DDT Ban Myths (malaria).
Dave Pettingill
http://members.aol.com/jimn469897/ddtban.htm
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THE DDT BAN MYTH
Several anti-environmentalists have claimed that public concern over
the effects of DDT after the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent
Spring led to a ban on the pesticide in some third world countries in
the 1960s. This ban, it is claimed, led to a resurgence in malaria,
resulting in thousands of deaths. But in accounts of the war on
malaria, such as in Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague, it is clear
that the suspension of spraying programs was unrelated to any
environmental concerns. In fact, DDT continued to be the insecticide
of choice in the battle against malaria as recently as 1994, some 30
years after the alleged ban, in areas where it was still effective
(Curtis). Before considering what actually happened, let's see how
some anti-environmentalists described the alleged ban.
This is how Elizabeth Whelan (Toxic Terror, page 69) described events:
Why was there an increase in malaria in Ceylon [now called Sri
Lanka] after 1964? It is clear that the effects of Silent Spring
was not limited to the United States. Following the publication of
this book, the use of DDT was discontinued in Ceylon. Epidemic
conditions reappeared and it it has been estimated that between 1968
and 1969 "considerably more than two million cases occurred," all
related to the campaign against DDT.
Here is how Dixy Lee Ray (with Lou Guzzo) described events (Trashing
the Planet, page 69) [note: Ray has the timing wrong, the spraying
was stopped in 1964, not the late 60s]:
Public health statistics from Sri Lanka testify to the effectiveness
of the spraying program. In 1948, before the use of DDT, there were
2.8 million cases of malaria. By 1963, there were only 17. Low
levels of infection continued until the late 1960s, when the attacks
on DDT in the U.S. convinced officials to suspend spraying. In
1968, there were one million cases of malaria. In 1969, the number
reached 2.5 million, back to the pre-DDT levels. Moreover, by 1972,
the largely unsubstantiated charges against DDT in the United States
had a worldwide effect. In 1970. of two billion people living in
malaria regions, 79 percent were protected and the expectation was
that malaria would be eradicated. Six years after the United States
banned DDT, there were 800 million cases of malaria and 8.2 million
deaths per year. Even worse, because eradication programs were
halted at a critical time, resistant malaria is now widespread and
travelers could take it home.
Here is the version of Joseph L. Bast, Peter J. Hill. and Richard C.
Rue (Eco-Sanity, page 100):
But probably the most remarkable demonstration of the
health-preserving powers of pesticides was the use of DDT to kill
maria-carrying mosquitoes. Thanks to DDT, countries such as
Zanzibar (an island off the east coast of Africa) reduced the
percentage of their populations infected with malaria from 70
percent in 1958 to under 5 percent in 1964. Then, the DDT spraying
program was suspended, and by 1984 the malaria rate was back up to
50 to 60 percent...It is probably fair to say that Zanzibar and
other African countries would not have suspended DDT spraying if
environmentalists had not claimed, without evidence, that DDT posed
a significant risk to human health. DDT is still used to combat
malaria in some parts of the world, and the decision to suspend
spraying in Zanzibar and other areas reflected the judgments of
health officials and political leaders as well as environmentalists.
Still, the environmental movement must take partial responsibility
for halting the use of what many health experts considered to be the
greatest lifesaving chemical ever discovered--so great that its
inventor, Dr. Paul Muller, was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine
in 1948.
And, most recently by Michael Sanera and Jane E. Shaw in Facts not
Fear (pages 202 to 203) (Note:: the book lists the halt in spraying
as a consequence of the 1972 US ban on DDT, given the timing this is
clearly impossible):
In at least one country, Sri Lanka, a DDT spraying program, which
had virtually eliminated malaria in Sri Lanka, was stopped. When
Sri Lanka stopped using DDT, the number of malaria cases rose again
to 2.5 million in the years 1968-9.
