The 1962 book "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson was instrumental at affecting public opinion against DDT and other pesticides culminating on banning DDT all over the world. While Carlson has many detractors, ecology militants would label them as being mercenaries at service of industrial interests.
From "Bring Back DDT, and Science With It!" by Marjorie Mazel Hecht:
The campaign to ban DDT got its start with the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962. Carson’s popular book was a fraud. She played on people’s emotions, and to do so, she selected and falsified data from scientific studies, as entomologist Dr. J. Gordon Edwards has documented in his analysis of the original scientific studies that Carson cited.
From "DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud" by Dr. J. Gordon Edwards:
The chemical compound that has saved more human lives than any other in history, DDT, was banned by order of one man, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Public pressure was generated by one popular book and sustained by faulty or fraudulent research. Widely believed claims of carcinogenicity, toxicity to birds, anti-androgenic properties, and prolonged environmental persistence are false or grossly exaggerated. The worldwide effect of the U.S. ban has been millions of preventable deaths..
All my life I was told DDT (and pesticides in general) accumulates on the body across the whole food chain with severe consequences to the environment.
Is DDT really significantly less harmful than the current EPA official position?
[update] I'm new here, would appreciate if you hint why are you downvoting so I can improve my questions.