DDT was used heavily in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s as an insecticide. Silent Spring (by Rachel Carson; http://www.rachelcarson.org/ (opens in a new window)) was published in 1962 and warned of the damage irresponsible use of DDT was causing to the environment. It inspired a worldwide campaign against its use.
The opposition to DDT had unintended consequences however. In the effort to protect the environment, DDT was gradually phased out as a preventative tool against malaria.
DDT was banned in the USA in 1972. Other countries followed suit and in the early 1980s, the World Health Organisation (WHO) stopped promoting its use in their Global Malaria Campaign.
In 2006, the WHO stated it would once again support the use of DDT to fight malaria, following extensive studies which concluded it presented no harm to humans or the environment.
Greenpeace and WWF have since stated that they support the WHO position and DDT should be used for malarial prevention until a more environmentally friendly alternative can be found.
The debate about DDT is polarised: many writers and scientists, including climate change deniers, claim that millions of people have died unnecessarily due to environmentalists' campaign to ban DDT completely. In response, several people in the environmental movement claim this is untrue. They point out that malaria has never been wiped out by DDT alone, that the more you spray the more resistant mosquitoes become; and that the issue is being used to attack the environmentalist movement in general.
The following compilation of statistics and quotations, including links to sources where applicable, presents a snap-shot of the opposing views concerning DTT.
Extensive research and testing has since demonstrated that well-managed indoor residual spraying programmes using DDT pose no harm to wildlife or to humans:
'We must take a position based on the science and the data,' said Dr Arata Kochi, Director of WHO's Global Malaria Programme. 'One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual house spraying. Of the dozen insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT.'
– mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr50/en/ (opens in a new window)
'Environmentalists were right to be inspired by marine biologist Rachel Carson's book on pesticides, Silent Spring, but wrong to place DDT in the category of Absolute Evil (which she did not). Most of her scientific assessments proved right, some didn't – such as her view that DDT causes cancer. In an excess of zeal which Carson didn't live to moderate, DDT was banned worldwide and malaria took off in Africa [...].When malaria disappears so can DDT.'
– Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline, p219
'Environmentalists were right about DDT's threat to bald eagles, for example, but blocking all spraying in the third world has led to hundreds of thousands of malaria deaths.'
Nicholas Kristoff, New York Times, 2005 nytimes.com (opens in a new window)
'Environmentalists are unrepentant. The WWF says the insecticide should be 'phased out and ultimately banned'. But its benefits are hard to dismiss. Virtually all countries that had a high incidence of malaria half a century ago saw a dramatic decline when they used DDT. When spraying stopped, the incidence rose again. Perhaps the best-documented recent case is South Africa, where DDT was banned in the mid-1990s. Malaria then increased tenfold, and since spraying resumed in 2001, rates have begun to fall again.'
– Fred Pearce; newscientist.com (opens in a new window), 2007.
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'By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the donor nations were starting to withdraw support from insecticide-spraying programs and from the use of DDT,' Tren says. 'I am confident in saying that the anti-DDT crusades harmed malaria control and cost lives.'
– Richard Tren, chairman of the board of Africa Fighting Malaria, quoted in Salon Article; salon.com (opens in a new window)
'For more than three decades, the most effective chemical against malarial mosquitoes was virtually banned around the world. The ban, triggered by environmental concerns, torpedoed a campaign begun in the late 1950s to eradicate malaria from the planet. Since then, the disease has returned with a vengeance, killing more than 2 million people a year. Late last year, the World Health Organization took a U-turn and announced that DDT will once again be one of its main tools against malaria [...]. It seems millions of lives have been lost because health experts threw away their best weapon. Are environmentalists to blame? There is no doubt that DDT was misused as an agricultural pesticide and seriously damaged wildlife. In that sense Carson was right. But regulators did not recognise that spraying indoors was different. And an environmental outcry against DDT helped to ensure that the early fears about its effect on human health became entrenched dogma long after they had been proved unfounded.'
– Fred Pearce; newscientist.com (opens in a new window), 2007.
Opinions against DTT:
Spraying Alone Doesn't work:
'Endemic malaria was eliminated in developed nations and sharply reduced in India and Latin America but the DDT campaign failed in many less developed areas because spraying alone did not work. Spraying along with good nutrition, reduction of insect breeding grounds, education and health care did work – which explains why malaria was eradicated in developed nations like Italy and Australia, but not in sub-saharan Africa [...].The lesson of history is clear. DDT alone did not eradicate insect-borne diseases and those diseases have been controlled in places with little or no use of DDT.'
– Merchants of Doubt; merchantsofdoubt.org(opens in a new window), chapter 7, Oerskes and Conway, p226
'DDT use peaked in the USA in 1959 – 13 years before the ban – because insects were already starting to become resistant to it. [...] The most important reason DDT failed to eliminate malaria was because insects evolved. That is the truth – a truth that those with blind faith in free markets and blind trust in technology simply refuse to see.'
– Merchants of Doubt; merchantsofdoubt.org(opens in a new window), chapter 7, Oerskes and Conway, p236
'There is no scientific evidence to support the claims that millions of lives have been needlessly lost, and there is substantial scientific evidence that a good deal of harm – both to humans and other species we share the planet with – has been avoided.'
Merchants of Doubt; Oerskes and Conway p232
'Despite what the pro-DDT organizations alleged, DDT was not banned for use in mosquito control in the Stockholm Agreement and could continue to be used in 25 countries in malarial regions. In these countries, limited amounts of DDT can be sprayed on the inside walls of houses to combat malaria-carrying mosquitoes.'
Donald Gustein, The Tyee Magazine; thetyee.ca(opens in a new window))
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Geoengineering I Zambia I Chernobyl I Golden Rice I Climate change I The energy debate I DTT
