The ban on DDT and the rise of malaria

From Ashley Martin at the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law*:

In 1972, EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus banned the use of
DDT in the United States after nearly a year of hearings on the
matter. Ruckelshaus’ decision went against the recommendation of
the hearing administrator, who had found that “there is a present
need for the essential uses of DDT” and that DDT posed no great
threats to humans or wildlife. However, the EPA’s decision
reflected public and political opinions of the time, which strongly
opposed DDT due to its perceived harms. Following the ban of DDT
in the United States, the use of DDT waned internationally.
American decisions carry disproportionate weight worldwide;
therefore, DDT’s toxic image coupled with America’s denunciation of
the chemical has effectively made DDT unavailable, even for
malarious nations. Political pressures, financial funding, and social
opinion all contributed to a decline in the use of DDT throughout the
world for agricultural and public health uses; low levels of DDT use
continue today as major donors are reluctant to finance the use of
DDT and global institutions discourage its use. Indeed, not a single
industrial country currently uses DDT. The chemical that once was
seen as a savior in fighting diseases globally is now shunned
throughout the world.

The alternatives to DDT for malaria control—including nets,
other chemicals, and drugs—have proven to be less effective, both
with regard to cost and to success. Indeed, the strongest correlation
with an increase in malaria is a decrease in the use of DDT. Actual
case studies support this conclusion: Madagascar, Venezuela, Belize,
and South Africa all experienced increased rates of malaria in their
populations after banning the use of DDT. Similarly, Columbia and
Peru experienced a doubling of the risk of malaria when they stopped
DDT spraying in the 1990s. When South Africa abandoned the use
of DDT for malaria control in 1996, switching instead to pyrethroids,
malaria rates skyrocketed from about 6,000 cases to 61,000 cases over
the span of five years. In 2000, South Africa returned to using DDT
in order to regain control of the epidemic, and as a result decreased
the number of malaria cases by 45,000 over two years. The World
Health Organization (WHO) delegates reported in 2000 that no cost-
effective or proven alternatives that are less toxic than DDT exist to
replace it. In fact, the use of alternative means of protection not
only seems less effective in combating malaria, but essentially results
in mere risk transformation. Organochlorides, the chemicals that
replace DDT, have more immediate and significant risks of toxicity,
which are exaggerated by users’ unfamiliarity with them. The
number of accidental pesticide poisonings, for example, has increased
14% over the decade following the ban of DDT.

Repeatedly, the cessation of the use of DDT has caused a large spike in malaria deaths, and use of DDT markedly diminishes malaria deaths.

The environmentalist war on DDT has killed tens of millions of people-- mostly children and pregnant women in the Third World. As soon as malaria was eradicated from the rich countries by the use of DDT, greenies who had eradicated malaria with DDT in their own countries worked 24-7 to ban it in the rest of the world. They are still working feverishly.

Environmentalists refuse to acknowledge their responsibility for this crime against humanity.


(Vol 41:677. 2008)