Prof: This is one of my
favorite topics in the course,
food, agriculture.
 
And I'm deeply interested in
everybody's personal connection
to food.
 
You are what you eat,
you are what you breathe,
you are what you drink.
 
And we often don't have a very
good understanding of what's in
our food, what's in our air,
and what's in our water.
So hopefully,
this will sensitize you to that
problem and also to get you to
understand hopefully the
structure of U.S.
 
environmental law that applies
to food and agriculture.
And this is an interesting area
of law.
Food, like plastics,
like energy,
it really does not have a
distinctive specific body of law
that applies to it,
as opposed to air and water or
pesticides.
 
So that's kind of curious.
 
It's a problem that cuts across
many different areas,
many different types of
regulation.
And the management of food in
the U.S., and the management of
agriculture, is really fractured
among a number of agencies.
Great Britain recently
centralized their regulatory
program and created a single
agency to manage food.
And we'll think about the
wisdom of doing that,
and some of the strengths and
weaknesses of the European and
British system.
 
So to begin,
I want you to think about the
percentage of the world that is
used to grow crops or to graze
livestock.
 
So there are thirty billion
acres of land in the world,
and about four billion acres of
those are in cropland.
So roughly about one-seventh or
one-eighth of the world is used
to grow crops.
 
Within the United States,
it's about 400 million acres of
land.
 
It's an enormous area.
 
And it's dispersed increasingly
in more remote areas as cities
grow, as suburbs sprawl,
and as farmers are pushed
further and further away.
 
And this has really interesting
and important implications for
environmental quality and also
for human health.
So here are four crops
represented in these pictures.
Wheat in the upper left, corn.
 
Many of you are probably
unaware that on a daily basis
most of us consume cotton in a
variety of foods without
recognizing it.
 
Anybody know in what form?
 
Oil, cottonseed oil.
 
It's part of many pastries,
many different kinds of
cereals, so that many breads
rely on cottonseed oil.
And the bottom, rice.
 
These are four major grains in
the world that take up hundreds
of millions of acres of the
landscape.
Corn alone in the United States
is almost eighty million acres
that is currently planted.
 
Increasingly,
in the United States,
farm size is increasing,
meaning that there are fewer
and fewer farmers.
 
And surprisingly,
the diversity of crops that are
planted on individual farms is
also going down.
So what that means is that
farming is becoming more highly
specialized, that farmers are
knowledgeable about fewer crops.
They have less capacity to
manage problems such as pests,
fungi, insects of different
sorts, because they really don't
have the fundamental
understanding of ecology that
many farmers had to have in
order to survive in a world that
was not as chemically dependent
as ours is.
Current industrialized
agriculture could be successful
on a parking lot if you brought
in soil and you brought in
fertilizer and you brought in
water and artificially added
organic matter.
 
So basically,
the more you control your
environment using industrial
technology,
the more expensive it becomes,
but the less you have to worry
about understanding ecology.
 
So it's curious that as
centralization has occurred in
ownership patterns,
the farms got larger,
the crop specialty diminished,
our dietary patterns have
followed a similar pattern.
 
We've relied on fewer and fewer
crops.
So now most people's diet is
comprised of between thirty to
forty different individual
crops.
So I want to talk today about
what the central problems in
food and agriculture are.
 
And these include food
availability.
And I think most of us
understand that the role of
government has often been
perceived as one of trying to
make sure that we have a
productive food supply,
that our agriculture is as
productive as it possibly could
be so we could maximize our
exports to other countries,
so that our balance of trade
would be helped,
but also so we could deal with
undernourished and impoverished
parts of the world that do not
have the capacity to grow food,
for whatever reason.
 
Food prices are going up,
particularly in the last
decade,
they've taken up an increasing
percentage of the average
household income,
meaning that people are looking
to buy lower cost foods.
And lower cost foods are often
higher calorie foods.
They're often foods that come
in bulk packages.
So people are more prone to buy
the liter and a half bottles of
soda than they would individual
cans.
And that has had an influence
on patterns of food consumption.
As I mentioned,
species dependence has gone
down.
 
We're relying on fewer and
fewer crops.
We're genetically engineering
those crops more and more.
A very high proportion of corn
that's planted in the United
States is now genetically
engineered.
The same goes for the other
major grains that we produce.
Also a serious problem that we
have is that our tastes are
being cultivated by other
organizations,
particularly food processors,
that are adding ingredients
that we don't really pay much
attention to in terms of fat,
in terms of salt,
in terms of sugar,
and a variety of artificial
flavors and colors that they do
very careful social surveys to
understand what kinds of tastes,
what kinds of colors,
what kinds of flavors people
enjoy the most.
 
