-February, the epidemic was over.
Major drawbacks
DDT is a very effective pesticide. Only a handful of the material will kill all mosquitoes and larvae in a swamp, a ditch, a pond and on a garbage heap which can be counted as the true breeding grounds of the mosquitoes. Tests have proven that DDT sprayed on a wall kills flies that settle on the wall after three months. A bed pollinated with DDT will continue to kill lice for 300 days. Clothes dusted with DDT repel pests for a month even if the clothes are washed repeatedly. But despite all this effectiveness, DDT remains banned in Western countries because of the major disadvantages such as difficult to biodegrade and resistance.