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War:

Science and Environment

Frederick R. Davis Professor of History

R. Mark Lubbers Chair – History of Science Purdue University

Fritz Haber (1868-1934)

Feeding a Growing World

• 1890: Professor of Chemistry and Electrochemistry –Challenge: Feed the growing population of

Germany

Fixing Nitrogen

• Haber broke the Nitrogen bonds and formed Ammonia.

• Produced liquid fertilizer.

• 1909: Announcement

• 1918: Nobel Prize in Chemistry

• Global food exploded.

World War I and Chlorine Gas

• Haber developed explosives • Haber developed chlorine gas.

• German high command accepted recommendation. • German troops killed during test runs.

• Haber’s wife:

• “…A sign of barbarity, corrupting the very discipline which ought to bring new insights into life.”

Operation Disinfectant

• 22 April 1915:

• 6000 soldiers killed.

• WWI ended 11 November 1918

• 100,000 people died in gas attacks. • Millions died in bombing attacks. • Clara Haber committed suicide.

Geneva Protocol

• League of Nations - 1925

• Banned asphyxiating, poisonous or other gasses and bacteriological methods of warfare.

Atomic Bombs in World War II

• Albert Einstein signed a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt.

• Discovery of nuclear fission.

• “This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs and it is conceivable – though much less certain – that extremely powerful bombs of a new type could be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port…”

Manhattan Project

• Leader: General Leslie H. Groves.

• Scientific / technical director: J. Robert Oppenheimer

• Physicists: many nationalities:

American, German, Hungarian, Swiss, British

• Confirmed a few kilograms of U₂₃₅ would work for the bomb.

Manhattan Project Sites

• Niels Bohr: “to get the fissionable material necessary to make a

bomb,” it was necessary to “turn the whole country into a factory.”

Trinity: 16 July 1945

• Alamagordo, New Mexico

• Jornado del Muerto (Journey of Death)

• Oppenheimer: “It worked.”

Trinity Test: July 16, 1945

Atomic Bomb

• Total cost: $2 billion • 120,000 workers

• 2 bombs / 1 test bomb: 3 bombs in total.

• Uranium – 235 • Plutonium

Medical Technology

• WW I: Deadly infections could have been avoided by a powerful antibiotic.

• “penicillium”: blue-green mold.

• Penicillin (the drug that the British developed from the mold) would destroy bacteria (and bacterial infections).

Penicillin

• Antibiotic • 1945:

• 21 million daily doses to soldiers.

Malaria

• Second only to gonorrhea in producing casualties from infection.

• Guadalcanal in 1942, malaria caused 5 times as many casualties as combat.

Quinine to Atabrine

• Before World War II, quinine from Indonesia. • Japanese: 90% of the world quinine supply. • Atabrine (Man-made substitute for quinine)

Mosquitoes?

Agriculture before Insecticides

• Most crops: 30-60% loss of the produce to insect damage.

• 19th Century--farmers desperate for a technological fix for insect infestations.

• Pyrethrum: insecticide made from Chrysanthemum flowers in the Caucasus Mountains.

The Magic Bullet

The Perfect Insecticide

• What were the key features that farmers demanded?

• High toxicity to insects of all orders (broad spectrum) • Low toxicity to non-target organisms (bees, wildlife) • Low toxicity to humans

• Safe for crops

Toxicology Definitions

• Acute Toxicity: poisoning causing dramatic effects on function (death):

LD

• Chronic Toxicity: small doses of a toxin produce more subtle effects:

• neurological • carcinogenic • reproductive

Major Pesticide Classes

• Natural: Pyrethrum and Nicotine.

• Metals: Lead, Arsenic, and others used in combination: Lead Arsenate.

• Chlorinated Hydrocarbons: Synthetic insecticides: DDT, Aldrin, and Dieldrin.

• Organophosphates: Synthetic insecticides including Parathion, Malathion (still in use) and Diazinon.

• Pyrethrum: Short-lived. Does not accumulate.

• Metals (lead / arsenic): Stable, long-lasting, persistent. Accumulate in soil and animals.

• Chlorinated Hydrocarbons - (DDT) Very stable, long-lasting, persistent pesticides. Accumulate in soil and animals.

• Organophosphates and Carbamates: Short-lived compounds. Do not persist in the environment. Very toxic to vertebrates.

