DDT: A Weapon of Mass Survival

Fox ^

[Kokojmudd]

Thursday , May 04, 2006

By Steven Milloy

The U.S. Government has finally begun to reverse policy on the insecticide DDT. Let’s hope that this policy shift represents the beginning of the end of what can only be called a crime against humanity: the decades-old withholding of the world’s most effective anti-malarial weapon from billions of adults and children at risk of dying from the disease.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) told the Washington Times this week (May 3) that it endorses and will fund the indoor spraying of DDT in sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria kills more than one million Africans annually, mostly children under five and pregnant women.

Malaria accounts for 10 percent of Africa’s disease burden and causes $12 billion yearly in lost productivity.

USAID reportedly will use about 20 percent of its $99 billion budget to fund indoor spraying with DDT, according to the Times. “Between 1 million and 1.5 million people will be protected,” a USAID official told the Times..........

[catmanblack.]

As long as it comes across the rio grande, no paper work!!!

[ansel12]

Before it was banned, children would run behind the DDT fogging trucks, exhausting ourselves and deep breathing the stuff.

The trucks were just like smoke machines with huge dark clouds rolling out enveloping the neighborhoods, if you've ever lived among mosquitoes you can imagine how much we liked that city service.

[backhoe]

West Nile Virus- Bring Back DDT?

100 things you should know about DDT

[brityank]

50/50 Baking Soda and Powdered Sugar work on most bugs. They eat but can't burp. Bug Booms!!

[frannie]

If you are my age ,83, perhaps you can remember after World War11 the pictures of American troops spraying many with DDT to control whatever bugs were on them. I believe it was lice. Did these people have medical problems? Are any of them alive? Many were children, so some surely alive today.

This was not on the ground it was directly on the people.
The American troops did have protective covering. It seems to me that this is some data that is out there some place. How many of these people are still living and what has their health been over these many years.

[Fraxinus]

I am significantly younger than you, though I have seen some of the pictures you refer to. DDT was test as a poison during WWII, they found if did not work very well at killing the lab rats, but worked great at killing insects. Not knowing the details on what it is effective on, I wonder how effective DDT is at killing ticks and mites.

I was at one conference where they said that if DDT was a new product it would be pass muster with regulators, however it would have a much more restrictive label than it had 50 years ago. The over and misuse of this compound caused all sorts of trouble, like pest resistance.