eelgrass
Long Time Member
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This is in response to recent posts blaming President Bush for "everything"
http://www.igreens.org.uk/malaria_and_ddt.htm
Malaria continues to topple empires today, killing over one million people every year, mostly children and pregnant women. (As Dr. Wenceslaus Kilama, chairman of Malaria Foundation International, has said, the malaria epidemic "is like loading up seven Boeing 747 airliners each day, then deliberately crashing them into Mt. Kilimanjaro.") The number of deaths is increasing, especially in developing countries. Yet while these countries ought to have every method available to control this disease, political leaders and environmental groups recently came very close to banning an important weapon in the fight against malaria: DDT.
Spraying DDT in houses and on mosquito breeding grounds was the primary reason that rates of malaria around the world declined dramatically after the Second World War. Nearly one million Indians died from malaria in 1945, but DDT spraying reduced this to a few thousand by 1960. However, concerns about the environmental harm of DDT led to a decline in spraying and, likewise, a resurgence of malaria. Today there are once again millions of cases of malaria in India, and over 300 million cases worldwide-most in sub-Saharan Africa. Cases of malaria in South Africa have risen by over 1000 percent in the past five years. Only those countries that have continued to use DDT, such as Ecuador, have contained or reduced malaria.
Malaria is clearly a human tragedy, but it is also an economic disaster. According to Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard's Centre for International Development, lost productivity from malaria costs afflicted patients about 1 percent of Africa's wealth every year. In many countries, malaria halves the economic growth that would otherwise occur.
While there is some evidence that DDT causes environmental harm, damage occurred only during widespread agricultural use of DDT in the 1950s and 1960s. It was alleged that DDT led to eggshell thinning and other effects in certain birds; these problems were shown to be reversible. No study in the scientific literature has adequately shown any human health problem resulting from DDT. Therefore, low-dose use of DDT indoors is unlikely to cause any significant harm to the environment or people.
Yet in 1995, the United Nations Environment Program proposed an international treaty to reduce and/or eliminate 12 Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), including DDT, from world-wide production and use. The result of such a process is obvious. As environmentalists have pushed to eliminate DDT over the years, the relationship between decreased DDT use and increasing malaria cases has become very clear.
http://www.igreens.org.uk/malaria_and_ddt.htm
Malaria continues to topple empires today, killing over one million people every year, mostly children and pregnant women. (As Dr. Wenceslaus Kilama, chairman of Malaria Foundation International, has said, the malaria epidemic "is like loading up seven Boeing 747 airliners each day, then deliberately crashing them into Mt. Kilimanjaro.") The number of deaths is increasing, especially in developing countries. Yet while these countries ought to have every method available to control this disease, political leaders and environmental groups recently came very close to banning an important weapon in the fight against malaria: DDT.
Spraying DDT in houses and on mosquito breeding grounds was the primary reason that rates of malaria around the world declined dramatically after the Second World War. Nearly one million Indians died from malaria in 1945, but DDT spraying reduced this to a few thousand by 1960. However, concerns about the environmental harm of DDT led to a decline in spraying and, likewise, a resurgence of malaria. Today there are once again millions of cases of malaria in India, and over 300 million cases worldwide-most in sub-Saharan Africa. Cases of malaria in South Africa have risen by over 1000 percent in the past five years. Only those countries that have continued to use DDT, such as Ecuador, have contained or reduced malaria.
Malaria is clearly a human tragedy, but it is also an economic disaster. According to Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard's Centre for International Development, lost productivity from malaria costs afflicted patients about 1 percent of Africa's wealth every year. In many countries, malaria halves the economic growth that would otherwise occur.
While there is some evidence that DDT causes environmental harm, damage occurred only during widespread agricultural use of DDT in the 1950s and 1960s. It was alleged that DDT led to eggshell thinning and other effects in certain birds; these problems were shown to be reversible. No study in the scientific literature has adequately shown any human health problem resulting from DDT. Therefore, low-dose use of DDT indoors is unlikely to cause any significant harm to the environment or people.
Yet in 1995, the United Nations Environment Program proposed an international treaty to reduce and/or eliminate 12 Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), including DDT, from world-wide production and use. The result of such a process is obvious. As environmentalists have pushed to eliminate DDT over the years, the relationship between decreased DDT use and increasing malaria cases has become very clear.
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