Author Q&A: Frank A. von Hippel on pesticides and podcasting

Frank A. von Hippel wears many hats. By day the Northern Arizona University ecotoxicologist investigates how chemicals are contaminating ecosystems across the globe. By night he moonlights as a science communicator, writing articles on a variety of topics and hosting the Science History Podcast. His new book, The Chemical Age: How Chemists Fought Famine and Disease, Killed Millions, and Changed Our Relationship with the Earth, discusses the promises and perils of modern chemistry. In Physics Today’s November issue, Alison McManus terms it a “timely exploration of our environmental present.” Physics Today recently conducted an email interview with von Hippel to discuss the book and his podcast.

PT: Tell us a bit about your background and training.

VON HIPPEL: I had the good fortune of growing up in Alaska and spending my youth outdoors, which piqued my interest in the environment. I completed my PhD in ecology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1996. I applied for 88 jobs with no luck, with the exception of an offer to shoot wolves from helicopters that I declined. I finally landed my first academic position as an assistant professor teaching field courses at Columbia University. That sounds impressive, but it was really a fluke, as I happened to fit the bill due to my fieldwork in college and graduate school.

PT: What are you working on now?

VON HIPPEL: At any given time, I have about 20 projects going on in the lab and the field, all of which are team-based and interdisciplinary. My projects focus on contaminant exposure and health effects in vulnerable human populations and wildlife. I am working with the Yupik and Qawalangin tribes in Alaska to investigate contaminant exposures from atmospheric deposition and Cold War military installations. I am working on an endangered fish project in California with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. I am working with hospitals and a farmworker advocacy group in Yuma County, Arizona, to examine the effects of pesticide exposure on migrant farmworkers. Abroad, I am studying chemical pollution in communities and ecosystems in Guatemala, Ecuador, Chile, Australia, and Israel.

PT: Why did you want to write The Chemical Age? What was the objective of the book?

VON HIPPEL: My interest in pesticides grew out of a childhood experience described in the epilogue. I am fascinated by the way in which chemicals developed to kill pests were weaponized to kill people. Many top-notch chemists worked on both problems. I wanted to understand how they justified their work on pesticides, which aimed at improving public health, in the same breath as their work on chemical weapons. I read thousands of historical documents and books on this dissonant theme.

PT: You write about figures such as chemist Thomas Midgley, who developed leaded gasoline—which ultimately caused neurological damage to millions of children. How do you think figures like Midgley should be remembered?

VON HIPPEL: Many of the chemists I profile in the book tried to solve long-standing problems plaguing humanity: famine and infectious diseases. Even though many of the chemicals these innovators discovered were later used in chemical weapons or otherwise despoiled the environment, at least the motivations of scientists such as Paul Müller, who pioneered the use of DDT as an insecticide, were honorable.

It’s more difficult to justify the work of Midgley. He and his employer knew that lead was toxic, and he and workers at Standard Oil and DuPont suffered lead poisoning during the fuel’s development and production. Nevertheless, he pushed ahead, and the lead industry then spent decades obfuscating the toxicity of the product while countless children suffered from irreversible neurological damage.

PT: You are descended from German–Jewish physicist and Nobel laureate James Franck, whose career and flight from Nazi Germany are detailed in the book. How did your family history influence your scientific career? How did it impact this book?

VON HIPPEL: I’m a fifth-generation scientist, and my family history had a huge impact on my interests and career. Growing up, my grandfather, physicist Arthur von Hippel, always asked me, “What kind of professor will you be?” No matter what field I indicated, his reply was, “Wunderbar [wonderful].” Science was a staple of our family’s dinner conversations. When I asked my father a question, he would respond, “Figure it out,” and then help me work out the answer from first principles. Our home burst at the seams with books. I grew up hearing family stories about many of the scientists profiled in my book. I tucked those stories away somewhere until they fell onto the pages of The Chemical Age.

PT: Are you optimistic about the future of the ongoing chemical age? Have we learned our lessons about the environmental dangers of pesticides and other chemicals?

VON HIPPEL: We have not learned the important lessons, and our current trajectory is both unsustainable and catastrophic. In the US we still require consumers to prove a chemical is toxic before it is removed from the marketplace, rather than requiring chemical companies to prove their products are safe before commercialization. We then ban only that one chemical, not the entire class to which it belongs, due to “uncertainty.” Such bans, which are rare, occur decades after proof of harm is provided, and often after the chemical is obsolete. The playing field is uneven. Chemical companies have limitless resources and an arsenal of dirty tricks, while consumers have only citizen activism and protest. When chemicals are finally banned, we replace them with new chemicals that are themselves toxic. The structure of our society rewards chemical companies for seeding doubt, feeding uncertainty, and skewering scientists and whistleblowers.

PT: Why did you decide to start your Science History Podcast? How did it connect with your research work?

VON HIPPEL: Like many others, I was shocked at Trump’s election and his administration’s attacks on science, which pose an existential threat to humanity. This is why I created the Science History Podcast. Right away I found that I enjoyed doing the background research and interviewing incredible people. So though my original intention was political, about half the episodes are on largely nonpolitical topics that I nevertheless find interesting and important. Many of them do intersect with my research, as I’ve returned repeatedly to the themes of pollution and conservation. But I’ve also interviewed interesting people about poetry, Winston Churchill, and talking parrots.

I try to ask questions at a high scientific level, and my guests seem to love that. I also try to probe spaces left vacant by interviewers who only ask obvious questions. For this reason, I did not ask Noam Chomsky about his politics. Similarly, I interviewed Matthew Meselson, who should have won the Nobel Prize for his work in genetics, about herbicidal warfare and bee vomit. I aim to understand the scientific problems my guest cares about most, the historical context of scientific breakthroughs, and how great achievements affect scientists personally.

PT: How has the coronavirus affected you?

VON HIPPEL: My wife and daughter both got sick with COVID-19 in early March, near the start of the pandemic in the US, but both had mild cases and fully recovered. My two boys and I quarantined with them and did not get sick. I feel incredibly lucky that we came through unscathed. But my institution is devastated. Northern Arizona University laid off about 10% of faculty in late May and imposed part-time furloughs on everyone else. We’ve been largely unable to use our laboratories, and we cannot travel for research. I share a lab with another professor, and we have continued to pay our laboratory staff, even when they cannot work. This cut into our grant money even as our budgets were reduced. The days of the solitary scientist are long gone. All modern scientific problems require a team, and collaborating over Zoom is no substitute for working through an experiment together on a whiteboard or conducting fieldwork on a windswept island in the Bering Sea.

PT: What have you been reading?

VON HIPPEL: I just read Industrial-Strength Denial by Barbara Freese, Secrets by Daniel Ellsberg, and The Triumph of Doubt by David Michaels, all in preparation for their appearances on my podcast. I’m rereading My Uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl in Spanish. I’m reading Winston Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples. I’m also an avid consumer of mystery novels. I’m nearly done with the Navajo mysteries by Tony Hillerman and the Chet and Bernie dog mysteries by Spencer Quinn. Mysteries are fun to read, as they follow a parallel trajectory to science: observe, hypothesize, and test.