I use the example of Salmofan,
so that salmon is now colored
in thirty-five to thirty-six
different shades,
ranging from a really deep red
to a very light coral.
So they did their focus groups
and conducted surveys,
and figured out that most
people like number thirty-three.
So that type of thinking is
pervading the food industry.
We as buyers tend to respond.
 
We respond by basically looking
for the lower cost foods,
but also those that seem to
provide either taste or some
other aesthetic appeal.
 
We also are consuming more
calories than we ever have
before.
 
We are consuming on average in
the United States about 3,900
calories per person.
 
Only fifteen years ago,
we were consuming about 3,200
calories.
 
And that's up from perhaps
2,700,2,800 calories per person.
And the average person with the
average weight,
say a 165-pound male,
could survive extremely well on
a diet of about 2,400 calories
per day.
Now this would vary
tremendously.
I know some of you are athletes.
 
Some of you may run ten miles a
day, some of you may swim four
or five miles a day.
 
For those of you that exercise
a great deal will obviously need
a much higher caloric intake.
 
But if you combine knowledge
about what's happened to our
behavior and our increasingly
sedentary lifestyles,
sitting behind computers,
watching video games.
The latest report came out only
last week demonstrating that
kids are now spending seven
hours a day looking at
electronic equipment in one form
or another.
This is really quite striking.
 
In my generation,
we had televisions.
But television wasn't that big
a thing when I grew up.
And we spent a whole lot more
time outdoors.
People are spending time
indoors, they're not burning up
as much energy as they used to,
so we're all putting on weight.
Water consumption.
 
Water consumption,
especially in arid parts of the
word,
irrigation necessary for
agriculture,
this is a critical problem,
particularly related to climate
change,
which is causing experts to
predict that it's going to be
increasingly expensive to move
water into dryer environments,
meaning that it's going to be a
requirement to ship those foods
from longer distances,
demanding higher energy.
Most of us don't really have
much knowledge of the energy it
takes to produce say a bowl of
peas as opposed to a bowl of
oatmeal or a steak.
 
And that's quite curious.
 
The amount of energy obviously
increases with distance from the
source of production to the
source of consumption.
But we really don't pay any
attention to that,
and we don't have any way of
measuring it.
This by the way would be a
terrific term paper,
if somebody's still thinking
about a research topic for the
course.
 
Just take one food.
 
Just take apples,
figure out where apples are
produced in the world,
figure out where Yale buys its
apples,
and try to come up with a
metric for the energy involved
in moving an apple from point of
production to point of
consumption.
So you could imagine a society
decades into the future where
you could take your iPhone and
you could walk up to a grocery
store shelf and you could hold
the bar code on the food or on
the side of the shelf next to
your phone,
and you could call up
information on where the food
came from.
 
You could call up information
on its energy.
Was it produced using
artificial chemicals?
Or what kinds of fertilizers
were used to produce it?
So we could get a whole new
level of understanding of energy
and the environmental health of
different products,
including issues such as
protein content,
fat content,
type of fat,
amount of salt,
et cetera.
Right now, most of us walk
through the marketplace really
blind to these issues,
blind to the environmental
effects of food production,
blind also to the energy
consumption.
 
We also have very little
understanding of food
processing,
and I want you to think about a
couple of commodities that you
experience on a routine basis.
You take cotton,
for example,
that I just showed you a
picture of.
Cotton seeds are put into a
machine.
They are ground up,
then they are sprayed by a
solvent.
 
The solvent extracts the oils,
and the oil drips down into
vats.
 
It gets mixed with other kinds
of vegetable oils and winds its
way into supermarkets.
 
How about grapes?
 
Well grapes have water
extracted from them.
And they are turned into
raisins.
You can think of a variety of
different foods.
Corn as another example.
 
Oil is extracted from corn.
 
How is it done?
 
It's done using a solvent.
 
Well, what happens to the
solvent?
Where does it go?
 
Are there residues of the
solvent in corn oil?
And the answer is often yes,
the residues do persist,
they do get into the food
supply.
But we have very little
understanding of what happens to
food when it leaves the farm on
its way to our dinner table.
Food packaging is a topic that
we'll take on in a few weeks,
particularly with respect to
plastics.
In the absence of our
understanding the origin of the
plastic,
the content of the plastic,
the energy that it takes to
produce the plastic,
is really quite striking.
 
