So I read quite a bit of this book from 2020 called "The Chemical Age" by Frank A. Von Hippel straight through, and the whole time I wanted to scream at the nightmare unfolding upon the page before me!
I had read this essay once called "Living Lawns, Dying Waters" about how chemical fertilizers on lawns were first marketed because chemical companies after WW2 had a bunch of extra nitrogen for making bombs and they wanted to profit off it.
But the full story of how American Lawns, Agriculture and Horticulture are part of the Military-Industrial Complex is much worse.
So long story short, around the time of World War 1, scientists (particularly, German chemists) developed chemical weapons that could be released on the battlefield in toxic clouds. These poison gases were used in World War 1, and in the USA, chemical companies made big bucks creating chemical weapons that killed people horribly. However, at the end of World War 1, the chemical companies saw that they couldn't make profits anymore if nobody was killing people anymore, so they decided to market the chemical weapons as insecticides.
To keep making their big bucks, they had to have a war, so they "declared war" on insects. Boldly stating that insects were nothing but evil agents of disease, and this "war" would determine whether arthropods or humans would rule the Earth.
Basically the modern business of killing bugs with chemicals emerged from the modern business of killing humans with chemicals.
However, early chemicals were so deadly that a lot of people died accidentally, so there was need to develop better chemicals. One of the better chemicals was DDT.
DDT was considered to be a miracle and people dusted the whole countryside, indoor and outdoor, agricultural and wild environments, with DDT like powdered sugar on a donut. People celebrated how it was going to make flies go extinct and end malaria forever. Pretty soon all Americans had a measurable amount of DDT in their bodies and it was in breast milk and everything.
(Most mosquitoes and houseflies evolved resistance to DDT within 1-2 years of spraying starting.)
Of course it turned out that DDT poisons mass numbers of wildlife, so birds started dying in droves. Almost all the bald eagles died. A lady named Rachel Carson (This part is familiar to many of us) wrote a book called Silent Spring describing how the highly toxic chemicals were sterilizing the planet of all life, and what really got me about this part of the story was that it was VERY CONTROVERSIAL.
The chemical companies were PISSED.
But it wasn't just the companies. The idea of not sterilizing the whole planet with toxic chemicals was perceived by many as radical and insane. A lot of major publications were like, "What does she expect us to do??? GET RID of DDT?? That crazy bitch wants us all to GO BACK TO THE DARK AGES and DIE OF BUBONIC PLAGUE."
I'm not exaggerating one bit:
Countless people have insisted to me that getting rid of lawns means returning to a state where the world is uninhabitable and children can't play safely and ticks and snake bites sicken and kill indiscriminately. Mind which side of history you are on!
The above book was a new source looking back on the past. I think it is even more informative to look at old sources talking about their present. I was definitely much more horrified.
The thing is, as terrible as DDT was, it was far from the worst, and especially many of its predecessors were much, much worse, but in the 50's and 60's, putting those chemicals on your lawn was just as ordinary as using the chemicals we use now. It was just what you were supposed to do.
There were several of the 1960's lawn books, and I didn't write down their titles sadly, they were all something very generic like "Lawns." But here's some of what was in them:
Many of these chemicals are now illegal or highly restricted because many are very dangerous to humans when acute exposure occurs and cause cancer and other disease, and many last a very, very long time in the environment as well as building up and being stored in the body. For example Chlordane causes cancer and persists in the environment 10-20 years, while Methoxychlor is an endocrine disruptor. I think Malathion and possibly Carbaryl are the only ones you can still buy as a homeowner in the USA, and the USA is incredibly loose on regulations, with many countries worldwide being far more restrictive. Trichlorofon is still used by lawn care companies and on golf courses even though it causes cholinesterase inhibition in humans.
Lead arsenate is what it sounds like. This book tells readers that earthworms (yes, EARTHWORMS) can be killed with lead arsenate on golf courses.
The amount of highly toxic heavy metals recommended in these books was insane. For killing fungi, this same book recommended cadmium and mercury.
These books of course had zero concept of the mycorrhizal network or that fungi might be important, and had recommended treatments even for destroying fairy rings.
This is from a different book.
Even after reading the recommendations of mercury and cadmium application, does the phrase "soil sterilant" not send shivers of terror through you?
Same book as above recommended destroying many completely harmless creatures with DDT:
KILLING ISOPODS WITH DDT.
It's a miracle any of our grandparents lived long enough to reproduce!
I can only wonder how contaminated many former lawns and golf courses must be with dangerous substances that would make gardening or letting children play in them unadvisable.
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