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Is DDT Africa's last hope? Sat 10 Nov 2007 - The Globe and Mail by Tim Querengesser
NAIROBI -- First, actress Ashley Judd urged Americans to buy bed nets for pregnant women and new mothers. Then American Idol finalist Melinda Doolittle and first lady Laura Bush travelled to Zambia to help package 500,000 bed nets. Next, Chicago Bulls forward Luol Deng asked fans to donate money for nets in Chad.
Why are such celebrities - along with Bill and Melinda Gates and Jeffrey Sachs - so interested in keeping mosquitoes away from the people of Africa as they sleep?
The simple answer is that, while the toll AIDS has taken on the continent has shocked the world, malaria is still the biggest cause of death for children under 5 and kills about a million people a year in sub-Saharan Africa. And bed nets make a difference. For every 1,000 put into use, seven African lives are spared from infection.
But there may be a better, cheaper way to keep malaria at bay - one that is taboo among celebrities, donors and policy-makers in the bird-loving West.
It's DDT. And by next year 16 African countries are expected to spray it inside houses, reversing a decades-long fight against the pariah chemical and raising challenging questions about the balance between environmentalism and humanitarianism.
THE RISE OF GREEN POLITICS AND THE BAN ON DDT
When men with canisters of DDT started their rounds of South African neighbourhoods, the BBC reported that people locked their doors. Nobody wanted even the recommended three grams per square kilometre of the insecticide inside their homes.
This made sense for a generation raised on horror stories about the chemical. As Rachel Carson noted in her landmark 1962 book Silent Spring , Dichloro- diphenyl-trichloroethane made bird eggshells weak and threatened eagles, falcons and other animals. She also implied that it was a human carcinogen.
A decade later, the insecticide was banned in the United States. In due course, foreign aid for malarial programs with DDT in other countries dried up too. And Westerners threatened sanctions on exports from those using the chemical. By the 1990s, fewer than five countries in Africa still sprayed it.
But advocates of DDT say we must look back a little further: Since it was first tested as a powerful insecticide in 1939, the chemical has saved millions of lives. Soldiers in the Second World War were given powder laced with it to kill mosquitoes and lice that carried diseases. And, according to the World Health Organization, it was instrumental in eliminating malaria from North America, Europe and parts of Asia in the 1950s and 60s.
Research on the effects of DDT may also warrant a second look. Although hundreds of studies have linked the chemical to wildlife impacts, Dyann Wirth, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, says the hazard to human health is inconclusive.
And in a paper published this week by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, economist Roger Bate insists that the move to ban the chemical was "political," spurred on by the environmental lobby, "without any grounding in good science."
Some critics go even further. They say the ban on DDT is not only rooted in misinformed "chemophobia," it is also "eco-imperialism" that puts environmental concerns before the health of millions of black people in Africa out of prejudice.
"Denying people the right to choose to spray DDT is denying them autonomy, and that is racism," says Thabiso Morodi, a public-health officer with the Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria who has been lobbying for the revival of DDT.
What is clear is the dramatic health hazard of banning DDT in countries where malaria runs rampant. Cases in Sri Lanka had dropped from 2.8 million in 1948 to just 17 by 1963. But the next year DDT was discontinued - and five years later malaria had again spread to 2.5 million people. And from 1996 to 2000, when South Africa bowed to international pressure and stopped using DDT, malaria rates soared by 500 per cent.
So what about those celebrity-endorsed, richly funded bed nets?
Bed nets are much more expensive than DDT and the insecticides they are coated with don't remain effective nearly as long. They can also rip. And some impoverished farmers have been known to cover their livestock with them instead of protecting themselves. Even those who do put themselves first, though, are not shielded when they are not, well, tucked into bed.
"The whole concept of using pesticide-soaked 19th-century colonial-style net curtains is regressive," journalist Emily Hill says on Spiked.com, an alternative political daily. "The charity nets are a $10 solution; they're a $10 insult."
In contrast, studies show that DDT, which is relatively cheap, kills mosquitoes for six months. And even when bugs become resistant to the chemical, it continues to repel them.
This is why hundreds of scientists pressed WHO to exempt the use of DDT to fight malaria from its chemical hit list in 2002. And last year, the organization reversed its 30-year stance on the indoor spraying of DDT to fight malaria. "We need DDT because there is no other insecticide which is as effective and can be used so successfully to control malaria," spokesman Pierre Guillet said.
WHO's radical about-face has no legal force. But it has influenced global donors who are eager to help Africa overcome a scourge that costs $12-billion in lost productivity and continues to infect 300 million to 500 million people a year. Since 2006, both USAID and the U.S President's Malaria Initiative have changed direction on funding DDT programs.
