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DDT
- In 1939, a chemist from Switzerland named Paul Muller created DDT.
- He demonstrated that DDT killed the Colorado potato beetle, a pest that was ravaging the potato crops across America
and Europe.
- It quickly became a very popular insecticide.
- Credited with saving thousands of people during WWII by killing typhus-carrying lice and malaria carrying mosquitoes.
- First "organic" chemical insecticide.
- After WWII it was available as an agricultural insecticide.
- In the 1970s DDT was mostly banned from the US.
- It's classified as an EPA Toxicity Class II substance.
DDT in Borneo
- People in the region of Borneo had trouble with malaria.
- Malaria is carried by mosquitoes.
- The World Health Organization (WHO) decided to kill the mosquitoes by spraying DDT on the island.
- The spraying of DDT significantly reduced the incidences of malaria.
- DDT also killed a parasitic wasp.
- Geckoes consumed DDT, which was slowly metabolized in their bodies.
- The WHO failed to consider full implications of their actions.
- Made things worse rather than better.
Operation Cat Drop
DDT sprayed in Borneo resulted in a decline in the population of cats. Since the geckoes consumed the DDT they were poisoned.
These geckoes that carried the poison, were in turn, hunted by the cat population. With much fewer cats, the rat population
rises. The increase in rat population led to an outbreak of typhus and the sylvatic plague. To solve this problem the WHO
decided to parachute 14,000 live cats into Borneo to solve the rat problem.
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