Arsenic to the rescue of European potatoes

Lyautey, Margot

doi:10.3828/whpge.63837646622490

Arsenic to the rescue of European potatoes

The institutionalisation of plant protection in France and Germany (1920s–1950s)

Publication date

2024-06-08

Document type

Forschungsartikel

Author

Lyautey, Margot

Organisational unit

Wissensgeschichte moderner Gesellschaften

DOI

10.3828/whpge.63837646622490

URI

https://openhsu.ub.hsu-hh.de/handle/10.24405/22832

Publisher

White Horse Press

Series or journal

Global Environment

ISSN

1973-3739

Periodical volume

17

Periodical issue

2

First page

230

Last page

260

Peer-reviewed

✅

Part of the university bibliography

✅

Language

English

Abstract

By displacing Rachel Carson’s approach in Silent Spring to another time, another place and another family of pesticides, this paper tells the story of the wide adoption of arsenates, despite their known toxicity, to control the then newly present Colorado potato beetle in Western Europe from the 1920s to the 1950s. Although arsenate use entailed health and environmental risks, it was extended to other insect pests because this control method proved effective. The Colorado beetle appears as the matrix around which plant protection was developed in France and Germany. The regulations, administrative structures and habits that revolved around the wide use of arsenates then paved the way for the quick and massive adoption of organochlorides after 1945.

Description

This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .

Version

Published version

Access right on openHSU

Metadata only access