CHAPTER FIFTEEN— THE INSECTICIDE, FUNGICIDE, 

 AND RODENTICIDE ACT OF 1947 



I. Introduction 



Chemical pesticides developed over the past two i^enerations have 

 been acclaimed as an indispensable tool of agriculture to produce food 

 for the rapidly expanding poj^ulation of the world ; they have saved 

 the lives of tens of millions of persons through control of disease- 

 carrying insects. They have also been assailed for upsetting the eco- 

 logical balance of nature, threatening some species with extinction, 

 causing widespread injury to others, and progressively degrading 

 man's environment. In regulating commerce and use of these chemicals, 

 both sets of effects do not appear to have been considered together. 

 Concern at first centered on the maintenance of their quality and on 

 the safety of users; later, their undesirable secondary consequences 

 received attention. This chapter examines testimony received by a 

 congressional committee in 1946 and 1947 on pesticide regidation, to 

 explore the reasons for, and the implications of, the lag in awareness 

 of the adverse secondary consequences of the use of pesticides. 



An overvieto of jmblic attitudes on pesticide regulation 



To arrive at the significance of this question, it may be helpful to 

 approach the period in question by retracing subsequent events in 

 reverse chronological order. By 1967, widespread attention was being 

 given to the wholesale poisoning of the environment by pollutants. 

 An important class of these pollutants was the chemical poisons — in- 

 secticides, fungicides, rodenticides, and the like. The impairment of 

 the environment by these chemical poisons had provided the theme 

 for an influential popular treatise by Rachel Carson, in 1962. Much of 

 the subsequent concern over environmental degradation was attrib- 

 utable in some measure to the persuasive exposition of the case in Miss 

 Carson's book, "The Silent Spring."' Her book was based upon a large 

 number of scattered reports mainly published in the 19,50's, many of 

 which indicated — sometimes quantitatively — the ways in which toxic 

 pesticides reached beyond their intended target organisms to strike 

 down others more useful if sometimes insufficiently appreciated. The 

 question of regulating the new organic pesticides, with their unprece- 

 dented potency and effectiveness, had been dealt with by the Congress 

 only a few years earlier. However, in the assessment that preceded 

 adoption of Ihe Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act of 1947,^ 

 the issue of adverse environmental effects of wholesale use of the new 

 chemicals was undeveloped; it had no apparent influence on the form 

 taken by the legislation nor on its acceptance by the Congress. 



The thrust of this chapter is to consider the reasons why the tech- 

 nological assessment function of the Congress in 1946-47 did not en- 

 compass the broader social and environmental implications of pesti- 



1 Public Law 104, SOth Cong., 61 Stat. 163, approved June 25, 1947. 



(404) 