All of the plastic waste that
surrounds most of the meats that
are produced and available in
grocery stores is thrown away.
And there's almost no hope that
any of that plastic is ever
recycled.
 
It's simply discarded and it's
burned.
And many of the plastics
contain chemicals that you
really don't want to breathe.
 
Or if they're buried in
landfills, they will leach.
They will break down gradually
and they will leach into soils
and underlying water supplies.
 
And as I mentioned in an
earlier lecture,
in every landfill,
among the 300,000 that exist in
the nation,
you can find these residues of
plastic in the soil and the
underlying groundwater supply.
So the key environmental and
health problems associated with
our methods of food production
include pesticides.
And I'll talk a bit about
pesticides today and the
structure of pesticide law.
 
There are now some 25,000
pesticides that are packaged in
different ways and sold in
different combinations in the
United States alone.
 
In the world marketplace,
there are 75,000 different
pesticide products that have
been registered by different
nations.
 
How about fertilizers?
 
Well, in some parts of the
world, human waste is used as
fertilizers, animal waste is
used.
But also, there are fossil-fuel
based fertilizers that are very
common.
 
So increasingly,
we find fertilizer being used
as farmers continually plant and
replant the same field,
they don't let it lie fallow.
 
They don't plant crops that can
fix nitrogen into the soil,
so they have to add it
artificially.
Coloring agents,
most of you probably do not pay
too much attention to coloring
agents in your food.
But there's a very interesting
history of coloring agents.
And different nations have
different laws.
And some of these agents are
natural, others are artificial.
But that would be another great
paper topic.
Just take a look carefully at
what we know about different
kinds of chemicals that are used
to color foods.
Flavors also,
artificial flavors and natural
flavors.
 
What do you know about them?
 
They do not have to be labeled
under federal food law.
So natural flavors is an
umbrella category,
artificial flavors also is.
 
And this is a huge industry.
 
If you decided you wanted to
produce say a new concoction,
maybe it would be a
coconut-flavored applesauce.
Well, you could basically get
some sort of pureed fruit of
different sorts,
maybe pear, maybe apple,
maybe peaches.
 
You could grind the pulp up,
and by processing it,
you would likely lose all the
flavor.
So you'd have to figure out how
to put the flavor back into it.
Well, you could do that really
easily.
I encourage you to go online
and take a look at the
International Flavors and
Fragrances Institute.
And it will give you a list of
firms,
chemical companies all over the
world that will allow you to
say,
"Yes, I want to make a
coconut-lime applesauce or a
root beer flavored chewing
gum."
 
They will give you the chemical
company's name and they will
provide you with the essences
necessary to create the product.
Also, you may not know,
but fragrances are commonly
used in food,
because fragrances will trigger
the same nerve response in your
mouth and in your mind that the
flavors will trigger.
 
So to create a sense that
you're eating say,
root beer flavored oatmeal,
they could simply use a drop of
a fragrance to give you that
impression.
So packaging materials,
processing effects,
contamination of air,
water, and food,
and genetic modification,
these are all critical,
highly debated topics around
the world,
given the fact that many
nations have different
standards.
 
Whereas the marketplace,
the global marketplace,
clearly is moving commodities
at a lightening pace across
national boundaries,
creating serious legal problems
for firms that have to
understand the difficult problem
of having different regulations
in different countries.
And there are deeper problems
here associated with the food
supply.
 
And they include really a
fractured legal and regulatory
responsibility.
 
And I'll talk more about that
in a few moments.
Private science,
the fact that the majority of
science that underlies
understanding the environmental
effects,
the health effects,
the energy consumption required
in order to produce and move
food,
the energy required to deal
with the waste,
that the science is being
conducted in the private sector,
it's often not available to the
public sector.
 
So trade secrecy law is quite
important in this case in that
it often prevents you from
understanding in detail what
you'd really need to know in
order to take control over your
own diet.
 
Worker safety is another deeper
problem that we don't pay much
attention to.
 
If you look at the farm worker
poisoning data,
it becomes apparent that
workers are often not well
protected.
 
They're often not monitored.
 
They often do not have
insurance and healthcare,
so that it's a neglected
population.
Migrant workers traditionally
have been exploited in almost
every nation in the world.
 
But even in our country,
where we think we have highly
sophisticated law,
workers really are not
protected nearly the same as you
or I would be,
so that there are different
standards for allowable risk for
workers than there are for you
or I,
say from purchasing food in the
marketplace,
different contamination limits.
 
Another deeper problem is the
narrative advantage of the
producers.
 
