DDT or Malaria -- Which is Worse?

Assassin bug wonders: "Although the topic of malaria has been discussed on Slashdot, DDT use has not. After having banned DDT (C14H9Cl5)" in 2004, Tanzania has reversed their ban on DDT use. What is the Slashdot community's opinion regarding the use of DDT for mosquito control versus genetically modified mosquitoes?" "Key facts to consider:

• Insects have developed resistance, for every tactic that has been used against them (including biological control, crop rotation, and various chemicals)
• Although the direct effects of DDT on humans might be benign, the effects on wildlife and the environment are well documented
• In some countries, such as India, popluations of DDT-resistant mosquitoes exist
• The fitness (i.e., reproductive success in the wild) of mutant mosquitoes is not well understood."

Comments

DDT

[Erich]

DDT use is allowed (even in the US, I think) for application around the home, ie. treating walls and such.

The alleged environmental impact was when the use was ultra-widespread, like dusting crops.

DDT is effective at fighting malaria in much of the world, applying just around the home, but chemical manufacturing companies largely stopped making it after it got a bad name from the environmental concerns.

Re:DDT

[barawn]

but chemical manufacturing companies largely stopped making it after it got a bad name from the environmental concerns.

You mean like after it decimated the ecosystem on Borneo, forcing 14,000 cats to be parachuted in to stop the population from dying of bubonic plague and typhus.

Alleged? Alleged? C'mon. This is well documented. DDT doesn't kill humans, but it sure does screw with a lot of other animals. It can be used intelligently, but it can also be used stupidly, too.

It's not even clear that when it's used intelligently that it's cost effective to do so. USAID doesn't believe that it is.

Re:DDT

[Firethorn]

but there are alternatives (pyrethroids, for example)

Having read several articles about this very topic, it's been mentioned that none of the alternatives are either as effective as DDT, or, just as important for poor african nations, as inexpensive and easy to produce. The whole 'sticking around' thing is very usefull for mosquito suppression.

Nobody's supporting the wide-area spraying that went on in the US before the ban, where some states seemed determined to hit every square foot. They're talking about directed application like on occuppied building's doorways that use small amounts, the preventive effects last for a long time, and doesn't really get into the ecosphere.

Rachael Carson = Bad Science

[FooAtWFU]

From Why we need DDT:

In fact, DeWitt's 1956 article in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry came to a very different conclusion. DeWitt reported no significant difference in egg hatching between birds fed DDT and birds not fed DDT. Carson also omitted to mention DeWitt's report that DDT-fed pheasants hatched about 50 percent more eggs than 'control' pheasants. As to DDT causing cancer in humans, study after study reports no association between DDT exposure and cancer rates.

Dr Joel Bitman and his associates at the US Department of Agriculture published an article in Nature in 1969, which found that Japanese quail fed DDT produced eggs with thinner shells and lower calcium content. Further examination of Dr Bitman's study revealed that the quails under experiment had been fed a diet with a calcium content of only 0.56 percent, whereas a normal quail diet consists of 2.7 percent calcium. Calcium deficiency is known to cause thin eggshells. After much criticism, Bitman repeated the test, this time with sufficient calcium levels, and the birds produced eggs without thinned shells.

Following years of feeding experiments, scientists at the Department of Poultry Science at Cornell University 'found no tremors, no mortality, no thinning of eggshells and no interference with reproduction caused by levels of DDT which were as high as those reported to be present in most of the wild birds where "catastrophic" decreases in shell quality and reproduction have been claimed' (2).

Re:DDT Use

[Detritus]

The problem with pesticides and antibiotics is that they are often abused and misapplied through ignorance, stupidity and greed. Read how China may have fscked the entire world by using a human antiviral drug in an effort to protect the Chinese poultry industry from bird flu.

100 things you should know about DDT

[bill_mcgonigle]

Here's an interesting DDT FAQ entitled 100 things you should know about DDT.

Link to Harvard about Borneo

[BobPaul]

Found your comment interesting, so I googled it and found this very interesting. Thought others might find it a good summary.

Click on the top link about borneo on this Harvard Page

Re:Link to Harvard about Borneo

[barawn]

Here is another much much more detailed description (down in Malaria control), and here is an eye-witness account from 1959 of the cat drop itself.

Note that the author of the cat drop was a little too dismissive of the dangers of the rats (he seemed to be more concerned by the fact that they were nibbling people's toenails and eating transistor radios) but hey, he's a reporter. Can't blame him for that.

Still, though, I really recommend the Charlotte Pomerantz book. It's a well-written children's book which describes what happened in Borneo in a way to help kids understand.

