How many millions of people will die with a ban on DDT?
My guess would be no millions of people will die with a ban on DDT. Note that DDT is already banned for use in the U.S. (IIRC, it can still be manufactured here for export though).
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The POP Treaty (Persistent Organic Pollutants) includes a provision for use of banned pesticides in case of public health emergencies, such as outbreaks of malaria.
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Other insecticides are effective against mosquitoes beyond DDT, and these insecticides are less persistent and environmentally damaging.
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Most industrialized nations have already banned use of DDT, and were never areas in which malaria was common anyway. Developing nations are a different matter. Some of them have already banned DDT, while others have not.
You may have seen a bogus “Rachel Carson Death Clock” somewhere out there on the web. Don’t believe it. All it does is add up deaths from malaria (I haven’t even checked to see whether it does so accurately) and ignores the points I’ve mentioned above.
This reminds me; there was a DDT thread here a while ago I was going to do so research and respond to. I’ll have to look that up again and link it once I do.
In 1951 India had 75 million cases of annual cases of malaria .After 10 years of spraying DDT they only had 500,000.
Before this thread joins all of your other anti-environmental threads in GD, I will point out that your response to wevets is irrelevant.
There are other chemicals that are as effective as DDT that are less persistent and less harmful in the environment. The problems associated with DDT have been known for 40 years and it has been banned in most Western nations for at least 30 years while its substitutes have been developed and deployed. The only reason to continue using DDT is cost–and this is one area where the World Bank is actually liable to held an undeveloped country offset some of its costs.
From
http://www.altgreen.com.au/chemicals/ddt.html
The ban on
DDT was considered the first major victory for the
environmentalist movement in the U.S. The effect of the
ban in other nations was less salutary, however. In
Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) DDT spraying had reduced malaria
cases from 2.8 million in 1948 to 17 in 1963. After
spraying was stopped in 1964, malaria cases began to rise
again and reached 2.5 million in 1969.33 The
same pattern was repeated in many other tropical—
and usually impoverished—regions of the world. In
Zanzibar the prevalence of malaria among the populace
dropped from 70 percent in 1958 to 5 percent in 1964. By
1984 it was back up to between 50 and 60 percent. The
chief malaria expert for the U.S. Agency for
International Development said that malaria would have
been 98 percent eradicated had DDT continued to be used.34
In addition,
from 1960 to 1974 WHO screened about 2,000 compounds for
use as antimalarial insecticides. Only 30 were judged
promising enough to warrant field trials. WHO found that
none of those compounds had the persistence of DDT or was
as safe as DDT. (Insecticides such as malathion and
carbaryl, which are much more toxic than DDT, were used
instead.) And—a very important factor for malaria
control in less developed countries—all of the
substitutes were considerably more expensive than DDT.35
Check this column from the New York Times which is on
And this one.
Just to add to this - people who say that the difference is ‘just money’ either don’t understand economics, or haven’t thought out the consequences of it in this case.
Whenever the price of something goes up, the use of it diminishes. Period. Eliminate DDT and replace it with a more expensive alternative, and people will die who otherwise would not have. At least Tomndebb recognized that the World Bank or someone else would have to subsidize alternatives in order to maintain the same levels of spraying.
IMO, the ban on DDT is another example of rich white people putting their own priorities ahead of the priorities of those poor brown people in the world who have no political pull.
If 70% of your family had suffered from Malaria and several of them had died, you’d be marching in the streets demanding more DDT spraying.
BTW, the same thing has happened with the worldwide CFC ban. To us, it’s a minor inconvenience and air conditioning and refrigerators might be slightly more expensive. No big deal. But to poor people who could barely afford refrigeration before, the ban on CFC’s means less use of refrigeration, which means more illnesses and deaths from food poisoning and stomach cancer.
So we traded our right to suntan without the increased risk of ugly but typically non-lethal blemishes for the increased risk that poor people in other parts of the world would die horrible agonizing deaths.
At the very least, the effects on those people should be considered in a cost/benefit analysis before banning these substances. But that goes against the precautionary principle, which every major environmental agency supports.
That is true.
Which does provide an alternative, although so far not very well addressed.
Agreed, although we can add lack of research dollars for any number of "tropical’ problems. Even what I work on might not survive retrenching going on (of course this is private sector).
Well given the very real problems of DDT, I might think about marching for subsidies to DDT alternatives, another choice here.
However, I can’t agree with this:
Do you have data to back this up? By which I mean non-biased data from reliable, preferably peer-reviewed sources. I had rather understood from reading just such materials a few years back that CFC substitutes have turned out to be fairly cheap subsitutes. Further, transitional production of CFC replacement charges was explicetly allowed for in the Montreal protocol. As such I do not believe one can coherently make the charge that poor folks are dieing because of the marginal cost of CFC substitutes for refigeration.(*)
Your charges here sound as if you’re parroting (old, even hoary) industry propaganda.
