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Crisis

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Insects, Experts, and the Insecticide Crisis

Abstract

Widespread adoption of the new insecticides in American agriculture was essentially complete by the early 1950s, but it was not uncontested. Safety to humans and other species constituted a recognized problem from the beginning, but the exact nature and magnitude of the threats continues to be a subject for bitter debate. A second sort of problem emerged almost simultaneously with the introduction of the new insecticides. Are they a stable technological tool? Resistance of insects to the poisons and the destruction of natural enemies of insect pests threatened to unleash the tremendous reproductive power of pest species in a way that would render the insecticides useless or worse in the eyes of their users.

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Reference Notes

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    John H. Perkins

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Perkins, J.H. (1982). Crisis. In: Insects, Experts, and the Insecticide Crisis. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-3998-4_2

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