The one thing I will say (that I've said elsewhere, too) is that I might've been being a bit strong in saying what happened there, but that's mainly because the comments I've seen have been equally strong the other way - as in "DDT doesn't cause any damage to ecosystems." Well, it does. I'm not trying to say DDT shouldn't be used. I'm trying to say DDT isn't hand soap. It isn't manna from heaven. It's an insecticide that, if used improperly, can concentrate lethally in apex predators.

Crichton's State of Confusion

[x1048576]

Because a novel has some footnotes, you think everything in it must be true? Crichton has been taken to pieces by actual scientists for completely screwing up the science in his book. Read what the scientists think of his work here.

As for his DDT stuff -- it's complete rubbish. In the 60s the World Health Organization tried to eradicate malaria by spraying DDT and failed. There are several reasons why it failed, but one of them was the indiscriminate use of DDT in agriculture, which was a very effective of evolving DDT-resistant mosquitoes. DDT is still useful in the areas where the mosquitoes are not resistant and for that you can thank the ban on the agricultural use of DDT. In other words that ban, far from causing 50 million deaths, has saved lives. You can read about the failure of the malaria eradication campaign here.

Don't be astroturfed: DDT is not banned

[Nick Barnes]

Widespread use of DDT for crop-spraying has lead to DDT-resistant mosquitos in many parts of the world. Despite this, and despite some other adverse effects, DDT is not banned. DDT is recommended by the WHO for residual indoor spraying as part of an anti-malaria campaign. Governments and NGOs fund residual indoor DDT spraying programs in many countries. However, for saving lives, DDT is far less effective than treated bed-nets, and each is less effective than an integrated anti-malaria campaign.

For reasons best known to themselves, some parts of the blogosphere have taken up the meme "By banning DDT, environmentalists have caused the deaths of millions of people from malaria." Almost every aspect of this meme is false, as anyone can discover with a small amount of Googling. I can even save you the small amount of Googling by pointing you to Deltoid, the blog of someone who has done it for you. The "Rachel Carson was worse than Stalin" notion seems to have been started as an astroturf lobbying operation by DDT manfacturers, and spread by dittoheads. Some wingnut sites have counters suggesting that the death-toll is even billions, which just goes to show how innumerate some people are.

old news

[argStyopa]

The "DDT is dangerous" has been conclusively and comprehensively DEBUNKED years and years ago. There is NO reason this crap needs to continue, except for the psychological agenda of the enviro-facist movement.

http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm

Basically, 'Silent Spring' was based on test data that was wrong.
The birds whose eggs were shattering, had been raised on a diet containing less than 20% of the calcium they usually got. Duh. Low calcium = weak eggshells.
When the experiment was repeated with a proper diet, there was NO such finding, even in birds HEAVILY fed DDT.
Even the original authors of the experiment had, by 1971, turned their investigations more to PCBs, and discounted DDT as an issue with bird populations.

An administrative Judge ruled even at the time that DDT wasn't dangerous.
Nevertheless, the administrator of the then-new EPA ruled it would be universally banned...and then promptly went to work for the exact same anti-DDT enironmental lobbying group, after he left he EPA.

But I find that DNR staff, ecological speakers visiting schools, reporters, etc all have cheerfully and unquestioningly swallowed the Kool Aide on this because of its SEMINAL impact and justification of the environmental movement. To be fair, when confronted constructively about it, are rather shocked but eventually persuaded that there MIGHT be some doubt...which is a lot when you're attacking such a sacred cow. However, I have yet to see anyone subsequently change their presentation, curricula, or (effectively) beliefs.

Question that DDT might not be dangerous? That might make people wonder about the validity of the whole "movement", if they could be shown to be such easily-gulled rubes.

Heck, it might even make you think global warming is BS...but no, that MUST be true, right? Scientists say it is.

Re:old news

[Anonymous Coward]

Steven Milloy sure ate your brain. He basically has his hand right up your ass, and truth be told it's really funny to see when people are brainwashed that thoroughly. Maybe you should consider educating yourself on the subject from a source other than an industry shill--that is if you have any semblance of intellectual honesty and aren't just interested in masturbating your own political beliefs. Tim Lambert's page will give you a good basis for finding resources if you can't look for scholarly work yourself.

That is, assuming that you aren't just a paid shill of Citizens for the Integrity of Science. You know, the new name for TASSC that Steven Milloy started using after TASSC was shown to be a propaganda outlet for the tobacco company to discredit governmental science organizations. You know, the sort of people that believe scientific discourse ended with Silent Spring.