There were suspensions in the spraying programs, but they were not the
result of any "environmental hysteria". To understand what actually
happened, it is necessary to learn about the realities of pesticide
use. One of the major problems with using pesticides is that insect
populations soon develop resistance to the chemicals. Insects
resistant to DDT began appearing one year after its first public
health use (Garrett, page 50). As new insecticides were introduced,
resistance to them also developed. Much of Silent Spring is a
cataloging of reports of resistance to insecticides. With the problem
of mosquito resistance to DDT in mind, a plan to eradicate malaria was
developed--several years of spraying, accompanied by treating patients
with anti-malaria drugs, would be followed by several years of
monitoring. Here is how Paul Russell, who would head the eradication
effort, explained it in 1956 (Quoted in Garrett, page 48):
Generally, it takes four years of spraying and four years of
surveillance to make sure of three consecutive years of no mosquito
transmission in an area. After that, normal health department
activities can be depended upon to deal with occasional introduced
cases. . . . Eradication can be pushed through in a community in a
period of eight to ten years, with not more than four to six years
of actual spraying, without much danger of resistance. But if
countries, due to lack of funds, have to proceed slowly, resistance
is almost certain to appear and eradication will become economically
impossible. Time is of the essence [his emphasis] because DDT
resistance has appeared in six or seven years.
Incredible as it might seem, while public health officials were
cautiously limiting the usage of DDT, it was being used in increasing
amounts in agriculture, especially on cotton, a cash crop (Chapin &
Wasserstrom). This heavy use led to resistance among malaria carrying
mosquitoes throughout the tropics. In this instance, the unwise use of
DDT, rather than improving life, actually resulted in a resurgence of
malaria. According to Chapin & Wasserstrom (page 183) "Correlating
the use of DDT in El Salvador with renewed malaria transmission, it
can be estimated that at current rates each kilo of insecticide added
to the environment will generate 105 new cases of malaria."
Not surprisingly, anti-environmentalists ignore or downplay the
importance of insect resistance. There is no mention of the problem
in Trashing the Planet, Eco-Sanity or Facts not Fear. Toxic Terror,
which has a twenty six page chapter on "The DDT Debate", devotes just
one paragraph to the issue. There is no mention of the impact of DDT
resistance on the war against malaria.
There were a number of other problems in addition to insect resistance
to DDT and other insecticides. The heavy use of anti-malaria drugs
started to produce microbes resistant to them. Non insecticide control
measures that had greatly reduced the presence of malaria in many
areas were discontinued when DDT arrived (Chapin & Wasserstrom).
There was a chronic lack of funds. Many countries had to abandon their
control efforts, or they diverted funds to other areas when the number
of cases of malaria had been reduced to a low level. The United
States bankrolled the eradication program starting in 1958, with the
assurance that it would only take five years. When the five years was
up, the funding was cut off, even though it appeared that the
eradication program was working (Garrett). This cut off of funds
occurred just before the alleged bans went into effect. Political
turmoil also might have had an effect. 1964 was a year of major
political turmoil in Zanzibar, the country used as an example in
Eco-Sanity. The country gained independence in December 1963, there
was a bloody revolt in January 1964, and later that year the country
joined with the much lager mainland country of Tanganyika to form the
country of Tanzania (Kaplan). Any of these events could have
disrupted the malaria control program.
The eradication program ended not because of any environmental
concerns, but because it did not work. The mosquitoes had grown
resistant to insecticides, and the microorganisms that cause malaria
had become resistant to the drugs used against them. In many areas
the numbers of cases of malaria greatly exceeded what it was before
the effort was started. If events had been different, if DDT had not
been used heavily in agriculture and there was no shortage of funds
the outcome might have been different. Malaria might have joined
smallpox as a disease that had been eliminated from the face of the
earth. Unfortunately, such was not the case. As early as 1967 it was
clear that the effort had failed, and in 1972 the official policy
shifted from eradication to control of malaria.
Commentary
DDT was not banned in any developed country till the 1970s (Curtis).