(*: nor do I think its particularly realistic to be frank. Most contraints I’ve seen relate to basic infrastructure presence, although to an extent in a country like Egypt certainly some constraints exist in terms of buying power. I would like, however, some documentation as to the size of the contribution of CFC subsitution to the overall cost of the refigeration machinery)
And this characterization is just plain fooolish, or another word starting with I. Ozone depletion was and is a non-trivial problem with impacts beyond white people getting cancer – yes skin cancer not “non-lethal blemishes” but also extending to agriculture etc.
This sort of easy trivialization of these topics does not contribute to a well-rounded discussion. I think everyone knows I am a proponent of economically viable environmental policy as a good from economic viewpoints, above all in the medium and long term. I have no patience for the fools who wish to ban agriculture, etc. etcHowever, neither do I see it as useful to respond with distortions, including my own industry, no better than those of the eco-extremists.
At the very least, the effects on those people should be considered in a cost/benefit analysis before banning these substances. But that goes against the precautionary principle, which every major environmental agency supports.
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Okay, I’ll accept some of that blame. You’re right, I did treat the problem somewhat flippantly.
But my basic point remains: When discussing the need for CFC reduction or elimination, how often did you hear of or see a cost/benefit analysis which factored in such things as the increased risk of food poisoning in the 3rd world?
Or, for that matter, a cost/benefit analysis on purely economic terms, which is just as important. The 3rd world is starved for financial resources. Even if they manage to replace their CFC’s through subsidy, that’s money that instead could have been directed at malnutrition, education, child vaccinations, etc.
If our ultimate goal is to have the healthiest planet, while maintaining a good balance of health for people who live on it, then every decision like this should only be considered in the context of all the alternatives. Unfortunately, that rarely happens today, because environmental groups have become increasingly more militant over time, and so has opposition to them. For the people in the middle, the choices get very difficult and confused.
I’ll also admit that my data was a few years old. It’s entirely possible that good alternatives to CFC’s have now been found, but they certainly didn’t exist at the time when the time frame for the ban was adopted. If good alternatives had not been found, what would have been the result?
Well, growing up in the '70’s it was near impossible to see an american bald eagle in the wild here in the Pacific NW. DDT nearly rendered them extinct. Today, you see bald eagles hanging out in downtown Seattle, happily coexisting and thriving with humans. Enough of a reason for a ban for me.
DDT is an effective pesticide, but it has consequences. Alternative pesticides exist that are relatively environmentally benign. Given this, how can a pro-DDT argument even be made? This kind of “logic” is like saying the best way to protect your sheep is to burn down the forests that the tigers live in…
DDT is now only used indoors not spray over large outdoor areas so there is little danger to wildlife.
Kevin
Is this an actual “question,” kmudd, or an opportunity for a soapbox? If it is the latter, it belongs in Great Debates, not General Questions.
It is a question , but if you want to move it to Great Debates ,go ahead.
So there’s no effect on the mosquitoes then, either…
Another point to consider is how long DDT would be effective if its use continued unabated.
Like all chemicals — and now many antibiotics — tolerance to DDT would continue to build in mosquitos, requiring more and more of the chemical to be applied, until it ceased being an effective tool.
Will more people die because of a ban on DDT? I can’t answer that. But I do find it reasonable to conclude that if its use was continued, millons would die in any event when DDT ceased to be effective in killing mosquitos.
Weighing the risks inherit in its use, against the eventual collapse of its effectiveness, I’d say it makes sense to ban it now and concentrate on other methods of control and disease prevention.
Not that often, but its generally part of first world navel-gazing. But one can find such analyses, often from the Third World itself.
Well, much more significant to be frank are debts to the First World and the like. Given the exemptions for CFCs and the turnover, I don’t think this is a truly significant cost as compared to other items
I will agree here that too many environmental organizations have a warped view of their relationship with third world people, however its not impossible to overcome. For example the Chad oil pipeline. “Progressive” organizations came out against it without qualification at first, often in the name of the Chadian peoples. However, grassroots work by some quickly showed that while some of their concerns were shared by the folks on the ground, many were not. Opposition to the project was modified to consultation to help reduce environmental impacts, improve this and that etc. A good thing.
And on the flip side, too many industry groups put out real nonesense, including sometimes my very own. Scare tactics. Does us not a whit of good in the long run.
Ah, no they did. That was one of the strengths of Montreal as I recall. However they weren’t commercialized. But at least the initial problem was an engineering one in terms of developing cost effective production techniques, as well as perhaps improving the actual chemicals in question.
