Popular book provokes international debate
However, it soon emerged that there were disadvantages with pesticide use. The first signs of negative effects on the environment appeared in the beginning of the 1950s, and a general awareness of this problem was stimulated by Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, which was published in 1962. In the book she wrote:
"Since the mid-1940s over two hundred basic compounds have been created for use in killing insects, weeds, rodents and other organisms described in the modern vernacular as "pests"; and they are sold under several thousand different brand names. These sprays, dusts and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests and homes, non-selective compounds that have the power to kill every insect, the "good" and the "bad", to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film and to linger on in the soil - all this though the intended target may only be a few weeds or insects."
Despite early warning signals about the effects of DDT on e.g. bird reproduction, it took until 1970 before DDT was banned in Swedish agriculture and until 1975 before its use was completely halted. Other countries in Western Europe and the USA followed this lead, but DDT is still being used in certain parts of the world and from there it can be spread by the winds to other parts of the globe.