"The War Against Weeds": How Hormonal Herbicides Reshaped the Global Environment

FAIN: FT-285804-22

Laura J. Martin
Williams College (Williamstown, MA 01267-2600)

Archival research leading to a book on the history of how hormonal herbicides were produced, promoted, used,  and eventually came to be understood as threats to human health.

Since their development in the 1940s, auxinic herbicides, the most famous of which is Agent Orange, have been used in agriculture, lawn care, warfare, and invasive species management, with dramatic consequences for ecosystems and public health. This project argues that the proliferation of these “selective herbicides,” which kill dicots but not monocots, explains how agricultural and residential landscapes became what I call “grassscapes.” This book will expand scholarship in environmental history, history of biology, and environmental justice by telling how auxinic herbicides were produced, promoted, and used, and how they came to be understood as threats to human health. My research follows these herbicides from test grounds in Kenya to battlefields in Vietnam, disposal sites in the Pacific, and American backyards.