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A CASE STUDY* THE DECISION TO BAN DDT by Charles F. Wurster Associate Professor State University of New York at Stony Brook January 1975 NAS-NAE JAN 2 01976 *Written for the study on Decision Making for Regulating-'Cft6fi»441s in the Environment, Environmental Studies Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, undertaken at the request of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Contract No. 68-01-2262.
THE DECISION TO BAN DDT* Charles F. Wurster Associate Professor of Environmental Sciences Marine Sciences Research Center State University of New York Stony Brook, New York 11794 1 January 1975 Introduction On June 14, 1972, William D. Puckelshaus, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), announced his decision to halt virtually all interstate sales and shipments of the insecticide DDT (Ruckelshaus, 1972). The decision followed a 7-month hearing in which numerous witnesses explored the benefits and costs of the use of DDT in the United States. Mr. Ruckelshaus concluded that the costs exceeded any benefits. This action was taken under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), the Federal law that provides for the regulation of pesticides, legally known as economic poisons. FIFRA provides that all economic poisons must be registered before they can be shipped and sold in interstate commerce, and they must also be so labeled as to protect non-target organisms when the product is used as directed on the label. If the label does not provide such protection, then the product is termed misbrandecl and the registration must be canceled. The Ruckelshaus decision found almost all DDT registrations misbranded. He concluded that no directions for the use of DDT, even if followed, could eliminate DDT's damage to non-target organisms, and accordingly registrations were terminated by the June 14 order (Ruckelshaus, 1972).