Science: Safe DDT

For those who would like to use DDT but are afraid of being poisoned by it, the current Mosquito News (published by the American Mosquito Control Association) has a word of reassurance. According to Lieut. Commander William J. Perry and Lieut. Leonard J. Bodenlos of the Medical Corps, U.S. Navy, DDT is practically harmless to humans who get it on their skins or breathe it into their lungs.

The two officers examined military personnel and laborers who had been working with DDT for as much as five years. In no case did they find an ailment traceable to DDT. To make doubly sure, they analyzed body fat from 16 men who had been exposed constantly to DDT. Though the insecticide tends to concentrate in fatty tissues, they found none of it in their samples.

Like many other things, DDT is poisonous to human beings if swallowed in large doses. Perry and Bodenlos suspect, however, that some of the deaths credited to DDT were really due to the kerosene and other solvents in which the insecticide was dissolved.