See below for a miscellany of less-easy-to-categorise articles.

I've chosen pieces that I

particularly like or that focus on issues that continue to fascinate me.

The early Soil Association's Campaign Against Pesticides

Ask a member of the general public about the history of pesticides and if s/he has anything to
say it will probably consist of two words: Silent Spring. Popular history about efforts to protect
humans and the environment from risks posed by pesticides begins and, for most people, ends
with Rachel Carson's 1962 book, Silent Spring. Carson's beautiful prose and careful
presentation of unimpeachable scientific evidence forced governments the world over to ask
questions about the safety of unregulated and rapidly-expanding use of newly-commercialised
chemicals, setting in train a painfully slow process (that continues to this day) of seeking to
control the sale and use of substances, some of which have the power to persist in the
environment, contaminate food chains, and to undermine the functioning of animals'
(including humans') basic physiological systems.

What few people are aware of is that Carson's concern about the post-Second World War
marketing of new 'wonder' chemicals was not unique. Silent Spring was brilliant - and
brilliantly successful and all the more so because it articulated the fears of a broader, largely
underground network of concern as well as tapping into public unease about the potential,
unintended consequences of what was an almost fundamentalist obsession with the
eradication of insects. The early Soil Association was part of the network that sought to draw
attention to the possibility that new, heavily-promoted agri-chemicals might be more
dangerous than manufacturers, leaders within the scientific community, and government
officials were willing to consider.

From the very beginning of its history, the Soil Association circulated information and debated
the potential threats posed by new pesticides, focusing primarily on
dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, better known as DDT. In the second introductory issue
published in 1947 of what was to become the the Soil Association's quarterly journal, Mother
Earth, DDT is discussed twice. Well-known farming journalist and founding member, Lawrence
Easterbrook, contributed an article entitled Insecticide or Homicide? in which he argued
that: It is not good for the name of science that such unknown potentialities for harm should
be given to the man in the street... with so little warning after so little research. In the same
issue, an extract from American magazine Organic Gardening was reproduced, speculating on
the impact of DDT on tomato cultivation.

From then on, the Soil Association regularly reproduced extracts from publications questioning
the safety of DDT and other new pesticides, continuing to do so throughout the 1950s and into
the early 1960s. From as early as the winter 1947/48 edition of Mother Earth, the Soil

Association was highlighting worries about the potential for DDT to accumulate in food chains,
particularly dairy and meat products. Later, it aired fears that DDT might persist in the
environment and contaminate human bodies.

In addition to reproducing extracts from press reports questioning the safety of

organochlorinated pesticides of which DDT was the best known Mother Earth also included
first-hand accounts from Eve Balfour of her two visits in the early 1950s to the Texas Research
Foundation, a private agricultural research station that was the source of early evidence about
DDT's tendency to bioaccumulate and to contaminate food chains.

Articles in Mother Earth also drew attention to reports of growing immunity by some insects to
these new chemicals as well as their negative impact on beneficial insects, especially
pollinators such as bees. The early Soil Association consistently argued that alternative, less
harmful solutions to agricultural pests could and should be found.
None of the warnings that the early Soil Association circulated about DDT and other new agrichemicals were wholly original. Instead, the organisation was disseminating information about
disquiet felt by many scientists, naturalists and others in the face of what amounted to an
entirely-unregulated use of a large number of substances that had not been proven to be safe.
The Soil Association's call for the application of what today is termed the precautionary
principle looks, in retrospect, both prescient and admirable. The impacts of decades of mass
use of organochlorinated pesticides were enormous, although there is little public knowledge
about the damage done and its continuing legacy. For this reason, it is worth stating a few
facts clearly. Use of organochlorinated pesticides during the post-Second World War has
resulted in:

- the contamination of the global environment, all food chains, all animals and all humans. The
bodies (particularly the fat) of all readers of this publication are contaminated with
organichlorinated pesticides or their 'breakdown' products. Because of the persistence and
bioaccumulative properties of substances such as DDT, every human being is now
contaminated regardless of the location of his/her birth and/or the 'purity' of his/her
environment and food. Biologist Sandra Steingraber argues that chemical contamination of our
bodies should be viewed as an issue of social justice.

- the human health impacts of contamination by organochlorinated compounds are many and
significant. While DDT is often referred to as a human carcinogen, which it is - thus
representing one factor in twentieth century increases in global cancer rates (particularly,
cancers affecting male and female reproductive organs and the thyroid) - that is only the start.
Other impacts include developmental and reproductive toxicity, meaning that DDT and related
substances are thought to be one factor in falling fertility rates and a myriad of problems

affecting human development, including cognitive (ie. intellectual) impairment. The list of
impacts is a long one and much still remains to be understood about the effects of
organochlorinated compounds on human health.

