Should we bring back DDT?

Question

Was the dangers of DDT overly exaggerated or erroneous?

Thus exposing millions of people to malaria?

BTW...how many of you heard about this? (That dangers of DDT are erroneous)

Hecate109

I hear you, but that is the point of contention. I am reading now that her analysis was flawed...

Perhaps this issue can be raised for further debate...
All I remember was that when AIDS came out...there was a lot of myths flying around. Some of it not true.. I wonder if its the same thing with DDT.

It perhaps doesn't hurt to re-evaluate it. I guess.

Answer 1

They are not erroneous and documented.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#External_links

Answer 2

First some facts:

Over one million die each year because of malaria. For every person that dies there two that are debilitated and have no energy for work.

Malaria and other mosquito born diseases were completely eradicated in the 40's & 50's because of DDT use. Now that we have stopped using DDT, a few dozen people in the US die every year because of the mosquite born West Nile disease.

(By the way, there are likely billions of birds that die every year world wide because of West Nile. This could be stopped through the judicious use of DDT.)

Of the few African nations that have implemented limited DDT programs, the reduction in malaria incidence is in the range of 80 to 90%. Those African nations that have tried the environmentalist/UN/WHO recommendations have experienced a 10% reduction in malaria. The difference is so profound that the WHO and even some environmental orgs. have begun to sanction the limited use of DDT.

One of the downsides of of the environmentally correct DDT replacements is that they have extremely short persistance and need to be re-applied very frequently.

Two of the upsides of DDT is its long persistance and the fact that it is a very strong repellent of mosquitos at concentrations far below those required to kill insects.

A final fact is that DDT was safety tested in the 40's by having people eat the stuff in substantial quantities. Most of these people are still alive & still do not have any statistically significant adverse effects. DDT is possibly THE most safe insecticide ever developed from the standpoint of human toxicity.

Finally outside the realm of facts:
Does DDT cause fatal problems with bird's egg shells? Aside from the documented junk-science of Rachel Carson, there has been considerable studies that have come down on both sides of this issue.

One intesting study has measured egg shell thickness taken from various historical samples over the last 100+ years. They found that shell thickness had been declining for many decades prior to the invention of DDT. It seems to correlated better to modern industrial activity rather than the introduction of DDT.

Answer 3

No!

DDT is an example of people dabbling in things about which they know nothing.

DDT is fat soluble, so it builds up in the ecosystem as you go up trophic levels. That is, herbivores have less DDT, but predators/carnivores get lots of DDT in them.

Example: off the coast of Southern California, DDT was and STILL is present in very high amounts. The bald eagles that ate the fish around there lost the ability to reproduce because the DDT interfered with the production of strong eggs (blocked the calcium deposits). As a result, the eagle population went down to only 2 individuals. It is only now being resuscitated, thanks to the efforts of many individuals (on Catalina Island) and lots of money.

This kind of thing (elimination of a top predator) destroys ecosystems. When you take out a predator, the prey population skyrockets; then the prey's food runs out, and the prey population then dies off.

There are other ways to fight off malaria. Developed nations have plenty of resources for research and distribution of proper malarial medications.

Now for the controversial point: humans die. It's a fact. They're dying from malaria either because there are too many of them or because they've allowed the environment to deteriorate to the point where mosquitos. And it's not like we have a shortage of people. What we need to focus on is how to save the world. Ya, that sounds like a hippie, but our world is dying off fast. We need to not be so self-centered as a species.

Answer 4

The dangers of DDT were neither exaggerated nor erroneous. DDT is an extraordinarily persistent compound with rapid rates of bioaccumulation in all ecosystems exposed to it. DDT has been shown to have deleterious effects on higher-order consumers (brittle, fragile eggs found in Osprey birds, for example.) Read Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" for more information.

There are new technologies being developed to ward off mosquitos and other pests. DDT was never the answer.

