DDT News

DDT, the wonder insecticide (TIME, June 12), was last week credited with the most crushing blitz of its career.

Three months ago Pennsylvania's Department of Agriculture decided to try the deadly chemical on the gypsy-moth cater pillar, one of the worst tree-stripping pests in eastern U.S. forests. From an airplane, entomologists sprayed five pounds of DDT per acre over 20 acres of timberland near Scranton.

Within a week, despite rains that would have washed out normal insecticides, the caterpillar population was liquidated with out a trace. Entomologist C. F. Campbell thereupon gaily offered a dollar bounty (out of his own pocket) for every live caterpillar found in the treated area. By last week he had not lost a dollar.

Nor was that all. Entomologists who went hunting in the blitzed acres found that the DDT spray had also wiped out the entire population of leaf-eating insects, black flies and mosquitoes.

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