DDT

Sometimes an opportunity presents itself to evaluate the long term effects of an environmental change. Case in point. In 1962 Rachel Carson wrote a book called "Silent Spring" in which she posed the argument that DDT spray was dangerous. In partial response the EPA was born and one of the first steps was to ban DDT. One of the bettern known uses of DDT was to spray US soldiers and that prevented many diseses including typus and malaria. WW2 was the first war in history where tyhpus did not kill more soldiers than war. When DDT was banned the West was not suffering from malaria so it was not a problem. The fact that it could prevent bird eggs from harm and thus saving many birds was a good trade off but in other parts of the world and in particular Africa malaria remained a killer. Each year a million people die from malaria something that could be prevented by spraying with DDT. Over the past years many studies have shown that the negative effects of DDT are minimal. Pressures on poor countries to ban the insecticide DDT because of fears that its use would harm the environment have led to a resurgence of malaria in the world, yet the environmental impact of its use are “negligible,” a study published this week has said.