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40. C. P. Carpenter, H. F. Smyth, M. W. Woodside, P. E. Palm, C. S. Weil, and J. H. Nair, “Insecticide Toxicology—Mammalian Toxicity of 1-Naphthyl-n-Methylcarbamate (Sevin Insecticide),” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 9 (1) (1961): 30–39.
41. John E. Casida, Klas-Bertil Augustinsson, and Gunnel Jonsson, “Stability, Toxicity, and Reaction Mechanism with Esterases of Certain Carbamate Insecticides,” J.E.E. 53 (2) (1960): 205–212. See also Robert Lee Metcalf, Organic Insecticides, Their Chemistry and Mode of Action (New York: Interscience Publishers), 1955.
42. Sheldon D. Murphy and Kenneth P. DuBois, “The Influence of Various Factors on the Enzymatic Conversion of Organic Thiophosphates to Anticholinesterase Agents,” J.P.E.T. 124 (1958): 201.
43. Ibid.
44. Rachel Carson drew attention to endocrine system effects in Silent Spring in 1962. For a detailed history of endocrine disruptors, see Langston, Toxic Bodies. More than three decades later, a study by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences of the basic variability in susceptibility to environmental and dietary chemicals between the young and the old led to the passage of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996. For a thorough examination of the history, science, and policy leading to FQPA, see John Wargo, Our Children’s Toxic Legacy: How Science and Law Fail to Protect Us from Pesticides, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
45. J. William Cook, Fred L. Lofsvold, and James Harvey Young, “Interview between: J. William Cook, Retired Director, Division of Pesticide Chemistry and Toxicology, and Fred L. Lofsvold, FDA, and James Harvey Young, Emory University,” in History of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (Rockville, Md.: History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, 1980), 1–2.
46. Ibid., 17–18.
47. Ibid., 18–19.
48. Ibid., 19–20.
49. Ibid., 21–22.
50. Ibid., 31–32, and J. William Cook, “In Vitro Destruction of Some Organophosphate Pesticides by Bovine Rumen Fluid,” Agricultural and Food Chemistry 5 (11) (1957): 859–863.
51. D. F. McCaulley and J. William Cook, “A Fly Bioassay for the Determination of Organic Phosphate Pesticides,” Journal of the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists 42 (1) (1959): 206.
52. John P. Frawley et al., “Marked Potentiation in Mammalian Toxicity from Simultaneous Administration of Two Anticholinesterase Compounds,” J.P.E.T. 121 (1957): 96.
53. Ibid., 106.
54. Kenneth P. DuBois, “Potentiation of the Toxicity of Insecticidal Organic Phosphates,” A.M.A. Archives of Industrial Health 18 (1958): 490–496.
55. Ibid., 495.
Chapter 5. What’s the Risk?
1. S. R. Newell, Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, Hearings Before the Committee on Agriculture House of Representatives on H.R. 4851 (H.R. 5645 reported): “A bill to regulate the marketing of economic poisons and devices, and for other purposes,” 79th Cong., February 5, 1946–April 11, 1947 (hereafter, FIFRA Hearings), 1.
2. Ibid., 4.
3. L. S. Hitchner, FIFRA Hearings, 29.
4. Ibid., 44.
5. Ibid., 46.
6. Ibid.
7. W. K. Granger, FIFRA Hearings, 46.
8. Hitchner, FIFRA Hearings, 46.
9. R. Smith, FIFRA Hearings, 84.
10. E. L. Griffin, FIFRA Hearings, 10.
11. Bosso, Pesticides and Politics, 57.
12. Ibid., 57–58.
13. Whitaker, “Federal Pesticide Legislation in the U.S.,” 449.
14. This section draws on Wargo, Our Children’s Toxic Legacy, 70–71, and Bosso, Pesticides and Politics, 73–78.
15. Wargo, Our Children’s Toxic Legacy, 71.
16. Bosso, Pesticides and Politics, 75.
17. K. T. Hutchinson, Chemicals in Food Products: Hearings Before the House Select Committee to Investigate the Use of Chemicals in Food Products, 82nd Cong., H. Res. 74 (hereafter, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings), September 14, 1950–March 6, 1952, 9.