If you look at the scale of the
advertising industry and their
methods of advertising--
and this also would be a great
topic for a paper--
what are their dominant
strategies?
 
How do they make claims of
product benefit?
Either that it is natural,
that it is healthful,
how far can they go?
 
And what laws restrict what
they can claim?
What about their requirements
to disclose risks that are known
to be associated with their
foods?
So it's interesting that the
organic food industry evolved,
basically growing from a
strategy that proclaims that a
certain class of chemicals is
not present in the food supply.
So synthetic organic pesticides
are not allowed to be used in
organic foods.
 
Now, that doesn't mean that
those that are producing
non-organic foods have to label
what synthetic organic chemicals
are in their food.
 
So you can think about
different legal strategies that
might be employed in order to
provide the consumer with
knowledge that would be really
necessary to understand what
they're eating.
 
Public subsidies also are a
worthy topic for somebody
interested in trying to
transform the international food
system.
 
So if you look at the subsidies
carefully,
and you can do this now because
there is a group in Washington
called the Environmental Working
Group that put together a
terrific website.
 
So you can go to the website
and you can find your home state
and your county or your town.
 
And you can figure out which
farmers are getting which
subsidies.
 
And what you'll see is that
industrialized commodities,
such as corn and wheat and
cotton, they're receiving the
bulk of the subsidies in the
nation.
As opposed to the organic
farmers or farmers that are
beyond organic,
who basically receive no
subsidy.
 
So that government funds could
be used to innovate,
to really transform the
structure of agriculture in the
nation.
 
But this is not likely in the
near future.
Land values,
how do land values play into
the pattern of farming and
agriculture that we currently
see?
 
Well, what I suggested earlier
in the talk was that as urban
areas and suburban areas sprawl
out into undeveloped lands,
they commonly will cause
property values in lands that
are nearby to increase.
 
Their commercial value,
their residential value,
or their industrial value may
shoot up quite quickly as a city
expands.
 
So that the value of the land
in terms of its productivity for
different crops often can't
compete with this rising
property value,
so the farmer sells out.
Also, the agricultural land,
it's flat generally.
It also is not forested.
 
And what this means is that
it's really easy to develop.
So you can imagine the problem
of developing in a forested
area, it's much more expensive
for a land developer.
So you find the rate of
transformation of farmland,
especially in rural parts of
the U.S.
that are in the target zone for
urban expansion,
these lands are being shifted
into residential and commercial
use at a very rapid rate.
 
So the fundamental problem that
I think we face right now is one
of intelligence.
 
And I don't mean to imply that
it's an absence of capacity to
understand these things,
it's an absence of producing
the knowledge and making it
publically accessible to
consumers in a way that really
could empower you to react in
the marketplace in a way that
would send messages back to
corporations,
messages that I think really
are often much more powerful and
often more listened to than
messages sent by regulators.
 
So I'd like you to think about
corn and ethanol for just a
moment,
and the increasing subsidy for
the production of ethanol that
it will oxygenate fuels and is
required by different levels of
government,
including the Environmental
Protection Agency,
as a way of improving air
quality.
But what is increasingly
apparent is that the ethanol
subsidy has caused corn prices
to rise quite dramatically
because more of the farmers are
putting these ethanol production
plants on their property and
they're not shunting the corn
into the food supply.
 
Now, there also was an
overabundance of enthusiasm
among the farmers to produce the
ethanol.
So the ethanol market started
to collapse, and this has hurt
the farmers throughout the
United States.
Think now about one area,
and the area of chemical
application, particularly
pesticides.
This is an interesting area in
that it demands that you think
about a real variety of laws.
 
The Federal Food,
Drug and Cosmetic Act,
on the top here,
the Federal Insecticide,
Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act,
and the Food Quality Protection
Act.
 
These are the dominant statutes
in the United States that apply
to pesticide control.
 
But other laws as well are
necessary to understand,
and have some control over
pesticides, including the Safe
Drinking Water Act.
 
In other words,
one would need to worry about
the application of billions of
pounds of pesticides in the
United States every year because
pesticides often don't just go
away.
 
They often will move down
through soils and into
groundwater supplies.
 
So we'll talk a bit later in
the week about the problem
managing drinking water quality.
 
By the way, the government,
in its food intake surveys,
concludes that the number one
food that everybody eats in the
United States is water.
 
Water is classified as a food
under the Food,
Drug, and Cosmetic Act,
so that worrying about water
contamination is a really
important issue,
and understanding the way that
chemical release into the
atmosphere,
as well as onto plants and into
the landscape,
that could contaminate drinking
water.
 
