Why would Big Tobacco secretly fight to protect another poison? Why was DDT—the pesticide that devastated ecosystems, & banned partly thanks to Rachel Carson’s SILENT SPRING—beloved by cigarette manufacturers? The answer is not what you’d think: #EarthDay 🧵 Growing up on Long Island in the 80s, I learned that the pesticide DDT was why our part of New York had lost the osprey, a bird of prey with a wingspan as wide as my father was tall.

I’ve got a book coming out soon, on the pesticide DDT & the history of science denial from 1950s chemical and tobacco campaigns to the January 6 Capitol riot. I confess that when I first saw the cover, I wanted to reject it.