I believe that the process has been largely successful. Otherwise I am sure I would hear about it here. Not a peep. Oh yes, by the way, CFCs are still available here for recharges, transition exemptions. I got a recharge on my old fridge before it finally gave up the ghost.
Well, certainly when addressing the issue one has to make sure that one focuses on mechanisms to allow the market to develop reasonable replacements and to allow for (a) technological limitations (b) possible market failures and subsequent necessity for subsidies are similar responses as in DDT.
- What is DDT?
DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) is a pesticide developed 1939 that became widely used when scientist Paul Herman Muller discovered its insecticide properties. DDT was hailed as a major public health achievement and earned Muller the 1948 Nobel Prize because his discovery provided an affordable way to manage major public health risks carried by mosquitoes, lice, and other vectors. DDT helped cleanse Nazi war victims of disease-ridden lice, protected allied troops against vermin and typhus, and became a key tool in fighting malaria around the world - saving millions of lives. In 1972, the U.S. EPA banned DDT for use the United States based largely on concerns that it posed a threat to wildlife.
However, DDT is still effectively used by some nations for malaria control. For example, Ecuador has increased its use of DDT since 1993, and has experienced the largest reduction of malaria rates in the world. (Donald R. Roberts, Larry L. Laughlin, Paul Hsheih, and Llewellyn J. Legters, “DDT, Global Strategies, and a Malaria Control Crisis in South America,” Emerging Infectious Diseases, Volume 3, No. 3, July-Sept. 1997.) - Is DDT safe for use in homes?
According to A.G. Smith of the Lancet: “The early toxicological information on DDT was reassuring; it seemed that acute risks to health were small. If the huge amounts of DDT used are taken into account, the safety record for human beings is extremely good. In the 1940s many people were deliberately exposed to high concentrations of DDT thorough dusting programmes or impregnation of clothes, without any apparent ill effect … In summary, DDT can cause toxicological effects but the effects on humans beings at likely exposure are very slight.” ( A.G. Smith, “How Toxic is DDT?” Lancet, Vol. 36, No. 9226, July 22, 2000.) In any case, the risks of using DDT should be weighed against the very real life-and-death risks of malaria.
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How would DDT use against malaria affect wildlife and the environment?
Many people express concern that because DDT does not break down rapidly, DDT could build up in the environment, which could adversely affect wildlife. Such persistence could be a problem if DDT is used for agriculture, but public health uses do not pose that concern because it will be used in very low levels and contained inside homes. -
Does DDT persistence affect human health?
When used for agriculture, DDT was discovered in human tissue and breast milk, which raised public health concerns. Fortunately, as noted above, DDT has not been shown to have any adverse effects to humans, even when found in tissue. In any case, exposure will remain low because DDT won’t be used in agriculture and subsequently consumed as residue on food products. Finally, when used for public health purposes, persistence is actually beneficial since it will means that DDT will effectively kill and deter mosquitoes from entering homes for long periods of time without continual spraying. Recently the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Expert Committee on Malaria" addressed concerns about DDT in breast milk and found: “The information presented does not provide convincing evidence of adverse effects of DDT exposure as a result of indoor residual spraying as carried out in malaria control activities.” Accordingly, WHO noted that DDT should remain a tool for controlling malaria. -
Why not use alternatives to DDT?
DDT is the most affordable and most effective pesticide for controlling malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Since malaria is largely a disease among impoverished nations, affordability greatly impacts their ability to protect themselves. (See DDT, Global Strategies, and a Malaria Control Crisis in South America) -
Will mosquitoes develop resistance to DDT?
Limited use of DDT for public health has continued to be effective in areas where it is used inside homes and because it often causes mosquitoes to avoid the homes altogether - avoiding the exposure that promotes resistence. (source) And should some resistance emerge, allowing use of a greater number of pesticides (including DDT) will help address the problem. For example, in South Africa, mosquitoes have developed resistance because of over reliance on another class of pesticides, causing the government to return to DDT. Similarly, increased use of pesticides becomes a greater need as the malaria parasite itself develops resistance to medicine. -
Who makes DDT?
Banned in most Western nations, the governments of China and India are the only manufacturers of DDT. (If there are other producers, that information is not known to members of our coalition.)
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Let’s not totally write off the health risks of DDT!
So the fact that (1) it’s a probable human carcinogen, (2) it bioaccumulates in animal and human tissue, (3) it adversely impacts the ecosystem (e.g., non-target organisms such as bald eagles, etc.), and (4) there are effective substitutes available…is reason enough to use something else.
I agree we need to combat malaria and other such pest-vectored diseases, but through means that present the least risk to our own health.