DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was first synthesised by Paul Hermann Müller in 1939, and its insecticidal properties were quickly recognised and exploited during the Second World War to control lice, mosquitoes, and other disease vectors. DDT was massively deployed in the 1940s and 1950s, nearly eradicating malaria from large parts of the world and eliminating typhus outbreaks in refugee populations. Müller won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948. However, its ecological consequences — including the near-extinction of several bird species — would later trigger an environmental crisis.

DDT's story is inseparable from the history of environmentalist literature. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) attacked the indiscriminate use of DDT and other pesticides in language of extraordinary literary power, helping launch the modern environmental movement and inspiring generations of nature poets. The irony that a chemical designed to destroy insects — parasites among them — became itself an ecological catastrophe gave Carson and subsequent writers a powerful narrative of unintended consequences. Silent Spring's literary influence on poets from Gary Snyder to Seamus Heaney has been profound.