18. R. L. Cleere, Letter to James J. Delaney, November 24, 1950, in Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 39.
19. Ibid.
20. Carl E. Weigele, Letter to James J. Delaney, November 9, 1950, in Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 53.
21. George A. Spendlove, Letter to James J. Delaney, October 27, 1950, in Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 58.
22. Morton S. Biskind, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, December 12, 1950, 700.
23. Ibid, 701.
24. Morton S. Biskind, “DDT Poisoning and Elusive Virus X: A New Cause for Gastro-enteritis,” American Journal of Digestive Diseases 16 (March 1949): 79–84; Biskind, “Endocrine Disturbances in Gastrointestinal Conditions,” Review of Gastroenterology 16 (March 1949): 220–225; and Biskind and Irving Bieber, “DDT Poisoning: A New Syndrome with Neuropsychiatric Manifestations,” American Journal of Psychotherapy 3 (April 1949): 261–270.
25. A. I. Miller, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, December 12, 1950, 705.
26. Ibid., 706.
27. E. M. Hedrick, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, December 12, 1950, 707.
28. Biskind, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, December 12, 1950, 707.
29. Ibid., 714.
30. Ibid., 716.
31. Ibid., 717.
32. Kleinfeld, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, December 12, 1950, 717.
33. PHS and USDA, press release re: DDT, April 1, 1949, in Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 719.
34. Wayland J. Hayes, Jr., Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, April 17, 1951, 90.
35. Ibid., 91.
36. Ibid., 93.
37. Ibid., 96.
38. Ibid., 97.
39. Paul A. Neal, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, April 17, 1951, 107.
40. Hayes, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 109.
41. Ibid., 111.
42. Frank Princi, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, May 1, 1950, 149.
43. Ibid.
44. Miller, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 149.
45. Princi, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 150.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid., 151.
48. Charles E. Palm, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, May 1, 1950, 166.
49. Ibid., 167–168.
50. Ibid., 168.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., 169.
53. Ibid., 172.
54. George C. Decker, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, May 2, 1951, 183.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. John Dendy, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, May 8, 1951, 220.
58. E. H. Hedrick, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 220.
59. Dendy, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 220.
60. Ibid., 222.
61. There is just one reference to Dendy unrelated to pesticides in Cyrus Longworth Lundell, Agricultural Research at Renner, 1946–1967 (Renner, Tex.: Texas Research Foundation), 1967.
62. Dendy, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, May 8, 1951, 237.
63. Louis Bromfield, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, May 11, 1951, 292.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid., 313.
66. Harold P. Morris, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, May 11, 1951, 348.
67. Wilhelm C. Hueper, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, January 29, 1952, 1370.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid. Emphasis added.
70. Proctor, Cancer Wars, 47–48.
71. Ross and Amter, Polluters, 71.
72. Ibid.
73. See Sellers, “Discovering Environmental Cancer,” 1832.
74. Hueper, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 1380.
75. Ibid., 1381.
76. Fred C. Bishopp, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, May 15, 1951, 373.
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid., 374.
79. Ibid., 375.
80. Ibid., 377. Emphasis added.
81. Ibid., 3
78. Emphasis added.
82. Ibid., 380.
83. Ibid.
84. Kleinfeld, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 520.
85. Bishopp, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 520.
86. Edward F. Knipling, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, May 15, 1951, 521–522.
87. Quoted by Kleinfeld, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 523.
88. Miller, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 524.
89. Bishopp, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 524.
90. Knipling, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 525.
91. Ibid., 313.
92. Kleinfeld, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, June 14, 1951, 518.
93. Bishopp, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 519. Emphasis added.
94. Arnold J. Lehman, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, November 28, 1950, 389.
95. Ibid., 407.
96. Ibid.
97. Ibid., 408.
98. Ibid.
99. Kleinfeld, quoting Arnold Lehman, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 540.
100. Lehman, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, 389.
101. See Pete Daniel, Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post–World War II South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005).
