DDT use encouraged by World Health Organization

Eddie Glenn | 08 Feb 2024
Talequah Daily Press Bob Kennedy has fond memories of DDT - or, at least as fond as memories of a banned insecticide can be.

First synthesized in 1874, and produced as an insecticide in 1939, Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane was used for years against flies, beetles, walking sticks, mosquitoes and other insects.

Before it was banned in 1972, DDT was sprayed on agricultural land all over the U.S., including Cherokee County. Kennedy was the OSU Extension agent for the county in the 1960s, and considered DDT to be the most effective insecticide at the time.

"That's what we were using, and we got good results with it," he said. "When the entomologist at OSU told us it was being banned, I asked him, 'Why is it we've been using that stuff for so long and I've never heard of anyone even getting sick from it?' He said they'd come up with something else that would work. But during the time we were using it, it was one of the most popular insecticides."

Evidently, the World Health Organization believes it still is.
WHO recently issued a statement promoting the use of DDT as an indoor insecticide in an effort to fight malaria - especially in African nations, where the mosquito-borne disease is a major killer.

The announcement comes more than three decades after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned the chemical because of health and environmental concerns.

"The scientific and programmatic evidence clearly supports this reassessment," said Dr. Anarfi Asamoa-Baah, in a WHO press release. Asamoa-Baah is the WHO assistant director-general for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

"Indoor residual spraying is useful to quickly reduce the number of infections caused by malaria-carrying mosquitoes," he said. "Indoor residual spraying has proven to be just as cost effective as other malaria prevention measures, and DDT presents no health risk when used properly."

According to WHO, views about DDT have changed in recent years, with the Sierra Club, the Endangered Wildlife Trust, and Environmental Defense (formerly the Environmental Defense Fund, which launched the anti-DDT campaign in the '60s and '70s) now endorsing its indoor use.

Kennedy said he'd heard about the WHO recommendation, and though he stopped short of saying "I told you so," he was glad to see a worldwide organization take what he sees as a more balanced view of DDT than what may have been prevalent in the early '70s.

After the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's book, "Silent Spring," DDT was blamed for causing bird eggs to be abnormally thin and causing liver and breast cancer in humans.

"When they banned it, I went and bought a lot of it," said Kennedy. "I couldn't recommend it anymore [as an OSU Extension agent] once they took it off the market, but I still used it." Roger Williams, the current OSU Extension educator for Cherokee County, said DDT was just one of several insecticides - diazinon and chlordane are two others - that have been banned in the U.S. because of environmental and health concerns.

DDT and chlordane have also been banned in 120 other countries through a 2001 treaty on persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Like Kennedy, Williams was glad to see WHO issue their statement on DDT. Exporting such bans to other countries, Williams believes, is a form of imperialism.

"In a lot of places, people have a very simple choice," he said. "They can either spray DDT, or lose someone to malaria. We wouldn't like it if someone from Africa told us to quit using some of the things we use because we were destroying the environment."

In a letter to the negotiators of the 2001 POP treaty, the Malaria Foundation International wrote, "Although we entirely agree that DDT should one day be eliminated because of its known environmental effects, we also believe that human life must not be endangered in reaching that goal."

The foundation conceded the agricultural use of DDT is the major cause of environmental concerns about the chemical, but added that the public health use of DDT should continue until effective alternatives are developed.

Steve Milloy, however, doesn't even make that concession. Milloy, commentator for FoxNews.com and publisher of the Web site, www.junkscience.com, makes a living taking on commonly held beliefs about scientific issues. Along with global warming, stem cell research, banned fireproofing material asbestos, and dietary recommendations, Milloy has also weighed in on the DDT ban and its subsequent spread to other countries.

Milloy said William D. Ruckelshaus, administrator of the EPA when DDT was bannedin 1972, was also a member of the Environmental Defense Fund. That organization, he said, was created by the Audubon Society to fight DDT while preserving the bird-focused environmental organization's tax-exempt status.

"There was never any reason to ban DDT to begin with," said Milloy, adding that a million children under age 5 die every year from malaria. Those deaths, he said, can be attributed to the DDT ban.

"The environmentalists really tout the ban on DDT as their greatest accomplishment," said Milloy in a telephone interview Wednesday. "But it really ranks them among some of the top mass murderers in the world."

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