Posted by
Georgiaboy on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 8:53:19 PM
Here is the latest article I have written for the Georgia Guarddawg. My privileged readers get the first look.
While much of the world’s disease fighting attention is focused on AIDS in Africa, another disease, malaria, kills a million people each year—many of them young children. In September, the World Health Organization announced that it will encourage indoor spraying of DDT to prevent malaria. This sets up a clash between environmentalists and health officials over the use of the controversial pesticide.
Widespread opposition to the use of DDT was first sparked in the 1960’s by Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring. Environmentalists say that DDT is harmful to humans and weakens bird eggs. They have been successful in banning the chemical in the US, Europe, and many other nations. Many organizations such as Beyond Pesticides still strongly oppose its use.
These bans have removed the most effective tool available for combating malaria. DDT is cheap and extremely effective. The US and Europe used it in the 1940’s to eliminate malaria. “Of the dozen insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT," says Arata Kochi, director of the WHO's Global Malaria Program. The question is not whether DDT can eliminate malaria—it does, but if it can be sprayed safely.
UGA Ecology professor Alan Covich says, “the problem with DDT is that is was grossly misused.” Blanketing entire areas with DDT, which was the old approach, certainly eliminated malaria, but was unnecessary. A focused program of indoor spraying, as WHO has encouraged, will have significant impact on reducing malaria without serious health impact. “If used carefully, it could be an important tool,” Covich concluded.
Many environmentalists oppose even limited spraying of DDT, however. Their emotional reaction to DDT supersedes the fact that no evidence exists showing limited spraying of DDT to be harmful to humans. Before the use of DDT was banned in the US, it went before EPA administrative law judge Edmund Sweeny in 1971 for a lengthy, 7 month hearing, involving 7,000 pages of testimony. Judge Sweeny concluded at the end of the hearings, “DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man... DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic (embryonic development) hazard to man.” But despite all this evidence, pesticide opponents still oppose its use. While they live a life free of malaria in the US thanks to DDT, a million people in undeveloped countries die every year because DDT isn’t used. To add to the tragedy, 500 million people are infected every year, which wreaks havoc on these countries’ economies.
Of course there are alternatives to DDT. Several other pesticides are available, stagnant pools of water can be removed to reduce mosquitos breeding grounds, and bednets can protect people while they sleep. But, all of these other methods are expensive—a major problem in impoverished Africa. While they can all be helpful in battling malaria, they won’t work by themselves. Malaria vaccines will not be available anytime soon either, despite a large amount of research and development work. DDT is quite simply the big gun in fighting malaria.
America has to put the environmentalist overreaction to DDT in our past. Even if DDT is not perfect, spraying more aggressively with it will not kill a million people—malaria will. In the 1950’s, WHO led a campaign that removed malaria from the developed world, and parts of Asia and Latin America. Global health officials need to do the same thing today. For too long, inconclusive fears about the safety of DDT have been responsible for the deaths of millions of Africans. America needs to step forward and provide the global leadership necessary to promote responsible DDT spraying. Millions of lives hang in the balance.