Even if it goes through a
filtration plant,
that often is the case for many
urban areas.
Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act that we talked a
bit about last week,
and Superfund,
most of these sites have
pesticides within them.
And they are classified as
hazardous sites in part because
of the pesticides that are
there.
Pesticides were in the RCRA
sites and the CERCLA sites on
Vieques.
 
Predominately chemicals that
are persistent were applied back
in the '30s, '40s,
and '50s.
The Toxic Substance Control Act
does deal with pesticides.
The Hazardous Material
Transportation Act does as well.
The National Environmental
Policy Act that we talked about
last week.
 
Endangered Species Act--if you
have an endangered species and
its habitat has been defined,
it's normally illegal to apply
pesticides in that habitat.
 
The Wilderness Act would
prevent pesticides from being
applied within its boundaries.
 
And the manufacture of
pesticides often produces
airborne residues that are
regulated under the Clean Air
Act.
 
And also the release via pipes
from those plants is regulated
under the Clean Water Act.
 
But as well,
you can imagine the problem of
spraying chemicals year after
year on a landscape,
and then you have rain storms
coming in the Spring.
Give you a good example of that.
 
Atrazine, which is an
herbicide, it's a pre-emergent
herbicide,
so they plant the corn,
but before the corn sprouts,
they'll spray the landscape
with the atrazine,
often in the spring.
Always in the spring,
actually, and particularly in
the Midwest.
 
After the spring rains come,
you can measure spikes in
atrazine in the Mississippi
River and most of the Midwestern
rivers.
 
And these rivers in the Midwest
provide water supplies for tens
of millions of people.
 
And the filtration of the
plants will not take it out.
So both the Clean Water Act and
the Safe Drinking Water Act come
into play in that case.
 
And the Occupational Safety and
Health Act also is designed to
protect worker safety.
 
But as I said earlier,
it often sets standards that
are far above standards that are
set for non-worker environments.
So it's a very complicated body
of law.
But for this reason,
pesticides becomes a good
window to understand law.
 
One way to think about this is
that it's driven by two things
really.
 
One is that pesticides are
intentionally toxic substances.
They're not like say,
just some new chemical that
somebody designs to be added to
plastic to make it stronger.
That wasn't designed to kill a
different species,
it was designed to provide some
functionality.
But pesticides,
as a group of chemicals,
were specifically designed to
injure either a plant,
an insect, some other species.
 
In fact, some of the nerve
gases that were designed during
World War II and in the 1920s by
Great Britain and Nazi Germany,
they were designed specifically
to harm humans.
And many of these nerve gases
have been diluted down for
agricultural purposes.
 
So that all species have been
targets for the development of
this class of biocides.
 
So number one,
they're intentionally toxic
substances.
 
And number two,
to get their effect,
they've got to be released to
the environment in great
quantities.
 
So you release a chemical to
the environment,
the atomic weapons testing
history tells us you'd better
understand something about where
it goes.
And pesticide history is
replete with examples where
people paid too little
attention.
Now I want to step back and
take you into the earlier part
of the century.
 
And I want you to think about a
very serious problem at that
point in time and a problem that
persists, and that's malaria.
Malaria is an illness that's
transmitted by a parasite.
The anopheles mosquito and all
of its variants had the capacity
to take the parasite up from the
blood of an infected animal or
an infected human.
 
So if you had malaria and an
insect came and landed on you,
the anopheles mosquito would
first spit a little bit of an
anticoagulant through its
proboscis into your body to help
you bleed a little bit.
 
And then it would suck your
blood into its stomach cavity.
And with that blood,
it would pull in malaria
parasites that are in your body.
 
Then perhaps assume I didn't
have malaria,
that mosquito flew over and
landed on me.
It would bite me and when it
would insert its anticoagulant
in its saliva in me,
it would transmit parasites
into my body.
 
And that's the way that this
illness is transmitted from
person to person.
 
The parasite has the capacity
to live for nine to eleven days
inside the body of a mosquito.
 
And this is kind of an
interesting issue,
that the encephalitis virus
lasts from ten to twenty-five
days,
and thank god the AIDS virus
lasts only one to two days.
 
So the longevity of different
viruses or bacteria or parasites
inside different insects affects
the rate of transmission.
So I want you to also
understand the scale of this
problem in the world.
 
And today, there are about
between 300 and 500 million
people that are clinically
disabled by malaria,
meaning that they're walking
around with this parasite in
their bodies that is sapping
them of energy,
that is giving them periodic
fevers,
that makes them more
susceptible to other kinds of
illnesses.
 
