War on Nature Chemical warfare

Reading about the history of chemical warfare development, my first impressions are that either the chemical companies were unaware of the dangers of their products, or they didn’t care about the ‘possible’ dangers because that would mean almost certain death for the company. Since the companies were deriving the home market chemicals from the war chemicals they had developed, it stands to reason that they were aware of dangers to the consumer. I do think that there was testing and concern for the immediate dangers to people, but not to the environment.

I also believe that generally, the chemical companies (and certainly the consumer) had no idea of the impact (especially long term effects) pesticides would have on the environment. You first had to get past the feeling of the time that nature could and should be dominated by the developments of man. Only after that can you even really ask the question is this going to harm the environment in ways we cannot yet see. Expecting the chemical companies in the early days of pesticide development to be concerned for the environment would be like getting angry at an inventor for not inventing an invention and then not telling him what invention he didn’t invent so he could go invent it. That said I still stand by and feel that chemical companies were reckless and really only concerned themselves with staying in business after the war.