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Enormous increases in agricultural productivity can properly be associated with the use of chemicals. This statement applies equally to crop production through the use of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, as to livestock production and the associated use of drugs, steroids and other growth accelerators. There is, however a dark side to this picture and it is important to balance the benefits which flow from the use of agricultural chemicals against their environmental impacts which sometimes are seriously disadvantageous. Agricultural Chemicals and the Environment explores a variety of issues which currently are subject to wide-ranging debate and are of concern not only to the scientific establishment and to students, but also to farmers, landowners, managers, legislators, and to the general public. ... Read more

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While cultural and scholarly traditions have led us to believe that war and control of nature are separate, there are many more similarities than most people might suspect. Tracing the history of chemical warfare and pest control, Edmund Russell shows how war and control of nature coevolved. Ideologically, institutionally, and technologically, the paths of chemical warfare and pest control intersected repeatedly in the twentieth century. War and Nature helps us to understand the impact of war on nature and vice versa, as well as the development of total war, and the rise of the modern environmental movement.Edmund Russell is an assistant professor in the Division of Technology, Culture, and Communication in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. This is his first book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

creative synthesis
In War and Nature Edmund Russell, Associate Professor of Technology, Culture, and Communication at the University of Virginia, cleverly traces the interaction between chemical warfare and pest control from World War I to the Vietnam War. His central thesis is that war and control of nature have coevolved: "the control of nature expanded the scale of war, and war expanded the scale on which people controlled nature" (p. 2). Following up on his dissertation (University of Michigan, 1993), which won the Rachel Carson Prize from the American Society for Environmental History, Russell culled a wide variety of recently declassified U.S. government documents, business publications, and contemporary books and articles. Russell finds that World Wars I and II and the Cold War forged close ties between military and scientific institutions, and efforts to maintain such links became hallmarks of the post-World War II era. Scientifically and technologically, pest control and chemical warfare each created knowledge and tools that reinforced the other (p. 4) For example, on the eve of World War I, there were few U.S. chemical companies. They manufactured primarily low-profit bulk chemicals. In contrast, Germany had the best chemical factories and schools and had the largest output of sophisticated products. Eight German companies made up almost 80 percent of the world's dyes (p. 18). However, the increased use of mustard and chlorine gas in the war boosted the demand by European allies for these chemicals from the United States. The "Chemical Warfare Service" was created within the U.S. Army to employ civilian chemists to conduct research on war gases. This research also stimulated the invention of new insecticides to deal with such menaces as the boll weevil (attacking cotton crops), house fly (spreading typhus), the San Jose scale (damaging fruit trees), and mosquitoes (spreading malaria).
The use of chemicals in warfare is not new. Interestingly, Russell points out that the first recorded use of poison gas was in 428 BC, when Spartans besieging Plataea attempted to kill its defenders by burning wood soaked in pitch and sulfur under city walls (p. 4). However, chemical warfare increased throughout the twentieth century. According to Russell, at least 90,000 people were killed in World War I by gas, and estimated 350,000 were killed by gas in World War II, not including all the victims in Hitler's gas chambers. Even these figures seem low. Russell skillfully shows through cartoons how federal entomologists and chemists used insects in their propaganda as metaphors for human enemies. One cartoon depicts a conversation between two worms, one of them exclaiming: "What! Me sabotage that guy's victory garden? What do you take me for-a Jap? (p. 100)."
The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 sought to exclude gas from warfare and define the rights of combatants. Public outrage at the use of chemicals as weapons of war continued to mount. After World War II, the Chemical Warfare Service and other chemical companies lobbied Congress vigorously, stressing the need to develop war gases as insecticides, for which increased funding was required. Noted chemists testified before Congress, claiming also that chemical and biological warfare was "more humane" than conventional warfare. According to Russell, who interviewed several of these chemists, Chief Chemical Officer William Creasy inanely argued in 1958 that 25,000 American casualties on Iwo Jima could have been avoided had the U.S. military employed chemical weapons (p. 208). Miracle "psychochemicals" were promoted, such as LSD-25 that could temporarily incapacitate troops but not permanently harm them. Russell cites a US Army propaganda film produced in 1958 in which a cat chased and caught a mouse, inhaled an unnamed gas, and then cowered from another mouse (p. 208). This publicity campaign persuaded Pentagon authorities to increase the U.S. Army's budget to $80,000,000 for chemical research.
Research to fight insects increased simultaneously with the development of chemicals to fight humans. As thousands of families moved to the suburbs in the 1950s, gardening became a popular hobby and stimulated the desire for pest control.Pesticide manufacturers such as Du Pont and Dow increased their marketing to this group of consumers, while federal crop dusting programs using DDT were initiated.
Russell shows how Rachel Carson's publication of Silent Spring in 1962 galvanized the American environmental movement, leading eventually to the ban on DDT in 1972. This immediate bestseller detailed the noxious effects of DDT on plants and animals and characterized pest control as a self-defeating form of warfare (p. 229).
Reading this book, one is struck by the immense irony of the twentieth century and the causal interaction of peace and war. Never before have so many human lives been saved (thanks to pesticides killing disease-carrying insects and increasing crop yields) and so many destroyed (mostly due to incendiaries, but also chemical weapons). Americans got better at saving lives partly because they got better at taking them, and vice versa. While War and Nature is almost too dazzling in its rich detail and sometimes a bit careless in its logic (e.g. implying that human beings should not be considered part of nature), the book breaks new ground in its connection of two traditionally disparate fields of inquiry, environmental and military history. It should be required reading in college courses in both security studies and environmental science.---Johanna Granville, Ph.D. (Stanford University)