And forty percent of the
world's population live in areas
that are at risk,
meaning that the mosquitoes in
that area are capable of
transmitting the parasite.
And you've got a large
population percentage that also
is carrying the parasite in
their bodies.
The core of the problem for
malaria in the world is really
in tropical regions and
particularly in Africa,
where ninety percent of the
incidents and mortality exist.
And the estimate right now by
the World Health Organization is
that roughly one to one and a
half million people die every
year from malaria.
 
And the estimate over the
twentieth century is about 100
million people have died from
this illness.
It's quite striking that many
people have not understood the
scale of this problem.
 
So it's also clear if you read
much military history that
malaria was a very serious
problem in all wars.
So that if you go back to the
time of Napoleon or if you look
at the history of World War I or
World War II,
as the U.S.
 
or other countries moved into
tropical parts of the world,
more casualties commonly
occurred, more lost days among
GIs occurred due to malaria than
it did to the direct effects of
casualties.
 
There are also susceptible
populations, kids in endemic
areas.
 
Although in epidemics,
all age groups are affected.
Refugees and migrant
populations, and those living in
tents, such as those that are
fighting in armed conflict.
It's all related to heightened
exposure, being out in an
environment where you're
exposing yourself to being
bitten by infected insects.
 
So you could also imagine that
those that work in mines or
those that work in forestry in
tropical parts of the world or
agriculture workers,
they are also more at risk.
People that spend time outdoors
in the tropics in endemic areas
are more at risk,
as are those with reduced
immunity.
 
Who has reduced immunity?
 
Well, pregnant women.
 
Pregnant women are extremely
susceptible to very serious
illness from pregnancy and also
miscarriages.
Also the very young,
young children.
Those that already have their
immune system compromised.
Or in the poorest parts of the
world,
you often have the background
high incidence of acute
respiratory infections or
diarrheal diseases that reduces
strength and immunity,
and makes one more susceptible
to this illness.
 
Well, one of the ways of
controlling malaria,
including pesticides,
and here's an example of a
worker in 1939 in an outbreak in
Natal,
Brazil, when a mosquito
actually hitchhiked from Africa
on a mail boat,
an anopheles gambiae
mosquito,
not indigenous to Brazil.
So they finally figured out
that it hitchhiked on this mail
freighter, or a number of them
did.
And they were able to establish
a fairly large and robust
population.
 
And it occurred during a rainy
season when they had exactly the
right pool of water standing on
areas.
Some mosquitoes actually are
interesting, in that they prefer
streams or rivers that are
moving really quickly as
habitat.
 
Others like very still water.
 
Others like shallow water.
 
So there are hundreds and
hundreds of different species of
mosquitoes capable of
transmitting these illnesses,
such as malaria or dengue fever
or yellow fever.
So understanding the ecology
here is really important.
One way of dealing with the
problem and not understanding
the ecology is basically to
simply spray broad areas of the
landscape with pesticides,
which is what they did in this
case.
 
When U.S.
 
troops invaded islands in the
Pacific in the war against Japan
in the mid-1940s,
the incidence among U.S.
GIs was often 3,000 per 1,000
per year, as it was reported.
Meaning that everybody on the
island had on average malaria at
least three times,
so that the casualty rates here
caused them to have to move
troops in and out of the island
much more rapidly than they
normally would have.
The development of the chlorine
industry is a very important
part of the story,
because chlorine is a key
component of many pesticides
that were developed in the
1940s,
including DDT.
Chlorinated hydrocarbons
include aldrin,
dieldrin, heptachlor,
chlordane, chemicals curiously
that became the target of the
Environmental Protection Agency
as soon as it was formed in the
1970s.
And why is that?
 
Well, because all of the
properties that made
strontium-90 a dangerous
compound,
it persisted,
it moved widely through the
environment,
it would contaminate virtually
every compartment,
and it would build up in food
chains,
marine food chains as well as
in ecosystems,
in terrestrial ecosystems.
It would get in people's bodies
and it would be transmitted via
breast milk across generations.
 
So the search was on during
this explosion in the chemical
industry in the 1940s for a
variety of new chemicals that
would replace the older metals,
like Paris Green.
In the previous shot here,
this gentleman is mixing Paris
Green, which is arsenic.
 
He's mixing it by hand and he's
basically just throwing it out
across a stream.
 
So that the heavy metals used
earlier in the century were
replaced by the chlorinated
hydrocarbons.
And gradually they figured out
that DDT in particular was
exceptionally effective at
controlling the insects that
would transmit the parasite that
causes malaria.
So this was first tried as
refugees moved through Europe
during World War II.
 
