Ddt should it be banned

Conducted in Limpopo, South Africa by de Jager and his colleagues, the study found men in the sprayed homes had extremely high levels of DDT in their blood and that their semen volume and sperm counts were low. The pesticide accumulates in body tissues, particularly breast milk, and lingers in the environment for decades. In the United States, beginning in thes, large volumes of DDT were sprayed outdoors to kill mosquitoes and pests on crops.

It was banned in , after it built up in food chains, nearly wiping out bald eagles, pelicans and other birds. Today's use differs greatly. In Africa, it is sprayed in much smaller quantities but people are directly exposed because it is sprayed on walls inside homes and other buildings.

Many health studies have been conducted in the United States, but on people who carry small traces of DDT in their bodies, not the high levels found in people in Africa. In , more than countries signed the Stockholm Convention, a United Nations treaty which sought to eliminate use of 12 persistent, toxic compounds, including DDT.

Under the pact, use of the pesticide is allowed only for controlling malaria. Five others—Zimbabwe, North Korea, Eritrea, Gambia, Namibia and Zambia--also reportedly are using it, and six others, including China, have reserved the right to begin using it, according to a January Stockholm Convention report.

But such efforts have been less successful in other places, particularly South Africa. There was also evidence linking DDT with severe declines in bald eagle populations due to thinning eggshells. Since DDT was banned in the U. Recently, Carson's work has again been targeted by conservative groups.

Capitalizing on the iconic status of DDT, these groups are promoting widespread use of the chemical for malaria control as part of a broader effort to manufacture doubt about the dangers of pesticides, and to promote their anti-regulatory, free market agenda while attempting to undermine and roll back the environmental movement's legacy.

Many DDT promoters are also in the business of denying climate change. The science on DDT's human health impacts has continued to mount over the years, with recent studies showing harm at very low levels of exposure. The only remaining legal use of DDT is to control malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Since the end of World War II, DDT had been used to control diseases, like malaria, at alarming rates, and this episode proved to be what ultimately drove Carson to write Silent Spring.

After four years Carson finished the book, which focused mainly on how DDT enters the fatty tissues of animals and humans via bioaccumulation in the food chain, causing cancer and genetic birth defects. However, the fact that DDT was not officially banned in the United States until a decade after publication shows that many still were unconvinced and considered the chemical a valuable as well as significant weapon in the fight against malaria and other insect-borne diseases.

More specifically, it is an organochlorine pesticide that was created in Germany in and was initially used by the US military to help control infectious diseases, such as malaria and typhus, during World War II.

The United States fought the war on two fronts, one being in tropical areas of the Pacific Ocean. DDT was no stranger to propaganda; for every one man killed in battle, malaria would kill eight, which gave the United States a stepping-stone from which to push its DDT agenda during the war. DDT was used largely due to its reasonable cost, demonstrated effectiveness, and persistence in killing insects. The insecticide also proved to be relatively inexpensive to manufacture and stayed in the environment for a long time, effectively killing any insects that came within a certain range.

Between and , cases of malaria fell from approximately , to practically none because of the use of DDT. DDT is still used today in parts of South America, Asia, and Africa with the aim of controlling malaria in places that may not be able to afford more expensive and potentially safer alternatives. Because of the ban on DDT in the United States in , restrictions have been applied to its use; DDT can legally be produced in the United States but may only be sold to or used by foreign countries.

Two of the major reasons behind the ban of DDT were the scientific evidence that exhibited buildup in the fatty tissues of wildlife while persisting in the natural environment and proved the existence of an evolutionary resistance that insects began to develop towards the chemical.

Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that can be found primarily in tropical and impoverished areas of the Earth. It can cause fevers, headaches, and may even lead to death. In , the first stages of spraying were carried out upon nearly , houses, with the goal of reaching nearly three million households by In South America, malaria was the leading health problem in Ecuador, with about half of the population infected by the disease.

Malaria contributed to the three leading causes of infant mortality in Venezuela, which became the first country to begin a national DDT program in Eradication of malaria in Venezuela was reported to have covered , square miles within a population of 2.

After Cuba partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation in using DDT to spray the houses, malaria was no longer a major health problem in some of its rural provinces. Russell of the Rockefeller Foundation. However, in , an increase in anophelism was attributed to the end of DDT application a few years earlier.

These case studies of the effectiveness of DDT in controlling malaria show how important international governments considered the insecticide in the fight against infant deaths and rapid population decline. During the s, rice cultivation in Greece was restricted because of malaria but permitted again in because of the anti-malaria campaign, making rice an export crop for Greece.

Daniel E. In addition, some animals exposed to DDT in studies developed liver tumors. As a result, today, DDT is classified as a probable human carcinogen by U. After the use of DDT was discontinued in the United States, its concentration in the environment and animals has decreased, but because of its persistence, residues of concern from historical use still remain. Since , EPA has been participating in international negotiations to control the use of DDT and other persistent organic pollutants used around the world.

Under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme, countries joined together and negotiated a treaty to enact global bans or restrictions on persistent organic pollutants POPs , a group that includes DDT. The Convention includes a limited exemption for the use of DDT to control mosquitoes that transmit the microbe that causes malaria - a disease that still kills millions of people worldwide.

In September , the World Health Organization WHO declared its support for the indoor use of DDT in African countries where malaria remains a major health problem, citing that benefits of the pesticide outweigh the health and environmental risks.