As for the tension between those who support the use of DDT and the green lobby?
"I am here today to ask you, please help save African babies as you are helping to save the environment," said the head of WHO's malarial program, Arata Kochi. "African babies do not have a powerful movement ... to champion their well-being."
CHEMICAL RESISTANCE,
COMMUNITY CONSENSUS
Still, not everyone is convinced that DDT is the answer.
Because it can actually increase the presence of some pests, environmentalists fear that spraying will cause an upsurge in the use of other insecticides.
Many worry that inadequate monitoring systems in countries readopting the chemical could make disposal difficult as well - and that DDT could end up seeping into local watersheds.
"I hope they don't dump [canisters] in Lake Victoria," says Willis Akhwale, the head of malaria control in Kenya. His country banned DDT in 1990 but shares a lake with two countries that have lifted bans on the chemical.
Detractors also insist that the chemical does have human health effects. They point to a 2006 study in South Africa that found exposure to low levels of DDT reduces the quality of male sperm and to another study that found exposure to DDT at an early age can increase the risk of breast cancer.
According to Stephenie Hendricks of the Pesticide Action Network North America, arguments that frame bans on DDT as "racism" or "eco-imperialism" overshadow the risks involved in spraying and the success of countries that have fought malaria without resorting to the chemical.
"Unfortunately, a small group of DDT advocates are creating a false controversy and perpetuating a debate that distracts the global community from moving forward with real malaria solutions," she says.
All of which adds up to a good reason to focus on alternative therapies, says Kenya's Mr. Akhwale.
Instead of using DDT, his country has dramatically increased the distribution of free or subsidized bed nets to pregnant women and children, as well as other drug therapies and malaria testing kits.
The price of these measures is not insignificant - 3.4 million bed nets cost $70-million - but Mr. Akhwale says the results are proved. After one charitable blitz, child mortality dropped by 44 per cent.
But whether DDT is a flawed, blunt instrument that is best avoided or the last hope in Africa's fight against malaria, its future depends on Africans themselves. Like residents in Cape Town, locals across the continent must ultimately open their doors to men with canisters of chemicals.
In Mozambique, for example, where 150 die from malaria every day, efforts to spray DDT have been blocked by popular resistance.
In Uganda, lobbyists who say the chemical causes congenital malformation have threatened to sue the government if planned spraying goes forward.
"Local people are the ones who fear DDT the most," says Ellady Muyambani of the Uganda Network on Toxic Free Malaria Control. "Most people know they can overcome malaria with other methods. Our country can afford other alternatives. DDT will not work when you consider people do not want it."
Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's President, has called resistance ill-informed, even "insulting," but who can blame the people who must live with DDT on their walls for their confusion?
After all, scientific studies can't seem to reach a clear consensus on the environmental or health impact of the chemical. Policy-makers continue to clash over the politics. And celebrities? Putting a human face on a toxic chemical is a lot more difficult than promoting a mosquito net.
The rise and fall of DDT
1939 - Paul Herman Muller proves that DDT - first synthesized by German scientist Othmar Ziedler in 1874 - is an effective insecticide.
1942-45 - DDT powder is given to soldiers in the Mediterranean to protect against typhus, lice and malaria during the Second World War.
1948 - Paul Herman Muller is awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on DDT.
1950s - The World Health Organization and UNICEF use DDT and other methods to largely eradicate malaria from the developed world and control it in much of Asia.
1950s-1960s - DDT is sprayed in massive quantities over crops in the United States to eradicate pests.
1962 - American Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring , about the death of nature from chemicals such as DDT.
1970 - A partial ban on DDT is introduced in Canada.
1972 - DDT is banned in the United States.
1984 - DDT is banned in the United Kingdom.
1985 - DDT is fully banned in Canada, with remaining stocks to be sold or used by 1990.
1987 - The Environmental Protection Agency lists DDT as a "probable" carcinogen.
1989 - A study finds the average amount of DDT eaten in food by Americans is 2.24 micrograms per kilogram per day.
2002 - WHO's Stockholm Convention blacklists DDT as a "persistent organic pollutant" - but after persistent lobbying scientists win a public-health exemption for its use against malaria.
2006 - WHO reverses its position on DDT for indoor spraying to prevent malaria.
Today - Malaria infects 300 million to 500 million people every year. A child under 5 dies of malaria every 30 seconds.
Tim Querengesser is a freelance writer based in Nairobi. © 2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20071110.DDT10/TPStory/?query=ddt
NAIROBI -- First, actress Ashley Judd urged Americans to buy bed nets for pregnant women and new mothers. Then American Idol finalist Melinda Doolittle and first lady Laura Bush travelled to Zambia to help package 500,000 bed nets. Next, Chicago Bulls forward Luol Deng asked fans to donate money for nets in Chad.
