510 ChaPter^10
weapons testing. The fallout poisoned grass, which was then eaten by cows
that were later consumed by the American people. Americans had unknow-
ingly eaten potentially deadly beef.
Even in the mid-1950s children swimming in public pools were hosed off
with dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane [DDT], a mass-produced and cancer-
causing insecticide used indiscriminately by the government and agribusiness.
It was thought that spraying down kids with DDT at the swimming pool
would prevent polio and malaria. It also indicated a naiveté among mid-
century Americans regarding a healthy relationship between humans, business
interests, and the ecosystem. The insecticidal properties of DDT were first
identified in 1939 and it was quickly mass-produced as a seemingly magical
chemical to prevent insect-borne diseases and used as an agricultural pesticide.
Best of all for agribusiness, it was cheap to make. The USDA drenched the
country with it and the 1950s became the “golden age” of pesticides. Where
crops used to be protected by the natural interaction of bugs eating each
other, chemicals would now do the trick.FIGuRE 10-5 Smoke stacks, 1942