Summary of Elena Conis's How to Sell a Poison

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 In the late 1800s, massive changes in American farming and transportation invited a long list of destructive bugs. Farmers loosed natural parasites and predators of the pests, which created bigger problems in the process.

#2 While working for a Swiss company, Eugene Froelicher studied how insects attacked crops, and how to grow crops that would resist those attacks. His work was instrumental in the development of the first generation of insecticides.

#3 In the late 1800s, massive changes in American farming and transportation invited a long list of destructive bugs. Farmers loosed natural parasites and predators of the pests, which created bigger problems in the process.

#4 In the late 1800s, massive changes in American farming and transportation invited a long list of destructive bugs. Farmers loosed natural parasites and predators of the pests, which created bigger problems in the process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Sep 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798350029994

IRB Media

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Insights on Elena Conis's How to Sell a Poison

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Swiss-born chemist and his wife, Helen, had a home in Ridgewood, New Jersey, just outside of New York City. They raised five children on its half-acre lawn and hosted endless events within its plastered halls.

#2

By the 1920s, unwitting consumers began to fall ill, left shaking with fever, bloody urine, and thready pulse after eating asparagus, cabbage, or celery.

#3

In 1941, Froelicher received a report from Basel headquarters about a dust that was extremely effective against the Colorado potato beetle. The dust had saved the Swiss potato crop, reportedly forestalling a famine in Switzerland. Froelicher knew that the US Department of Agriculture was very interested in finding the holy grail of insect killers.

#4

The USDA’s entomologists had developed a handful of repellants and insecticides. None of them were very remarkable. The scientists’ biggest accomplishment was to create massive colonies of mosquitoes and lice. But the lab’s director, Edward Knipling, was a thirty-five-year-old Texan with five kids and a reputation for being patient, thorough, and precise.

#5

The team in Orlando tested the chemical, and found that it was safe for people. They then went to Washington to meet with the surgeon general, Thomas Parran, who had only one duty: to save as many American lives as possible.

#6

The chemical, which was named DDT, was tested on larger populations than Knipling’s team had access to. Not a single person so much as sneezed or itched after being dusted or sprayed with it, but it would take a much bigger population for Knipling to be confident that it was safe.

#7

After the Naples experiment, Knipling’s team set up an insecticide school and outlined a new protocol for army personnel on how to use DDT. It started with instructions on how to make a spray: by dissolving a little bit of pure, or technical, DDT in kerosene, fuel oil, diesel oil, or waste crankcase oil from vehicles and planes.

#8

The FDA found that large doses of full-strength DDT caused nervousness, convulsions, and death when fed to guinea pigs, rabbits, and other lab animals. Dissolved in solvent and applied to rabbit bellies, it led to tremors and paralysis.

#9

In 1944, the army air base in Orlando, Florida, was dusted with a DDT spray so that white film would cling to everything in the rooms. The airman, who had been inducted the spring before, was one of three known men with the greatest exposure to DDT. His physical and psychological performance was average, but the findings did not indicate any definite evidence of toxic effects.

#10

Back at the Froelicher house in Ridgewood, New Jersey, Helen and Victor waited for word from their oldest son, Charles, who was serving with the US 6th Armored Division in