With toxic DDT against malaria

For malaria control, the highly toxic pollutant DDT is sprayed to this day

27.04.2011

To date, malaria is relatively widespread in South America, Africa, India and the South-East Asian region. Especially in the poorer African countries, toxic dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, DDT, is still used to fight malaria.

With the help of the insecticide DDT, the number of Anopheles mosquitoes, the main transmitter of malaria pathogens, decimated to keep the risk of infection in the population low. Thus, instead of a malarial disease, residents are threatened with serious health impairments due to DDT. Because the insecticide is according to the definition of the Stockholm Convention to the persistent environmental toxins (persistent organic pollutants) that accumulate in the human body via the food chain and can cause serious health problems here.

DDT mutagenic and carcinogenic
In order to curb the spread of malaria, many African countries have to this day relied on the use of insecticides. Since treatment of those affected for the relatively poor population is often not affordable, governments try to minimize the risk of infection by decimating the mosquitoes with the help of the massive use of DDT. According to the motto: Where there are no mosquitoes, nobody can be stung. But the DDT also accumulates in the human body through the food chain and is suspected to be carcinogenic and mutagenic. For example, the Stockholm Convention of 2004, not without reason, has banned the manufacture and use of DDT in general and made an exception only in the control of disease-transmitting insects. While DDT use of malaria control remains permissible, it does pose a significant health risk to the population.

Alternative malaria control methods without DDT
There are already alternatives to malaria control with DDT available that promise at least the same success - without having comparable side effects such as DDT. Nevertheless, demand for DDT remains relatively high, especially in African countries, while alternative insecticides are hardly tested, criticized Michael Brander of the Swiss Biovision Foundation „TIME“. According to the expert „the political will is missing“ and often ecologically sustainable alternatives would not be tested at all, but rejected immediately. Brander suspects that this is also due to the unrivaled low prices of DDT sprays. However, critics of the DDT mission see an even wider context. They assume that the manufacturers are pushing with all their might into the markets of the nations, where a DDT employment against the background of the malaria fight is still possible today.

Some African countries still rely on DDT
To curb the use of DDT even in the poorer African countries, representatives of the Stockholm Convention from politics, industry and associations met in Geneva on 26 April and also discussed alternatives to mosquito control. However, without a direct result like that „TIME“ reported. Thus, the use of the insecticide used as contact and feeding poison since the early 1940s remains high and fortification via the food chain is expected to increase in the coming years. DDT was the most widely used insecticide worldwide for decades, but it was the accumulation of human and animal tissues that ultimately led to an international ban on environmental toxins. As the „taz“ reported the African government in the use of DDT, however, by no means squeamish. In Uganda, for example, the farms were also sprayed by organic farmers, who were no longer able to sell their produce. (Fp)

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Picture: Peashooter