Annals of DDT: Pesticide starred in 1944 Army film


In 1944, DDT seemed like a great idea.  The U.S. Army made this film extolling the virtues of the stuff, “DDT:  Weapon Against Disease.”  It runs just over 14 and a half minutes, from the Army Signal Corps.

The film recently found its way to the Internet Archives; I assume this YouTube version comes from there (I can’t embed the Internet Archives version).

Though the film does not discuss the dangers of DDT in any appreciable way, it’s a valuable contribution to the historical canon, simply to show what DDT advocates hoped the substance could do, near the end of World War II.

A transcript of the film is available at the National Library of Medicine on-line version.

 

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