[citation needed] Due to a lack of documentary evidence, it has been questioned whether this is a modern urban legend rather than a historical reality.
[5] As of January 2023, the earliest reference on Newspapers.com to the drink is in the television listing for a 1992 episode of Pandora's Box, a BBC documentary series.
Time Magazine, reported on August 1, 1971, that Pest Control Executive Robert Loibl and his wife Louise start breakfast with a 10 mg capsule of DDT to demonstrate its safety, doing so for three months in front of witnesses.
On p. 75 of his 1992 book The DDT Story, Mellanby famously wrote: [The] consumption of smaller doses in the milligram range appears to be quite harmless.
[8][9]The entomologist Gordon Edwards also frequently demonstrated DDT consumption, and he appeared in the September 1971 edition of Esquire magazine doing so.