U.S. Insecticide Use (est. pounds)

1919-1929

Total Insecticide Use 14,500,000 45,000,000 58,000,000

C.N. Myers, Binford Throne, Florence Gustafson, and Jerome Kingsbury, “Significance and Danger of Spray Residue,” Industrial and

Engineering Chemistry (June 1933): 624.

DDT and WWII

• 1939: Paul Müller (Swiss chemist) first noted the

properties of the solid form of DDT.

• 1940: U.S. government obtained DDT for testing.

• USPHS and the USDA tested DDT against

DDT Initial Tests

• DDT destroyed 95 to 99% of the mosquitoes after

aerial spraying.

• No observed effect on vegetation.

• Birds, mammals, and humans did not appear to

react to DDT.

• Low Acute Toxicity

Deploying DDT

• Armed Services employed DDT in the South Pacific.

• Malaria cases fell.

• In Naples, Italy, DDT averted Typhus epidemic (transmitted by lice). • Dr. Seuss (children’s books)

Post War Proliferation

• Time Magazine: DDT and the Atomic Bomb as technologies that saved lives.

• DDT rapidly became the preferred agricultural pesticide after the war.

Gerhard Schrader (1903-1990)

Schrader’s Research and Development: Organophosphates

• 1936: esters of phosphorous acid as insecticides • 1937: Tabun 1938: Sarin

• Potential insecticides

• extremely toxic to mammals (and humans)

• notified German Chemical Warfare department • neither deployed as nerve agents during WWII.

Schrader’s R&D, continued

• Oganophosphate Insecticides:

• 1941: OMPA (Octamethyl Pyrophosphoramide):

• systemic insecticide. Pestox / Schradan (after Schrader)

• 1942: HETP (hexaethyl tetraphosphate)

• “Bladan” from Blattlaus (aphid)

Organophosphates at the close of WWII

• 1945: British and American Intelligence officers interrogated

German Chemical Warfare Department chemists.

• Schrader had also synthesized E605 in 1944.

• E605 given to British and American Chemical Companies for commercial development.

Rachel Carson

(1907-1964)

• Studied Genetics at Johns Hopkins (Master’s) • Worked at U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

• Writer • Biologist

• Wrote for the Atlantic

Rachel Carson, “Silent Spring,”

The New Yorker, June 16, 1962, p. 38.

The vast majority of modern insecticides fall into one of two large groups of chemicals. One group, represented by DDT, consists of the chlorinated hydrocarbons. The other consists of the organic phosphates, and is

represented by the reasonably familiar malathion and parathion. All have one thing in common: they are built on a basis of carbon atoms, which are also the

indispensable building blocks of life and thus both groups are classified as “organic.”

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, pp. 27-28.

The second major group of insecticides, the organic phosphates—esters of phosphoric acid—are among the most poisonous chemicals in the world. The origin of these chemicals has a certain ironic significance. Some of them had been known for many years, but their insecticidal properties were first

discovered by a German chemist, Gerhard Schrader, in the late nineteen thirties. Almost at once, the German government

recognized the value of these chemicals as new and devastating weapons in man’s war against his own kind, and work on them was declared secret. Some became nerve gases. Others became insecticides. The chief and most obvious hazard attending their use is that of acute poisoning of people applying the sprays or accidentally coming in contact with drifting spray…. In Florida, in 1960, two children used a discarded bag to repair a swing.

Shortly thereafter, both them died and three of their playmates became ill. The bag had contained the insecticide parathion, and tests established death by parathion poisoning.

Carson’s Hierarchy of Insecticides

• DDT and chlorinated hydrocarbons

• Organophosphates (much more toxic than DDT)

• Systemic Insecticides

Unintended Consequences

• soil, water, and air

• fish, birds, mammals, and even humans.

Bioaccumulation / Biomagnification

Bald Eagles Rachel Carson at Hawk Mountain

Additional Threats

• Not just landscapes and wildlife.

• Environmental cancer: dramatic rise in the

incidence of cancer US (1 in 4).

The “control of nature” is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.

1972: DDT banned in the U.S.

• 10 years after Silent Spring

• Triumph for the Environmental Movement

• What happened after the ban of DDT took

effect?

• After DDT Ban: farmers sought new technological fix: organophosphates.

Organophosphates

• Killed birds and other wildlife quickly.

• 1998: 67 million birds died from pesticide poisonings in the US (Audubon).

• EPA: comprehensive review of OPs (1996-2006).

