DDT

by Thomas R. Dunlap

"The controversy over DDT played a pivotal part in the formation of the environmentalist movement in the United States. Thomas Dunlap places this controversy in historical perspective and provides a case study of the involvement of scientists, citizens, and various environmentalist groups in the formation of public policy on pesticide residues. He treats the complex relationships among government agencies, the land-grant universities and their experiment stations, private industries, and the various sciences. He also reveals the nature of American support for science and the ways in which the social, economic, and political context of the scientists' work influenced their research and conditioned the effect of that research on policy. After tracing the development of regulation and research on pesticides in the pre-DDT period, Professor Dunlap describes the gradual discovery of DDT's properties in the environment and the growth of opposition to its use. He then discusses the legal and