From Dr. Keith Lockitch’s op-ed “Reject Environmentalism, Not DDT“:
[…] Carson filled her book with misinformation–alleging, among other claims, that DDT causes cancer. Her unsubstantiated assertion that continued DDT-use would unleash a cancer epidemic generated a panicked fear of the pesticide that endures as public opinion to this day.
But the scientific case against DDT was, and still is, nonexistent. Almost 60 years have passed since the malaria-spraying campaigns began–with hundreds of millions of people exposed to large concentrations of DDT–yet, according to international health scholar Amir Attaran, the scientific literature “has not even one peer reviewed, independently replicated study linking exposure to DDT with any adverse health outcome.” Indeed, in a 1956 study human volunteers ate DDT every day for over two years with no ill effects then or since.