Why are such celebrities - along with Bill and Melinda Gates and Jeffrey Sachs - so interested in keeping mosquitoes away from the people of Africa as they sleep?
The simple answer is that, while the toll AIDS has taken on the continent has shocked the world, malaria is still the biggest cause of death for children under 5 and kills about a million people a year in sub-Saharan Africa. And bed nets make a difference. For every 1,000 put into use, seven African lives are spared from infection.
But there may be a better, cheaper way to keep malaria at bay - one that is taboo among celebrities, donors and policy-makers in the bird-loving West.
It's DDT. And by next year 16 African countries are expected to spray it inside houses, reversing a decades-long fight against the pariah chemical and raising challenging questions about the balance between environmentalism and humanitarianism.
THE RISE OF GREEN POLITICS AND THE BAN ON DDT
When men with canisters of DDT started their rounds of South African neighbourhoods, the BBC reported that people locked their doors. Nobody wanted even the recommended three grams per square kilometre of the insecticide inside their homes.
This made sense for a generation raised on horror stories about the chemical. As Rachel Carson noted in her landmark 1962 book Silent Spring , Dichloro- diphenyl-trichloroethane made bird eggshells weak and threatened eagles, falcons and other animals. She also implied that it was a human carcinogen.
A decade later, the insecticide was banned in the United States. In due course, foreign aid for malarial programs with DDT in other countries dried up too. And Westerners threatened sanctions on exports from those using the chemical. By the 1990s, fewer than five countries in Africa still sprayed it.
But advocates of DDT say we must look back a little further: Since it was first tested as a powerful insecticide in 1939, the chemical has saved millions of lives. Soldiers in the Second World War were given powder laced with it to kill mosquitoes and lice that carried diseases. And, according to the World Health Organization, it was instrumental in eliminating malaria from North America, Europe and parts of Asia in the 1950s and 60s.
Research on the effects of DDT may also warrant a second look. Although hundreds of studies have linked the chemical to wildlife impacts, Dyann Wirth, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, says the hazard to human health is inconclusive.
And in a paper published this week by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, economist Roger Bate insists that the move to ban the chemical was "political," spurred on by the environmental lobby, "without any grounding in good science."
Some critics go even further. They say the ban on DDT is not only rooted in misinformed "chemophobia," it is also "eco-imperialism" that puts environmental concerns before the health of millions of black people in Africa out of prejudice.
"Denying people the right to choose to spray DDT is denying them autonomy, and that is racism," says Thabiso Morodi, a public-health officer with the Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria who has been lobbying for the revival of DDT.
What is clear is the dramatic health hazard of banning DDT in countries where malaria runs rampant. Cases in Sri Lanka had dropped from 2.8 million in 1948 to just 17 by 1963. But the next year DDT was discontinued - and five years later malaria had again spread to 2.5 million people. And from 1996 to 2000, when South Africa bowed to international pressure and stopped using DDT, malaria rates soared by 500 per cent.
So what about those celebrity-endorsed, richly funded bed nets?
Bed nets are much more expensive than DDT and the insecticides they are coated with don't remain effective nearly as long. They can also rip. And some impoverished farmers have been known to cover their livestock with them instead of protecting themselves. Even those who do put themselves first, though, are not shielded when they are not, well, tucked into bed.
"The whole concept of using pesticide-soaked 19th-century colonial-style net curtains is regressive," journalist Emily Hill says on Spiked.com, an alternative political daily. "The charity nets are a $10 solution; they're a $10 insult."
In contrast, studies show that DDT, which is relatively cheap, kills mosquitoes for six months. And even when bugs become resistant to the chemical, it continues to repel them.
This is why hundreds of scientists pressed WHO to exempt the use of DDT to fight malaria from its chemical hit list in 2002. And last year, the organization reversed its 30-year stance on the indoor spraying of DDT to fight malaria. "We need DDT because there is no other insecticide which is as effective and can be used so successfully to control malaria," spokesman Pierre Guillet said.
WHO's radical about-face has no legal force. But it has influenced global donors who are eager to help Africa overcome a scourge that costs $12-billion in lost productivity and continues to infect 300 million to 500 million people a year. Since 2006, both USAID and the U.S President's Malaria Initiative have changed direction on funding DDT programs.
As for the tension between those who support the use of DDT and the green lobby?
"I am here today to ask you, please help save African babies as you are helping to save the environment," said the head of WHO's malarial program, Arata Kochi. "African babies do not have a powerful movement ... to champion their well-being."
CHEMICAL RESISTANCE,
COMMUNITY CONSENSUS
Still, not everyone is convinced that DDT is the answer.