102. L. G. Cox, Chemicals in Food Products Hearings, January 31, 1952, 1388.
103. Ibid., 1390–1394.
104. Ibid., 1397.
105. For a similar conclusion, see Bosso, Pesticides and Politics, 75.
106. Ibid.
107. Wargo, Our Children’s Toxic Legacy, 106.
108. Bosso, Pesticides and Politics, 77.
109. Wargo, Our Children’s Toxic Legacy, 106.
110. Quoted in Bosso, Pesticides and Politics, 97.
111. Wargo, Our Children’s Toxic Legacy, 107.
112. Langston, Toxic Bodies, 82.
113. This section draws on Bosso, Pesticides and Politics, 98–100.
Chapter 6. Rereading Silent Spring
1. Doull, “Toxicology Comes of Age,” 4.
2. Kenneth P. DuBois, “Proposed Research and Teaching Program in Toxicology at the University of Chicago,” University Archives, University of Chicago, 1958, 1–2.
3. Doull, “Toxicology Comes of Age,” 5.
4. Ibid.
5. Kenneth P. DuBois and E. M. K. Geiling, Textbook of Toxicology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 211.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 213.
8. The Textbook of Toxicology was the only one in its field until 1968, when Theodore Loomis and Wallace Hayes published a similar work. Another seven years passed before Doull, in collaboration with Louis Casarett, published Toxicology: The Basic Science of Poisons in 1975. In addition to providing the standard review of classes of toxic agents (metals, solvents, pesticides, etc.), this last text presented the organ system involved (kidney, liver, etc.) Over thirty-nine years and eight editions, Casarett and Doull’s Toxicology (as the text became known) has remained the preferred textbook of toxicology. See John Doull, “Toxicology Comes of Age,” 6–7. See also Mary O. Amdur, John Doull, and Curtis D. Klaassen, eds., Casarett and Doull’s Toxicology: The Basic Science of Poisons, 4th ed. (New York: Pergamon Press, 1991).
9. Frederick Coulston, Arnold J. Lehman, and Harry W. Hays, Editors’ Preface, Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology 1 (1959): iii.
10. Ibid., iii–iv.
11. Doull, “Toxicology Comes of Age,” 5.
12. Martin W. Williams, Henry N. Fuyat, and O. Garth Fitzhugh, “The Subacute Toxicity of Four Organic Phosphates to Dogs,” Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology 1 (1959): 1.
13. Frederick Coulston, Victor Drill, William Deichman, Harry Hays, Harold Hodge, Arnold Lehman, Boyd Schafer, Kenneth DuBois, and Paul Larson. See Harry W. Hays, Society of Toxicology History, 1961–1986 (Washington, D.C.: Society of Toxicology, 1986).
14. Doull, “Toxicology Comes of Age,” 7.
15. Ibid., 7–8. Emphasis added.
16. See Robert Rudd, Pesticides and the Living Landscape (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), and Lewis Herber, Our Synthetic Environment (New York: Alfred A, Knopf, 1962).
17. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 26–27.
18. Ibid., 27–28.
19. Ibid., 29.
20. Ibid., 30.
21. Ibid., 31.
22. Ibid., 126–127.
23. Ibid., 196–198.
24. Ibid., 296.
25. Ibid., 297.
26. See, for example, Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (New York: Owl Books, 1998); Mark Lytle, The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); William Souder, On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012); Dunlap, DDT; Maril Hazlett, “The Story of Silent Spring and the Ecological Turn,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 2003); Hazlett, “‘Woman vs. Man vs. Bugs:’ Gender and Popular Ecology in Early Reactions to Silent Spring,” Environmental History 9 (4) (October 2004): 701–729; Frank Graham, Since Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1970); and especially Thomas R. Dunlap, DDT, Silent Spring, and the Rise of Environmentalism: Classic Texts (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008).