- the dangers posed by what are now known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are so
serious that a global treaty banning their use (except for some instances of anti-malarial
control in tropical environments) was finally hammered out in 2001 via the United Nations.
Following Carson's 1962 bestseller Silent Spring, individual nations began to control and,
eventually, ban the marketing and use of POPs. However, because these substances
contaminate the global environment and human populations, even if they are used in only a
small number of locations, governments eventually recognised the need to join forces to
protect their citizens. Now, the most dangerous substances are outlawed thanks to the
Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. It is worth reproducing two sentences
from the convention's website: Exposure to Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) can lead to
serious health effects including certain cancers, birth defects, dysfunctional immune and
reproductive systems, greater susceptibility to disease and even diminished intelligence. Given
their long range transport, no one government acting alone can protect is citizens or its
environment from POPs.

The early Soil Association was part of an international network that tried to act as an early
warning system about the dangers of new, untested pesticides. While it did not succeed in
stemming their use in Britain or convincing the government to introduce effective regulation,
the early Soil Association educated its own membership. Looking back, discussions in 1959
editions of Mother Earth are particularly noteworthy. These included information about a
lawsuit brought against the US Department of Agriculture by a group of Long Island state
residents who argued that aerial spraying of DDT in 1957 to combat an alleged infestation of
gypsy moth infringed on their property rights. Aerial spraying of large areas of the USA and
Canada with DDT and other, similar substances mixed with kerosene or other hydrocarbons
became routine in the 1950s. The Soil Association both reported on this lawsuit and sent a
donation to assist with the plaintiffs' legal costs.

The October 1959 edition of Mother Earth was a special pest control number and in addition
to carrying articles about potential alternatives to pesticides, it included an essay by Soil
Association founding member Lord Douglas of Barloch. A war-time MP and post-war governor
of Malta, Douglas was deeply concerned about unregulated pesticide use. His ten-page essay,
Mass-Spraying of Pesticides: A Growing Menace to Human Health, teased out the
contradictions inherent in official explanations about the alleged safety of mass spraying
programmes. On the one hand, American regulations forbade the sale of milk and its
products containing any residues whatever of DDT and other insecticides, stated Douglas,
while promoting simultaneously the view that if used in accordance with manufacturers'
directions, the substance was innocuous. Douglas' essay ends with a question: Is not the

time overdue when government should take more active steps at the least to warn the public
of the risks they are running, and preferably to prohibit the sale of food containing residues of
pesticides and to prohibit the mass-spraying of insecticides upon non-consenting individuals,
their plants and livestock?

In recent years, the Soil Association has sought to communicate similar warnings about the
risks posed by over-use of antibiotics by livestock rearers. In September 2010, the Soil
Association's long-standing campaigner against excessive use of antibiotics by livestock
farmers, Richard Young, drew attention to the issue yet again, publicising a conference in
London at which scientific evidence would be discussed. Young stated: There has been little
public scrutiny of farm antibiotic use for over a decade, yet during that time we have seen
farmers dramatically increase their use of antibiotics classified by the World Health
Organization as critically important in human medicine and we have also seen the
development of several serious antibiotic-resistant bugs in farm animals which are passing to
humans on food and in other ways. It is high time that the government took this problem
seriously.

It is impossible to know what will attract much-needed attention to farmers' over-use of

antibiotics and when. As the history of campaigning against use of persistent organic
pollutants such as DDT teaches us, a campaign can appear unsuccessful for years, yet sound
research and repeated dissemination of rational arguments can build an informed network of
individuals and groups capable of turning a brief campaign breakthrough into a lasting
transformation in policy. When Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was published in 1962, Carson
was already a well-known and respected popular science writer. Her existing public profile was
instrumental in the success of the book. Yet it was not Silent Spring on its own - or Carson
herself - that led to global regulation of persistent organic pollutants. Carson died of cancer
soon after her book was published and the scientific evidence in her book was soon overtaken
by new research. Carson's genius was to articulate the well-grounded fears of many, not least
the fears of early Soil Association members, and to do so in ways that the chemical industry
found extremely difficult to undermine.

Since Carsons's death, a great many have worked painstakingly to translate the warnings in her
book into regulations that appear dull but, in fact, are designed to reduce gradually the harm
caused by the post-Second World War love affair with untested agri-chemicals. The hope is
that these regulations will lead to some decrease in rates of cancer, infertility, compromised
immunity and developmental malfunctioning on a global scale. The Soil Association can be
proud of the small part it played in ensuring such policies exist.

This article first appeared in the autumn 2010 edition of Mother Earth, a journal published by
the Soil Association

Further reading:
Sandra Steingraber's books Living Downstream and Having Faith: http://steingraber.com/
Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants: http://chm.pops.int
DDT entry in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#References
DDT, Silent Spring and the Rise of Environmentalism, edited by Thomas
Dunlap:http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/DUNDDT.html