The back story about DDT is pretty interesting. OK, I'm an entomologist so maybe it's only interesting to me, LOL. DDT saved millions of people from insect vectored diseases. It is still one of the best choices for stopping the spread of malaria when used inside homes where female mosquitoes rest on walls after taking a blood meal or on insecticide impregnated bed nets-- no human toxicity, it's kept out of the food chain, and protected from sunlight one application lasts a long time without producing toxic by-products.
I grew up in the American southeast. I remember the DDT trucks that fogged up and down residential streets. We thought it was cool, and ran through the mist.
The worst thing about DDT is the way we overused it. Where grams were effective, we sprayed tons. I have older colleagues who came home from the Korean war to pilot surplus P-51s spraying entire landscapes for spruce budworm control. One guy told me stories about how they'd run their spray until the tanks were empty, then fly back through the cloud for fun and backfire their engines to ignite the mist while it was still in the air-- they used flammable diesel fuel as a solvent to disperse the DDT. The insecticides that replaced it were (are) way more toxic and environmentally dangerous than DDT. It's impact on bird reproduction was the result of massive bioaccumulation up food chains through over-application. Today we have similar issues with anticoagulate rodenticides killing carnivores like raptors and mammalian predators.
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