Before silent spring : pesticides and public health in pre-DDT America / James Whorton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Whorton, James C., 1942- author.

Series:

Princeton legacy library.

Princeton Legacy Library

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pesticides--Toxicology.

Pesticides.

Pesticide residues in food--United States.

Pesticide residues in food.

Food contamination.

Food adulteration and inspection--United States--History.

Food adulteration and inspection.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (306 pages).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 1974.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Modern consumers are well aware that the food they eat is tainted by pesticidal residues; they are less aware that their great-grandparents faced the same hazard. James C. Whorton's history of this public health menace emphasizes that insecticides have been contaminating produce since the introduction of chemical pesticides in the 1860s.The book examines the period before the publication of Rachel Carson's famous Silent Spring, tracing the origins of the residue problem and exploring the complicated network of interest groups that formed around the issue. The author shows how economic necessities, technological limitations, and pressures on regulatory agencies have brought us to "our present dilemma of seemingly having to poison our food in order to protect it." In Part I, the agricultural and medical literature of the past century is used to analyze the emergence by 1920 of a public health danger of serious proportions. Part II draws heavily on the unpublished records of the Food and Drug Administration to document how the ineffective handling of this danger established precedents for present pesticide abuses.Originally published in 1975.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Preface

Contents

Part One. Recognition

1. The Insect Emergency

2. The Lingering Dram

3. "Spray, O Spray"

Part Two. Regulation

4. Regulatory Prelude

5. Regulatory Perplexities

6. Regulatory Publicity

7. "No Longer a Hazard"

Epilogue

Bibliographic Notes

Index

Backmatter

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-691-64530-2

1-4008-7180-8

OCLC:

905863502