Answer 5

The people proposing DDT to fight malaria are bone-hard cynics, or nuts, or both. With the amounts needed to kill the mosquitoes, the people would certainly be protected from malaria - but now start dying from the consequences of DDT spraying instead. It means driving out Satan with Beelzebub.

Answer 6

I would highly suggest you actually read 'Silent Spring' by Rachel Carson. It presents the facts concerning DDT in a scientific, but understandable, format.

Answer 7

The dangers of DDT are greatly exagerated. The possible enviromental side effects were first addressed by Rachel Carson in a privately published book "Silent Spring," not a peer-reviewed journal, without sufficient scientific study into the issue. If you decide to read "Silent Spring" remember Carson was trained as a marine biologist and had little training in dealing directly with many of the topics she adressed in the book.

Subsequent studies in recent years have shown DDT poses little treat to organisms it is not intended to treat. Remember DDT is an organically derived pesticide. This means it degrades naturally and quickly when it is not where it is meant to be (such as in water).

Consider the following when talking about DDT...

1) Dr. Paul Müller, the first person to produce DDT, won the Nobel Prize in 1948 for his work with DDT.

2) The World Health Assembly adopted a Global Malaia Eradication Program in 1955 using DDT to eliminate the parasite from human populations. Do to their use of DDT malaria has been eliminated from every modernized country in the world by 1967. Unfortunately the use of DDT was banned before they could help the Third World.

3) "To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT... In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable." - National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Research in the Life Sciences of the Committee on Science and Public Policy.

4) Malaria affects between 300 to 500 million people every year; resulting in about 2.7 million deaths.

5) That's 2.7 million preventable deaths a year.

6) Carson wrote in "Silent Spring," "Dr. DeWitt's now classic experiments [on quail and pheasants] have now established the fact that exposure to DDT, even when doing no observable harm to the birds, may seriously affect reproduction. Quail into whose diet DDT was introduced throughout the breeding season survived and even produced normal numbers of fertile eggs. But few of the eggs hatched." According to Dr. DeWitt's paper quail were fed 200 parts per million of DDT in all of their food throughout the breeding season. DeWitt reports that 80% of their eggs hatched, compared with the "control" birds which hatched 83.9% of their eggs. Carson also forgot to mention that after a year of feeding quail high levels of DDT the controls hatched only 57% of their eggs while quail on the DDT diet hatched 80% or more of their eggs.

7) William Ruckelshaus, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency who made the ultimate decision to ban DDT in 1972, was a member of the Environmental Defense Fund. Ruckelshaus solicited donations for EDF on his personal stationery that read "EDF's scientists blew the whistle on DDT by showing it to be a cancer hazard, and three years later, when the dust had cleared, EDF had won." However, as Assistant Attoorney General he said, "DDT has an amazing an exemplary record of safe use, does not cause a toxic response in man or other animals, and is not harmful. Carcinogenic claims regarding DDT are unproven speculation."

8) During the hearings on DDT in 1972, the EPA hearing judge, Judge Edmund Sweeney concluded, "DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man... DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man... The use of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife." Ruckelshaus (see #7) overruled him and sealed all the procedings to anyone, including other braches of the government, and are not accessable by the Freedom of Information Act because they are classified as "internal memos."

9) According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the average American in 1981 consumed 0.000032 mg/kg/day of DDT, mostly coming from leafy and root vegetables. The WHO set an acceptable daily intake of DDT for humans at 0.01 mg/kg/day.

10) Studies into DDT consumption, where primates were fed 33,000 times the recommended daily allowance of DDT, yeilded, "inconclusive with respect to a carcinogenic effect of DDT in nonhuman primates." - J Cancer Res Clin Oncol 1999;125(3-4):219-25

Answer 8

You're hearing from African countries in which the governments are saying "We don't care if all our predatory birds die; we just want to save some people."

A better solution (but still not a good one) might be gambusias. Google around for "gambusias."

Answer 9

whats DDT?