DDT or Malaria?

[hey!]

This is known in reasoning circles as a "false dilemma".

DDT is very cheap and effective in the spot you're applying it to. And therein lies the problem: it's almost too good. The step from using it where it is effective and safe to using where it has unwanted side effects has historically proven to be very short.

Lacking DDT, the industry has had to develop alternative approaches, such as IPM, which are more information and biology centric, and new materials which are more narrowly targetted and which break down in the environment in a more benign way. This requires more up front effort and investment, but in the end is probably more effective.

Consider one common traditional use of DDT: Fogging to kill adult mosquito populations. The mosquito has to encounter the DDT on the wing or land in a place where there was residual toxic effect. Since the mosquito could be literally anywhere, this means you must saturate an entire area surrounding human habitations by fogging it. In the old days, you waited for a nuisance problem or a disease outbreak, and then fogged everything you could reach and hoped you were in time to stop human transmission. I've talked to public health researchers who believe that most such efforts tend to be undertaken after the actual problem has past. Or if you were proctive, you might try to treat preventatively, killing not only mosquitoes (you never get them all), but beneficial insects as well.

Today, if you can manage it, you find the aquatic habitat in which mosquito larvae hatch and develop, and if you can't drain it (e.g. artificial containers like abandoned machinery), you treat it with a narrowly targeted larvicidal material. BTI and Baccillus sphaericus for example, are endotoxic crystals that only act in aquatic larvae with high pH guts -- midges and mosquitoes mainly. If the mosquitoes have pupated, you treat with a material which forms a film on the water, blocking their breathing tubes; in the old days we used diesel oil, now we have specially formulated oils and even alcohols that form monomolecular films.

However, this involves knowing where the habitat is, which is information-centric problem. You need trained inspectors in the field who know what to look for and what to use. Even fogging operations are much more sophisticated; you don't just spray and pray. You have a trapping program to monitor adult populations so you don't end up fogging the wrong places. The technology involved for trapping is mostly rudimentary , but you need trained users who can sort and identify mosquitoes by species. Not all mosquitoes bite people or carry disease after all. Furthermore you'd be surprised how many untrained people mistake other insects such as crane flies for mosquitoes.

But it remains thrue, for the developed world Information + Biological Knowledge + Specific action pesticides = Control with fewer side effects.

With respect to human and animal health, there is little threat to human health from direct exposure to DDT in the concenrations that are effective. The established problem with DDT is bioaccumulation: the concentrations of DDT and chemical products of DDT break down are amplified as they go up the food chain. In certain key applications, such as house interior treatments, this is not a concern however, so it should be possible to use DDT this way.

In places like Africa, DDT used in domestic treatments would be a tremendous boon. The forms of Malaria that infect humans, unlike many other mosquito borne diseases such as the various encephalitis agents, don't have a natural animal reservoir. It spreads from person to person. Personally, I can imagine Malaria being eradicated, like smallpox, and domestic DDT treatments could play a part in this, if its use could be monitored and controlled.

I've been involved with equipping teams to go to Africa for malaria surveillance and for house treatments. One of the problems you face is that in many poor areas, theft is rife. I've had guys tell me they have

Re:DDT or Malaria?

[JohnsonJohnson]

Mostly correct, except you forgot to mention that DDT is actually in use in malaria prevention right now in 22 countries. Most of these countries are in Africa, but I'd appreciate it if you'd attempt to distinguish between individual countries and the second largest continent on the planet, since malaria is simply not a big problem in large areas of Africa such as Algeria (11th largest country by area in the world). And to the Steve Milloy fans, fears of creating DDT resistant strains of mosquitos are not unfounded, it's already happened. In short DDT is being used sensibly where appopriate by the people who are actually running malaria combatting programs (unlike Mr. Milloy) and not being used in areas where it's known to be ineffective, like Sri Lanka and increasingly India.

Re:Rachael Carson = Knew what she was talking bout

[R2.0]

"Or do you just mean to say that faking Scientific results is okay as long as your heart is in the right place?"

Google on "bone marrow transplant breast cancer faked study"

Yes, it's perfectly acceptable until you get caught.

Re:DDT Use

[will_die]

how cleaning with bleach has bread super-bacteria in some hospitals that can be cultured on undiluted Clorox
You are a little off here.
The problem is that the use of non-bleach clearers are creating bacteria that are resistant to anything but bleach based cleaners.
Bleach is the best thing around to kill bacteria the way it works is to disolve the skin wall, no way to build up a resistance to that.