angels and insects
World War I was just the beginning of an ongoing cultural and scientific process in which chemical based weapons were created and marketed for use against human and insect enemies. Russell reminds us that the cultural, institutional, and political evolution of twentieth century science and warfare in the United States began not with the J. Robert Oppenheimer and the physicists of Los Alamos but with chemists like James B. Conant and his colleagues at Harvard and American University, emergent corporations like Dupont and the Hooker Company, and government agencies such as the Department of Agriculture and the United States Chemical Warfare Service. With an eye for detail and a witty and readable narrative style, the author assembles scientific papers, declassified governmental and military planning documents, trade journals, and propaganda and advertising literature to reshape our understanding not only of the role of chemistry in warfare, but more importantly the reflexive nature of our understanding and relation to both technology and nature during times of peace. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Canadian Chemical News, published by Chemical Institute of Canada on April 1, 2002. The length of the article is 670 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Bug off, maggot! Make room for polymers. (News Briefs/Nouvelles en Bref).(future use of polymers in place of pesticides)(Brief Article)
Publication: Canadian Chemical News (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 1, 2002
Publisher: Chemical Institute of Canada
Volume: 54Issue: 4Page: 9(1)

Article Type: Brief Article

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

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Written in a clear and simple style, it will teach the farmer the basic principles of increasing soil fertility by the application of natural organic manures and synthetic inorganic fertilizers. ... Read more

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*Exposes the massive hidden health and environmental costs of rampant pesticide use
*Presents an array of cheaper, safer alternatives to pesticides used by millions of farmers around the world
*Written by leading international agricultural and biological scientists supported by The Global Integrated Pest Management Facility of the FAO

Since the 1960s the world’s population has more than doubled and agricultural production per person has increased by a third, largely because of widespread pesticide use. Yet this growth in production has masked enormous hidden costs -- massive ecological damage and high incidences of farmer poisoning and chronic health effects.
Yet in recent years millions of farmers in communities around the world have been identifying harmful pesticides and developing cheaper and safer alternatives. "The Pesticide Detox" explores the potential for the phasing-out of hazardous pesticides and the phasing-in of cost-effective alternatives already available on the market. This book makes clear that it is time to start the pesticide detox and to move towards a more sustainable agriculture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The new pesticide
Over the past 40 years, world population, the use of modernized farming methods, and farming production have gone up. Modernized farming uses hazardous pesticides. But does it have to? Where are pesticides used? Are there alternatives? And what can be done to replace pesticides with alternative controls?

More than 800 different pesticides are regularly used throughout the world. They're used to protect crop yields from diseases and pests. Just under 4/5 of all pesticides are used outside the United States. The developing countries are the part of the world where companies plan to hugely increase pesticide sales and use.

But pesticides are damaging to the environment. They're not just hazardous to people who make and use them. Scientists keep on studying the effects of pesticides on animals, birds, bugs, other green things, people, places and water. But the chain of cause and effect isn't always easy to prove, show and tell. That's particularly the case when the audience is people making money from pesticide sales and use!