And here's an example of taking
basically a variant on a bicycle
pump and taking a hose.
 
And the drill that was followed
was there was one shot down the
back of the neck,
there was one shot down the
waistband,
and then up into the lower part
of the shirt,
front and back,
and then up both of the pant
legs.
So that tens of thousands of
people were lined up in Rome,
walking through these stations
as people that were sanitation
workers then would basically man
these pumps and spray people.
This attempt brought the typhus
epidemic,
that is transmitted by fleas,
to a close extremely rapidly,
within a matter of a couple
weeks, when it was anticipated
to go on for months if not
years.
Another example of a child at
the time being sprayed.
So gradually,
they recognized that DDT would
kill so many different species
that it was sprayed across
marshlands and landscapes.
 
And they realized at the end of
World War II that they should
also release it for agriculture
purposes.
So by 1950, DDT was being
marketed as an effective way to
control pests that would
threaten just about every crop
you could imagine.
 
More than 300 different crops,
critical components of U.S.
agriculture,
were recommended to be treated
by this single chemical.
 
So DDT is good for me,
there's a little jingle that
went along with this that kids
would sing.
There was no understanding of
its bioaccumulation capacity.
Even though they understood
that they only had to spray it
once in an area,
whereas other compounds they
would have to kind of come back
and keep on spraying.
So I'll tell that story in just
a moment.
But here's another example of
Jones Beach in New York,
where the County Public Health
Department is driving down the
beach and the sign that is on
the side of this truck,
you can't read it I'm sure,
but it's telling,
it says, "DDT,
powerful insecticide,
harmless to humans."
 
Very little understanding of
what they were doing.
Kids were running down,
people were eating their
hamburgers.
 
Trucks would come by,
kids would be sitting at picnic
tables.
 
The picnic table,
all the food,
and the kids included would be
sprayed.
Very little understanding of
kind of the basic ecology of
this compound.
 
So it persists in the soil,
it was later discovered,
ten to thirty-five years,
and in the atmosphere for three
years.
 
And just as an aside,
they decided that they were
going to just test the air.
 
Just by chance,
somebody said,
"Well, you know,
this is a ridiculous thing to
do."
 
But thirty meters off the ocean
on a freighter halfway between
San Francisco and Tokyo,
they took air measurements and
found that DDT was present in
the air in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean and that there was
a latitudinal gradient,
so that as you approached the
Equator,
you would have a higher
concentration of DDT than if you
moved away.
 
And why was that?
 
Well, it's because of the
increase number of pests that
you get closer to the Equator in
tropical parts of the world,
led those nations to spray more
DDT,
both for sanitation and public
health purposes,
but also for crop protection
purposes.
It was also found in human
tissues.
And it probably is still
detectable in your tissue.
In fact, I was looking at the
Food and Drug Administration's
records on pesticide residues in
the food supply.
It's kind of striking in that
even today, DDT is one of the
most detected chemicals in the
U.S.
food supply,
particularly in milk products,
at very, very low levels.
 
But it's a good indicator of
the long-term persistence of
this compound,
and why we need to pay
attention to that.
 
Also, like strontium,
it was detected in breast milk,
meaning that if you were breast
fed,
your mom probably had a higher
concentration than you do,
but any body burden that you've
got is coming from probably just
stores from your mom,
because this compound binds to
body fat,
it's lipophilic,
as opposed to hydrophilic.
 
And that's the way that you'd
be exposed.
Your grandmother probably had
residues far higher than your
mother.
 
But this kind of
trans-generational effect is
quite curious.
 
In 1971, the effort to regulate
it was really pioneered by
Vermont.
 
Vermont passed a law banning
DDT use in the state.
And they had formerly been
spraying it on their forests to
control for gypsy moths.
 
That was followed in Wisconsin
in 1970 by a ban,
in New York in 1971 by a ban.
 
And finally,
actually, the British also
decided that this was not a
problem.
That the support for
agriculture and the control of
public health was so important
that it should continue to be
used.
 
Whereas the Soviets found that
it was worthy of a ban.
They came out strongly in favor
of a ban.
Finally, in 1972,
and remember,
EPA was created in 1969,
it actually physically came
into being in 1970.
 
In 1972, William Ruckelshaus,
who was the former
administrator of the
Environmental Protection Agency,
decided that they should move
ahead because of the effects on
wildlife,
but also the cancer threat to
humans he felt was significant
enough to justify its
regulation.
 
