Here’s something to look out for the next time you see footage on a documentary of the concentration camps in the Second World War. You often see people being dusted with a powder.
The chances are that it is DDT. At the end of the war Europe was on its knees with widespread destruction of infrastructure and a shortage of food. Many people were displaced as well as hungry and were moving about trying to get back to their homes. The situation was ideal for the emergence and wide spreading of disease. But that problem, at least was avoided, thanks largely to DDT. It had been developed as an insecticide in 1939 and was deployed in large quantities to prevent mites, the habitual spreaders diseases as the war ended in 1945.
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Silent Spring Review at the new home of the blog.
