Title: The Evolution of Chemical Pesticides
Headings: The Evolution of Chemical Pesticides
The Evolution of Chemical Pesticides
Pest Control from the Middle Ages to the Victorian Era
The Advance of Pesticides Through the 20th Century
GMOs: The Future of Pest Control?

Content: Part of that call to change was the reduction or elimination of DDT and many other pesticides developed from the 1940s through the 1960s from the pest-fighting arsenal. DDT remained in widespread use around the world until the 1980s, but its decline hastened once the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) canceled most uses of DDT by 1972. Many other countries followed suit shortly thereafter by removing DDT from lists of approved agricultural applications. In 2004, the Stockholm Convention outlawed many persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and restricted the use of DDT to vector control (primarily for malaria). Despite increasing worldwide restrictions and bans on DDT, as of 2008, India and North Korea were still using DDT in agricultural applications. Today, India is the only country in the world still producing DDT. Since the start of the production boom in the 1940s to present day, a huge catalog of thousands of insecticides, herbicides, and general pesticides was developed, including organochlorides (DDT, BHC), organophosphates (Parathion, Malathion, Azinophos Methyl), phenoxyacetic acids (2,4-D, MCPA, 2,4,5-T), Captan, Carbamates (Aldicarb, Carbofuran, Oxamyl, Methomyl), neonicotinoids (Imidacloprid, Acetamiprid, Clothianidin, Nitenpyram), and Glysophates. The neonicotinoids are neuro-active insecticides, similar to nicotine compounds that were developed in the 1980s and 1990s. Of all the neonicotinoids, Imidacloprid has become one of the most abundantly used insecticides in the world. Patented in 1988 and registered with the EPA in 1994 by Bayer Crop Science, Imidacloprid works by disrupting the transmission of nerve impulses in insects by binding to an insect’s nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, resulting in paralysis and death.