And I know you can't read this,
but there's an interesting
phrase,
and this is in the New York
Times,
that "Effective December
31,1972.
 
In the meantime (he explained),
growers of cotton,
peanuts, soybeans,
the three crops that account
for almost the total domestic
use of DDT,
will get instructions in the
handling of a substitute
pesticide,
methyl parathion.
The substitute is nontoxic,
but unlike DDT,
it degrades quickly."
 
So they're trading off a
persistent chemical for one that
degrades quite quickly,
not really understanding what
the long-term effect might be.
 
Curiously, the companies that
manufactured DDT said to
themselves,
"Well, you know,
is there a way that we could
modify the chemical structure of
the compound and sell something
that would be a minor
variant?"
 
And they produced a compound
known as dicophal that was only
a little bit different.
 
And lo and behold,
in all the parts of the country
where dicophal was sprayed,
they found similar effects in
wildlife,
particularly among large
raptors.
 
So in the Southwest and in the
South, where cotton is grown,
they found dicophal building up
just the way DDT had.
So it was lipophilic,
it was bio-accumulative,
and basically became equally
worrisome to the Environmental
Protection Agency.
 
So they banned DDT in '72.
 
They got around to recognizing
that not only was dicophal
having the same effects,
but it also was contaminated by
DDT at a level of about fifteen
percent and that they needed to
get that chemical out of the
food supply and out of the
environment as well.
 
So it took until 1986 for them
to actually move ahead with the
regulation.
 
And then to work its way out of
production took until the early
1990s.
 
So this is the ban that wasn't
a ban.
The ban that took effect in '72
that really was not effective
until the early 1990s.
 
Now, if you then jump ahead,
fast forward to 1999,
you'll see that EPA is getting
around to studying methyl
parathion--
the recommended substitute by
William Ruckelshaus in 1972--
in 1999, EPA decided this
chemical is more dangerous than
we thought.
In fact, methyl parathion is
responsible for more farm worker
deaths and poisoning than any
other chemical in history.
Not only is it far more acutely
toxic than DDT,
but it also persisted longer
than they believed.
So one of the concerns that we
have today is what are we going
to do with respect to the
persistence of malaria,
but also its likely migration
into parts of the world where it
had been well controlled?
 
And if you look at where
malaria exists now,
you'll see that malaria is a
problem predominately in the
tropical parts of the world,
also the poorest parts of the
world.
 
And you'll see that the
expected range of malaria,
of the different species of
mosquitoes that carry it,
it's widening.
 
It's widening right now in
response to changing climatic
conditions.
 
So that the habitat is becoming
more favorable for disease
transmission.
 
Now, the World Health
Organization recognized this and
they called together a group of
people that were experts in
pesticides.
 
And I'd worked on pesticides
for maybe fifteen years.
I'd worked with a group of
about seven other people,
some from African nations,
to try to understand how to
manage malaria,
particularly in Africa.
WHO had gone along with the
bans of EPA and most other
high-income nations in the world
and had phased it out.
It did not recommend the use of
DDT in any part of the world as
of the mid-1970s.
 
But they wanted to reconsider
this, because it was so
inexpensive, and it was so
effective, in part because it
was so persistent.
 
They realized that if it was
sprayed both indoors and
outdoors,
it would cause the insects to
evolve resistant strains that
would be harder and harder for
them to manage.
 
In fact, many mosquitoes have
developed a resistance to DDT so
that if they sprayed it on a
wall inside a house,
the anopheles mosquito would
land on the wall,
but it could sense it through
its feet and it would take off.
So it's a new behavioral
response that prevented it from
absorbing a lethal dose.
 
So gradually,
the World Health Organization
became concerned about
increasing incidence of malaria,
particularly in Africa.
 
And it convened this group to
try to figure out whether or not
it made sense to get behind DDT
and to use it again.
And the next most effective
pesticide cost four times the
level of DDT,
so this was a problem,
and the aid agencies were not
willing to pay this increased
expense.
 
So that WHO finally,
in 2006, gave DDT a clean bill
of health,
so to speak,
even though this group of
experts that convened in 2004,
this group found that well,
using DDT is really not a good
idea.
 
You should use a less toxic
chemical, one that is less
persistent, that would be
equally effective,
even though it costs more.
 
So it's a matter of finding the
money in order to pay for the
chemical that would protect
human health and environmental
quality at the same time it
would deal with the malaria
problem.
 
So, I'm at time and I'm going
to stop there.
And we'll come back on Thursday
and take a closer look at the
variety of laws that apply to
food safety in the nation.
Thank you.
 
 
 