It was not banned in the United States, that hotbed of "environmental
hysteria", until 1972, and even then there were exemptions for health
emergencies and some agricultural uses. The anti-environmental claim
that some third world countries that were fighting malaria banned the
pesticide back in 1964 stretches our credulity, to say the least.
Certainly such a ban would generate a great deal of press coverage, as
well as protests from the affected citizens and the international
agencies that were trying to eradicate malaria. But the
anti-environmentalists produce no such evidence. The only "proof"
that is offered that the suspensions were related to environmental
concerns was that they occurred after the publication of Silent
Spring. But this is a post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this,
therefore because of it) fallacy, no cause and effect was established.
Rather than causing deaths, the cautions in Silent Spring about the
indiscriminate use of pesticides could have saved many lives.
References
Bast, Joseph l., Peter J. Hill, and Richard C. Rue, Eco-Sanity: A
common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism, Madison Books, 1994.
Carson, Rachel, Silent Spring, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962.
Chapin, Georgeanne & Robert Wasserstrom, "Agricultural production and
malaria resurgence in Central America and India", Nature, Vol. 293,
1981, pages 181 to 185.
Curtis, C. F., "Should DDT continue to be recommended for malaria
vector control?", Medical and Veterinary Entomology, Vol. 8, 1994,
pages 107-112
Garrett, Laurie, The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a
World Out of Balance, Penguin Books, 1994
Kaplan, Irving (editor), Tanzania, a Country Study, The American
University, 1978.
Ray, Dixy Lee & Lou Guzzo, Trashing the Planet: How Science Can Help
Us Deal with Acid Rain, Depletion of the Ozone, and Nuclear Waste
(Among Other Things), HarperPerennial, 1990.
Sanera, Michael and Jane S. Shaw, Facts not Fear: A Parent's Guide to
Teaching Children About the Environment, Regnery Publishing, Inc.,
1996.
Whelan, Elizabeth M., Toxic Terror, Jameson Books, 1985..
Written by Jim Norton
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Byron Bodo
In article <APC&1'0'576a9b4b'5...@igc.apc.org>, iso...@igc.apc.org says...
> Commentary
>
> DDT was not banned in any developed country till the 1970s (Curtis).
And the prohibitions of the early 1970s in certain developed countries were
primarily against agricultural usage.
> It was not banned in the United States, that hotbed of "environmental
> hysteria", until 1972, and even then there were exemptions for health
> emergencies and some agricultural uses. The anti-environmental claim
> that some third world countries that were fighting malaria banned the
> pesticide back in 1964 stretches our credulity, to say the least.
The WMO malaria eradication campaign begun ca. 1956-57 ran out of funds
ca. 1963-64. Poor countries like Sri Lanka that couldn't carry on
themselves dropped anti-malarial spraying as stocks ran out. Next door,
India which began manufacturing DDT & other public health pesticides in the
early 1950s carried on. Malaria cases that had dropped to a low of ca.
50,000 in 1961 rose steadily to 6,000,000+ by 1976 despite continued spraying.
About then India abandonned the naive notion of "malaria eradication" &
shifted to a "malaria control" strategy focused on high transmission areas.
The annual case load was reduced to ca. 2,000,000 within 5 yrs or so, and
has been stable since then. About 1990, the 2 mosquito vectors responsible
for 80% of India's annual malaria case load, plus 14 other public health
insect pests were broadly resistant to the 3 major public health insecticides
DDT, HCH & malathion).
Pro-DDT propoganda originating in the USA is mostly blatant hokum.
-bb
Scott Nudds
Byron Bodo (bo...@interlog.com) wrote:
: Pro-DDT propoganda originating in the USA is mostly blatant hokum.
I have noticed that much of it comes from Libertarian sources...
---
"Swarms of locusts and grasshoppers; a plague of crickets, cutworms, and
ants; and swarms of mosquitoes are making life miserable and even
impossible in some parts of the world. . . . Some experts are treating
this as an unexplainable mystery. Actually, there is no mystery about
it. . . . The most effective pesticide, DDT, was outlawed. . . ."
(Ronald Reagan, October 1978)