27. Joseph Hickey, quoted in “Interview with Joseph J. Hickey,” Dunlap, DDT, 82.
28. CBS Reports, “The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson,” April 3, 1963, transcript. Quoted in Lytle, Gentle Subversive, 183.
29. Frank Graham, Jr., Since Silent Spring (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1970), 61.
30. For a detailed analysis of the PSAC and its significance in cold war America, see Zuoyue Wang, In Sputnik’s Shadow: The President’s Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008).
31. President’s Science Advisory Committee, “Use of Pesticides: A Report by the President’s Science Advisory Committee” (Washington, D.C.: The White House, May 15, 1963) (hereafter, PSAC, “Use of Pesticides”), 1.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., 3.
34. Ibid., 4. Emphasis added.
35. See Sarah A. Vogel, “From ‘The Dose Makes the Poison’ to ‘The Timing Makes the Poison’: Conceptualizing Risk in the Synthetic Age,” Environmental History 13 (October 2008): 667–673, and Vogel, Is It Safe? BPA and the Struggle to Define the Safety of Chemicals (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). See also Proctor, The Cancer Wars, and Wargo, Our Children’s Toxic Legacy.
36. PSAC, “Use of Pesticides,” 13.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., 22.
39. Abraham Ribicoff, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards (Pesticides), Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Reorganization and International Organizations of the Committee on Government Operations United States Senate, 88th Cong., 1st Sess.), May 16, 1963–July 29, 1964 (hereafter, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards), 1.
40. Ibid., 2.
41. Orville L. Freeman, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 84.
42. Ibid., 87.
43. Ibid., 86.
44. Ibid., 98.
45. Ribicoff, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 206.
46. Ibid.
47. Rachel Carson, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 215–216.
48. Ibid., 217.
49. Ibid., 218–219.
50. Ribicoff, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 220.
51. Carson, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 244.
52. Ibid.
53. See Scott Frickel, Chemical Consequences: Environmental Mutagens, Scientist Activism, and the Rise of Genetic Toxicology (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004).
54. Carson., Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 246.
55. James B. Pearson, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 247.
56. Ribicoff, Inte
ragency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 2005–2006.
57. Ibid., 2006.
58. PSAC, “Use of Pesticides,” 13.
59. Ibid., 20.
60. George Larrick, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 191.
61. Theron G. Randolph, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 591.
62. Irma West, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 601.
63. Ibid., 617.
64. Ibid., 626.
65. Julius E. Johnson, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 1334.
66. Thomas H. Milby and Fred Ottoboni, Report of an Epidemic of Organic Phosphate Poisoning in Peach Pickers, Stanislaus County, California, August 1963. Exhibit 132 in Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 1452.
67. Bert J. Vos, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 759.
68. Ribicoff, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 760.
69. Vos, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 760.
70. Recall that Frawley published several important papers on the toxicity of pesticides; see references in chapter 2.
71. Julius E. Johnson, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 1335.
72. This section draws on Langston, Toxic Bodies, 90–95.
73. Roger Williams, “The Nazis and Thalidomide: The Worst Drug Scandal of All Time,” Newsweek (September 10, 2012). Somewhat ironically this important piece of investigative journalism did not follow thalidomide to the United States.
74. Langston, Toxic Bodies, 93.
75. Ibid., 95.
76. Exhibit 126, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 1342.
77. Ibid.
78. E. F. Feichtmeir, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 1343.
79. See J. E. Lovelock, “A Sensitive Detector for Gas Chromatography,” Journal of Chromatography 1 (1958): 35–46. See also John and Mary Gribbin, James Lovelock: In Search of Gaia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 97–98.
80. Ribicoff, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 1343.
81. For a detailed analysis of the precautionary principle, see Langston, Toxic Bodies, 152–166. See also Wargo, Our Children’s Toxic Legacy.
82. Feichtmeir, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 1344.
83. Ernest J. Jaworski, Interagency Coordination in Environmental Hazards, 1348.