Editor Jules Pretty says alternatives can replace pesticides. Alternatives can be based on bacteria, certain nematodes, fungi or viruses. They can include parasitoids and predators. When tested with 80 crop combinations, alternatives came up with workable results. Crop yields went up acceptably, with cut-back pesticide use and with alternatives.

Pretty says that what's needed are political will, consumer awareness, and market response. But what can change national policies, international conventions, and programs? Pretty says to start on the level of appropriate taxing, education and environmental action. Specifically, for example, taking away subsidies and putting in effect high taxes would make pesticides less affordable. The list of registered pesticides could be reviewed. The most toxic pesticides could be taken off. Less hazardous alternatives could be added. Also, cooperative extension schools could be set up in the field. Agricultural colleges could have their courseload updated to cover alternatives as well as they're already covering pesticides! All three steps would make alternatives better known. Maximum residue limits could be set, checked and enforced. That would cut down the use of pesticides and increase the use of alternatives.

THE PESTICIDE DETOX is a well-organized and -written book. The editor and the contributing writers include helpful charts, examples, graphs and illustrations. There's a good index and set of references. The subject is now. It's dealt with in such a way that the problems are clear. And there are actually workable solutions! What more could a girl ask? ... Read more

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The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.
Medical theory and practice of the 1700s developed rapidly, as is evidenced by the extensive collection, which includes descriptions of diseases, their conditions, and treatments. Books on science and technology, agriculture, military technology, natural philosophy, even cookbooks, are all contained here.
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The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
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British Library

T132324

With a list of subscribers.

Bristol : printed by W. Routh. Sold by Mrs. E. Newberry, London; Mr. Shiercliff, Bristol; Mr. W. Stevenson, Norwich; Mr. B. C. Collins, Salisbury; and Messrs. Goadby and Co. Sherborne, 1787. vi,[18],359,[1]p. : ill. ; 8° ... Read more

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This book provides a comprehensive mechanistic interpretation of the transport phenomena involved in various basic modes of gas-liquid-solid fluidization.These modes include, for example, those for three-phase fluidized beds, slurry columns, turbulent contact absorbers, and three-phase fluidized beds, slurry columns, turbulent contact absorbers, and three-phase transport.It summarizes the empirical correlations useful for predicting transport properties for each mode of of operation.


Gas-Liquid-Solid Fluidization Engineering provides a comprehensive account of the state-of-the-art applications of the three-phase fluidization systems that are important in both small-and large-scale operations.These applications include fermentation,
biological wastewater treatment, flue gas desulfurization and particulates removal, and resid hydrotreating.This book highlights the industrial implications of these applications.In addition, it discusses information gaps and future directions for
research in this field.
... Read more

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This report puts executives and strategic planners on the fast track.The first chapter describes the study's methodology.The second chapter gives an overview of how to strategically access the market, mid-term forecasts of latent demand and accessibility benchmarks.The remaining nine chapters are not industry specific, but instead discuss economic fundamentals, marketing & distribution options, export and direct investment options, and full risk assessments (political, cultural, legal, human resources). Combined, the information provided in this market study is a "one-stop" shop for the strategic planner. Ample statistical benchmarks and comparative graphs are given. ... Read more

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This report puts executives and strategic planners on thefast track.The first chapter describes the study's methodology.Thesecond chapter gives an overview of how to strategically access themarket, mid-term forecasts of latent demand and accessibilitybenchmarks.The remaining nine chapters are not industry specific,but instead discuss economic fundamentals, marketing & distributionoptions, export and direct investment options, and full riskassessments (political, cultural, legal, human resources). Combined,the information provided in this market study is a "one-stop" shop forthe strategic planner.Ample statistical benchmarks and comparativegraphs are given. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 4897 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Intended to provide a comprehensive description of the enterprise of education both within the United States and throughout the world. Articles offer a view of the institutions, people, processes, and products found in educational practice. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Pollution A to Z, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 2495 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Provides the latest information on a variety of pollution issues, including sources, disposal, remediation, the ethical, social, and legal environment, careers, and much more. Articles range from topical essays on acid rain, cancer, noise pollution, and zero growth population to biographies on key figures. ... Read more