[afro-nets] Looming DDT Ban Spurs Debate On Malaria

[Claudio Schuftan <claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn>]

Looming DDT Ban Spurs Debate On Malaria
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from Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel@undp.org>

http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-18/s_23972.asp

Set for ban, DDT lingers in battle against malaria
By Alister Doyle, Reuters

OSLO, Norway - Few poisons have ridden such a roller coaster
through environmental history as DDT.

Once hailed as a miracle pesticide, DDT is outlawed as one of a
"Dirty Dozen" chemicals as of Monday, even as it stays in use as
a controversial spray against malaria-spreading mosquitoes.

The man who discovered its power to kill insects won a Nobel
Prize in 1948, while shock at its damage to wildlife awoke a
global environmental movement in the 1960s.

Into the 21st century, countries including South Africa and
Ethiopia still swear by DDT to combat malaria, which kills a
million people a year. They say there is scant evidence that DDT
is carcinogenic for humans.

"There is still a role for DDT," said Jim Willis, head of the
U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) chemicals division, estimating
that about 25 countries will use DDT under exemptions from the
DDT pesticide ban.

DDT is one of 12 industrial chemicals to be outlawed under the
U.N.'s 2001 Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollut-
ants (POPs), which formally comes into force on Monday after
ratification by 50 states.

Developing countries have a difficult choice in using a known
poison to spray homes, yet malaria kills one African child every
30 seconds, according to U.N. estimates. The disease burdens
health budgets and curbs economic growth.

Best known by its initials, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloromethylmethane
can suppress the immune system and is infamous for threatening
bird populations by thinning eggshells.

No Health Damage?

"We have seen no conclusive evidence that it (spraying) has any
impact on human health. We put very small quantities of DDT on
the wall (of people's houses)," said Devanand Moonasar, national
malaria program manager of South Africa's National Department of
Health. "We spray only under the eaves and also inside the
houses of traditional mud structures," he said, adding that
spraying was normally done from August to October when mosqui-
toes were worst.

Still, workers use full protective clothing for spraying, and
U.N. warnings about DDT and the rest of the "Dirty Dozen" POPs
are stark.

"Of all the pollutants released into the environment every year
by human activity, POPS are the most dangerous," said UNEP chief
Klaus Toepfer, adding that the world should hunt for alterna-
tives to DDT to control malaria.

DDT and other POPs including dioxins or pesticides like aldrin
or chlordane are found worldwide but build into highest concen-
trations in the fatty tissues of people in the Arctic and in
animals from polar bears to seals. In the heavily industrialized
Northern Hemisphere, the chemicals are swept north by ocean cur-
rents and winds and end up lodging in fatty tissues in the ap-
parently pristine Arctic.

"There is a conflict between the interests of the people in the
Arctic and those who are living in areas where DDT is used,"
said Lars-Otto Reiersen, head of the Arctic Monitoring and As-
sessment Program.

He said that a main modern source of DDT in the Arctic was Rus-
sia. Measurements showed that it was still in use there, perhaps
as a crop spray. Russia has signed but not yet ratified the POPs
convention.

Most western countries banned DDT in the 1970s.

The WWF environmental group said that more efforts should be put
into finding less toxic alternatives to DDT in fighting malaria.

"It's still a very dangerous chemical," said Samantha Smith, di-
rector of the WWF's Arctic program.

Napoleon's Lice

Towards the end of World War II, DDT was found to be potent in
killing lice that spread typhus among soldiers. Lice-borne dis-
eases had ravaged armies throughout history, including Napo-
leon's forces in his ill-fated 1812 march to Moscow.

"Unexpectedly, dramatically, practically out of the blue, DDT
appeared as a deus ex machina," said Sweden's G. Fischer in a
speech awarding the 1948 Nobel Medicine Prize to Switzerland's
Paul Hermann Muller for his DDT discovery.

But in 1962, U.S. author Rachel Carson made DDT infamous in her
landmark book Silent Spring, detailing the risks of using indus-
trial chemicals. The book is credited with spurring global envi-
ronmental awareness.

UNEP's Willis said there was hope for a world rid of DDT but
that it could take decades.

"Mexico recently stopped using DDT, and they've seen at the same
time a reduction in malaria rates," he said.

He said that broader antimalaria policies included clearing
stagnant water where mosquitoes breed, placing nets around beds
at night, targeted use of alternative antimosquito pesticides,
and development of new medicines.