Author’s latest book “How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall and Toxic Return of DDT” explores the pesticide’s history and how shifting understanding of its benefits and harms…
” and how the DDT story colors today’s public debate over health and science. She sees a connection in the DDT story and today’s public doubts about COVID-19 and vaccines.What was the inspiration for your new book?I grew up in a time when all we heard of DDT was that it was one of the most toxic chemicals around, how we’d lost all our ospreys and scientists were trying to bring them back and it was because of DDT. Because it was banned, I knew it was bad.
After the war communities began experimenting with DDT to see if it could stop polio. When a couple of communities sprayed DDT and saw polio outbreaks disappear, others began spraying DDT. Soon, I don’t think there was a single state that wasn’t spraying DDT. We came to believe it was saving us.
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