Effect of DDT Pesticides on Environment

There are a lot of environmental problems faced nowadays and most of those arise out of the human activities and the misuse of resources available to them. With the increase of the population on the Earth, the demand for food has also tremendously increased which has made the usage of pesticides essential for meeting the demands. However, it is adversely affecting the environment and proving to be a hazard for it.

The first usage of DDT was done in the form of chlorinated hydrocarbon. The full name of DDT is dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. The discovery of DDT was made by a Swiss chemist Paul Müeller in the year 1939. Initially, it was used extensively by people as it helped in killing a number of insects and pests without proving toxic to the mammals.

Due to its persistency, the effect of DDT remained for a longer duration when used once as it was not required to be applied often.  The main reason for this was its high tolerance due to which it didn’t get washed off by rain or got lessened by other weather conditions.

Gradually, due to immense usage of pesticides for growing more crops and getting rid of insects, the insects started growing resistant to the usage of DDT.  By the time, it was also revealed how DDT had disastrously polluted the whole environment with its dangerous chemicals. Though it is banned in a few nations, but still farmers have been using it in many countries for their profit.

Its continued usage has also proved cancerous for human consumption and has led to many other diseases in human beings. Animal lives are also affected as they eat the plants on which DDT is sprinkled.

The need of the day is to ban such harmful pesticides all over the world to save the environment.

C. Glover