DFDT
chemical compound, insecticide
Difluorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DFDT) is a chemical compound. Its composition is the same as that of the insecticide DDT, except that two of DDT's chlorine atoms are replaced by two fluorine atoms.
DFDT was developed as an insecticide by German scientists during World War II. It is possible that Hoechst wanted to avoid license fees for DDT to Schering or the original developer J. R. Geigy (the later Ciba-Geigy). It was documented by Allied military intelligence, but for Americans it remained in obscurity after the war.
In 2019, New York University chemists reported that DFDT and a mono-fluorinated derivative, MFDT, might be a more effective insecticide than DDT, and might therefore be used to combat malaria with less of an environmental impact. A later study of DFDT found it to be encumbered by the same resistance as DDT while being less effective in Drosophila melanogaster, and "unlikely to be a viable public health vector control insecticide".
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This entry incorporates text from “DFDT” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.