The Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 " for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods.

" After the war, DDT was made available for use as an agricultural insecticide, and soon its production and use skyrocketed.

The book suggested that DDT and other pesticides may cause cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds.

Its publication was one of the signature events in the birth of the environmental movement, and resulted in a large public outcry that eventually led to DDT being banned in the US in 1972.

DDT was subsequently banned for agricultural use worldwide under the Stockholm Convention, but its limited use in disease vector control continues to this day and remains controversial.

From 1950 to 1980, DDT was extensively used in agriculture — more than 40, 000 tonnes were used each year worldwide — and it has been estimated that a total of 1. 8 million tonnes have been produced globally since the 1940s.

With pyrethrum in short supply, DDT was used extensively during World War II by the Allies to control the insect vectors of typhus — nearly eliminating the disease in many parts of Europe.

By the time DDT was introduced in the U. S., the disease had already been brought under control by a variety of other means.

However, these early events received little attention, and it was not until 1957, when the New York Times reported an unsuccessful struggle to restrict DDT use in Nassau County, New York, that the issue came to the attention of the popular naturalist-author, Rachel Carson.

Victor Yannacone, Charles Wurster, Art Cooley and others associated with inception of EDF had all witnessed bird kills or declines in bird populations and suspected that DDT was the cause.

After an initial six-month review process, William Ruckelshaus, the Agency's first Administrator rejected an immediate suspension of DDT's registration, citing studies from the EPA's internal staff stating that DDT was not an imminent danger to human health and wildlife.

Immediately after the cancellation was announced, both EDF and the DDT manufacturers filed suit against the EPA, with the industry seeking to overturn the ban, and EDF seeking a comprehensive ban.

For example, in June 1979, the California Department of Health Services was permitted to use DDT to suppress flea vectors of bubonic plague.

Some studies show that although DDE levels have fallen dramatically, eggshell thickness remains 10 – 12 percent thinner than before DDT was first used.

According to a report in the British Medical Journal, use of DDT in Mozambique " was stopped several decades ago, because 80 % of the country's health budget came from donor funds, and donors refused to allow the use of DDT.

Before DDT, malaria was successfully eradicated or curtailed in several tropical areas by removing or poisoning mosquito breeding grounds and larva habitats, for example by filling or applying oil to standing water.

However, a study in Thailand found the cost per malaria case prevented of DDT spraying ($ 1. 87 US ) to be 21 % greater than the cost per case prevented of lambda-cyhalothrin – treated nets ($ 1. 54 US ), at very least casting some doubt on the unexamined assumption that DDT was the most cost-effective measure to use in all cases.

Malaria, the most widespread disease, was successfully fought through advances in health care, the use of DDT, and through the draining of swamplands.

During and just after World War II, DDT was used as insecticide to combat insect vectors carrying malaria and typhus.

Before the use of DDT it was dangerously infested with malaria.

Around 1960 DDT came into use to suppress mosquitos and the way was open to settlement from the land-poor hills to the detriment of Tharus.

DDT was used to control the spread of typhus-carrying lice.

PIP with a very low baud rate ( because it had no built-in error correction ) could be used to transfer a small simple version of Kermit from one machine to another over a null modem cable, or failing that, a very very simple version of the Kermit protocol could be hand coded in binary in less than 2K using DDT, the CP / M Dynamic Debugging Tool.

Using DDT requires less coding than to create a similar program using the Windows API.

Modern processes can produce technical grade dicofol that contains less than 0. 1 % DDT.

Alternatives were found to be less effective or more toxic to plants and animals, until 1947 when DDT was found.

When John Stossel accused USAID of not funding DDT because it wasn't " politically correct ," Anne Peterson, the agency's assistant administrator for global health, replied that " I believe that the strategies we are using are as effective as spraying with DDT ...

The real change in the past two years has been a new interest and emphasis on the use of IRS in general — with DDT or any other insecticide — as an effective malaria prevention strategy in tropical Africa.

Advocates of increased use of DDT in IRS claim that alternative insecticides are more expensive, more toxic, or not as effective.

In Mexico, effective and affordable chemical and non-chemical strategies against malaria have been so successful that the Mexican DDT manufacturing plant ceased production due to lack of demand.

DDT was initially extremely effective, but US weevil populations developed resistance by the mid 1950s.

* DDT is no longer effective in preventing malaria in some places, a fact which contributed to a resurgence of the disease.

They are often quite effective for controlling arthropod populations, though use of some of these chemicals is controversial, and some organophosphates and organochlorides ( such as DDT ) have been banned in many countries.

However, an ally could lift the opponent ' feet off the ground first, making it an Aided DDT, a much more effective variation of the move.

Habitat loss and DDT poisoning pushed this species to the brink of extinction, down to possibly as few as six individuals ( and an even smaller effective population size ) in the mid 1970s.

* Dicofol, a compound structurally related to the insecticide DDT, is a miticide that is effective against the red spider mite Tetranychus urticae.

Controlled, in-home spraying of DDT is effective as it gives the home immunity against arthropods while not contaminating the local water supplies and doing as much ecological damage as was once the case when DDT was first introduced.

DDT and its breakdown products are transported from warmer regions of the world to the Arctic by the phenomenon of global distillation, where they then accumulate in the region's food web.

Spraying programs ( especially using DDT ) were curtailed due to concerns over safety and environmental effects, as well as problems in administrative, managerial and financial implementation, but mostly because mosquitoes were developing resistance to DDT.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the main threats to Osprey populations were egg collectors and hunting of the adults along with other birds of prey, but Osprey populations declined drastically in many areas in the 1950s and 1960s ; this appeared to be in part due to the toxic effects of insecticides such as DDT on reproduction.

This occurs with DDT and a number of related compounds due to the process of bioaccumulation, wherein the chemical, due to its stability and fat solubility, accumulates in organisms ' fatty tissues.

* 1970-Peregrine Falcon listed as an Endangered Species in the U. S., due primarily to the use of DDT as a pesticide ( 35 Federal Register 8495 ; June 2, 1970 ).

Animal studies with vinclozolin, procymidone, linuron, and the DDT metabolite dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene ( p. p ’- DDE ) show irregular reproductive development due to their function as androgen receptor antagonists that inhibit androgen-activated gene expression.

In North America, there are potential threats from pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls ( PCBs ) and pesticides such as DDT which cause reduced reproductive success due to egg sterility and eggshell thinning.

Following the devastation to its populations from DDT, the reintroduction of the Peregrine Falcon was locally hampered due to predation on nestlings and adults by the Great Horned Owl.

This is probably due to the combination of the ban on DDT and the proliferation of backyard birdfeeders in North America which create unnaturally reliable and easy prey for all Accipiters.

The golden eagle replaced the bald eagle and began to feed on feral pigs due to the decimation of the local bald eagle population due to DDT exposure in the 1950s — the bald eagle would have deterred the golden eagle from settling on the islands while it subsisted on fish.

Additional studies suggest that a marked decrease in fertility in adult males may be due to DDT exposure.

Further decline came in the 1940s due to the widespread use of the pesticide DDT.

The organization's first recovery effort focused on the Peregrine Falcon, which was facing extinction due to the widespread use of the chemical DDT.