• Many organophosphates banned in 2001 in the U.S.

Pesticides in the News

1998: 67 million birds died from pesticide poisoning in the US (Audubon).

2013: 25 children died in a school in Bihar, India after consuming rice with pesticides.

2016: “Like it’s been nuked”: Millions of bees dead after South Carolina sprays (Washington Post)

Pesticides in the News

1998: 67 million birds died from pesticide poisoning in the US (Audubon).

Organophosphate Insecticides.

2013: 25 children died in a school in Bihar, India after consuming rice with pesticides.

Organophosphate Insecticides.

2016: “Like it’s been nuked”: Millions of bees dead after South Carolina sprays (Washington Post).

How many is too many?

• Family Size?

• 13 April 2018

• U.S. population: 327,527,951 • World Population: 7,466,343,400

10 most populous countries

2000 2018 2015(estimated)

# Country

2000 2018Growth % Pop 2050 Population Population 2000 - 2018 Expected Pop.

1China 1,268,301,605 1,415,045,928 11.60% 1,301,627,048 2India 1,006,300,297 1,354,051,854 34.60% 1,656,553,632 3United States 282,162,411 326,766,748 15.80% 398,328,349 4Indonesia 214,090,575 266,794,980 24.60% 300,183,166 5Brazil 174,315,386 210,867,954 21.00% 232,304,177 6Pakistan 152,429,036 200,813,818 31.70% 290,847,790 7Nigeria 123,945,463 195,875,237 58.00% 391,296,754 8Bangladesh 128,734,672 166,368,149 29.20% 193,092,763 9Russia 147,053,966 143,964,709 -2.10% 129,908,086 10Mexico 99,775,434 130,759,074 31.10% 150,567,503

The Atomic Bomb

Ultimate example of planning for war: • Government, Science, Military united:

• a project to create an atomic device. • Manhattan Project

• August 6: Hiroshima • August 9: Nagasaki.

Interpreting the Bomb

No similar event in human history to compare with the bomb: • brought people to understand the world has a whole.

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834)

An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798):

• People: 1 2 4 8 16 … (geometric)

• Food: 1 2 3 4 5 … (arithmetic / linear)

• No control: starvation.

• Influenced Darwin and Wallace

Critics of Malthus

• Marx: “a libel on the human race.”

• Engels: “We are forever secure from the fear of overpopulation.” • Mao: “Of all things in the world people are the most precious.”

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Paul Ehrlich

The Population Bomb (1968)

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970’s the world will undergo

famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…

Paul R. Ehrlich

The Green Revolution

Mexico 1962

• Wheat varieties vulnerable to rusts (diseases). • Long, thin stems blew over (lodging).

Norman Borlaug (1915-2009)

semi-dwarf wheat

• Short stature (< 2 feet), minimized blow over. • Resistance to common rust diseases

• Higher yield depends on fertilizers and pesticides.

Mexico

Pakistan

• 12 bushels per acre • 15 bushels per acre • 32 bushels per acre

India

• Mexican semi-dwarf wheat (1962).

• Indian government instituted national programs. • Wheat production tripled (36 bushels/ acre).

10 most populous countries

2000 2018 2015(estimated)

# Country

2000 2018Growth % Pop 2050 Population Population 2000 - 2018 Expected Pop.

1China 1,268,301,605 1,415,045,928 11.60% 1,301,627,048 2India 1,006,300,297 1,354,051,854 34.60% 1,656,553,632 3United States 282,162,411 326,766,748 15.80% 398,328,349 4Indonesia 214,090,575 266,794,980 24.60% 300,183,166 5Brazil 174,315,386 210,867,954 21.00% 232,304,177 6Pakistan 152,429,036 200,813,818 31.70% 290,847,790 7Nigeria 123,945,463 195,875,237 58.00% 391,296,754 8Bangladesh 128,734,672 166,368,149 29.20% 193,092,763 9Russia 147,053,966 143,964,709 -2.10% 129,908,086 10Mexico 99,775,434 130,759,074 31.10% 150,567,503

War: Science and the Environment

• World War I: Fertilizer, Bombs, and Gas • World War II: The Atomic Bomb

• Manhattan Project • Change in Worldview

• Technology in World War II

• Drugs and Pesticides: Malaria

• Pesticides, War, Agriculture • Population

• Malthus

• Population Bomb • Green Revolution