Because it can actually increase the presence of some pests, environmentalists fear that spraying will cause an upsurge in the use of other insecticides.
Many worry that inadequate monitoring systems in countries readopting the chemical could make disposal difficult as well - and that DDT could end up seeping into local watersheds.
"I hope they don't dump [canisters] in Lake Victoria," says Willis Akhwale, the head of malaria control in Kenya. His country banned DDT in 1990 but shares a lake with two countries that have lifted bans on the chemical.
Detractors also insist that the chemical does have human health effects. They point to a 2006 study in South Africa that found exposure to low levels of DDT reduces the quality of male sperm and to another study that found exposure to DDT at an early age can increase the risk of breast cancer.
According to Stephenie Hendricks of the Pesticide Action Network North America, arguments that frame bans on DDT as "racism" or "eco-imperialism" overshadow the risks involved in spraying and the success of countries that have fought malaria without resorting to the chemical.
"Unfortunately, a small group of DDT advocates are creating a false controversy and perpetuating a debate that distracts the global community from moving forward with real malaria solutions," she says.
All of which adds up to a good reason to focus on alternative therapies, says Kenya's Mr. Akhwale.
Instead of using DDT, his country has dramatically increased the distribution of free or subsidized bed nets to pregnant women and children, as well as other drug therapies and malaria testing kits.
The price of these measures is not insignificant - 3.4 million bed nets cost $70-million - but Mr. Akhwale says the results are proved. After one charitable blitz, child mortality dropped by 44 per cent.
But whether DDT is a flawed, blunt instrument that is best avoided or the last hope in Africa's fight against malaria, its future depends on Africans themselves. Like residents in Cape Town, locals across the continent must ultimately open their doors to men with canisters of chemicals.
In Mozambique, for example, where 150 die from malaria every day, efforts to spray DDT have been blocked by popular resistance.
In Uganda, lobbyists who say the chemical causes congenital malformation have threatened to sue the government if planned spraying goes forward.
"Local people are the ones who fear DDT the most," says Ellady Muyambani of the Uganda Network on Toxic Free Malaria Control. "Most people know they can overcome malaria with other methods. Our country can afford other alternatives. DDT will not work when you consider people do not want it."
Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's President, has called resistance ill-informed, even "insulting," but who can blame the people who must live with DDT on their walls for their confusion?
After all, scientific studies can't seem to reach a clear consensus on the environmental or health impact of the chemical. Policy-makers continue to clash over the politics. And celebrities? Putting a human face on a toxic chemical is a lot more difficult than promoting a mosquito net.
The rise and fall of DDT
1939 - Paul Herman Muller proves that DDT - first synthesized by German scientist Othmar Ziedler in 1874 - is an effective insecticide.
1942-45 - DDT powder is given to soldiers in the Mediterranean to protect against typhus, lice and malaria during the Second World War.
1948 - Paul Herman Muller is awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on DDT.
1950s - The World Health Organization and UNICEF use DDT and other methods to largely eradicate malaria from the developed world and control it in much of Asia.
1950s-1960s - DDT is sprayed in massive quantities over crops in the United States to eradicate pests.
1962 - American Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring , about the death of nature from chemicals such as DDT.
1970 - A partial ban on DDT is introduced in Canada.
1972 - DDT is banned in the United States.
1984 - DDT is banned in the United Kingdom.
1985 - DDT is fully banned in Canada, with remaining stocks to be sold or used by 1990.
1987 - The Environmental Protection Agency lists DDT as a "probable" carcinogen.
1989 - A study finds the average amount of DDT eaten in food by Americans is 2.24 micrograms per kilogram per day.
2002 - WHO's Stockholm Convention blacklists DDT as a "persistent organic pollutant" - but after persistent lobbying scientists win a public-health exemption for its use against malaria.
2006 - WHO reverses its position on DDT for indoor spraying to prevent malaria.
Today - Malaria infects 300 million to 500 million people every year. A child under 5 dies of malaria every 30 seconds.
Tim Querengesser is a freelance writer based in Nairobi. © 2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20071110.DDT10/TPStory/?query=ddt
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MCS International Country Coordinator for the USA - http://www.mcs-international.org/meet_team_steve.html and:
http://www.mcs-international.org/articles/article_steve_tvedten1.html
Websites: http://www.thebestcontrol.com , http://www.getipm.com , http://www.learnipm.com , http://www.licergone.com , http://www.safesolutionsinc.com - http://www.stephentvedten.com/
http://www.mcs-international.org/articles/article_steve_tvedten1.html
Websites: http://www.thebestcontrol.com , http://www.getipm.com , http://www.learnipm.com , http://www.licergone.com , http://www.safesolutionsinc.com - http://www.stephentvedten.com/
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