On Jun. 14, 1972, an end to the continued domestic usage of the pesticide DDT was decreed when William D. Ruckelshaus, the first Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), issued an order cancelling nearly all remaining Federal registrations of DDT products. Public health, quarantine, and a few minor crop uses were excepted, as well as export of the material.

Ruckelshaus, an Indiana native, moved his family to Seattle in 1975 where he accepted a position as Senior Vice President of Legal Affairs of the Weyerhaeuser Company.