Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
Arnold Kling decides to spread the DDT ban myth:
According to Iain Murray's new book, the worst disasters come from environmental policy. It is remarkable the magnitude of the harm caused by government relative to the harm caused by the private sector from which it protects us. ... The total death and illness caused by all of the chemical pollution ever created vs. the death and illness caused by the ban on DDT.
After he was corrected by commenters he added an update, but did not correct his false claim. To justify this he just made more more false claims:
The term "banned" may not be correct, but countries can be punished in many ways for using DDT--they can lose foreign aid, they can have imports of their crops banned, etc. The restrictions on crop imports apply even when a country uses DDT on homes, not on crops.
Of course, that's not true either, but even when a commentor told him the truth, citing scientific papers and the World Health Organization, Kling did not correct his post. Instead he trumped the WHO and peer-reviewed science with:
I met a student from Ghana who said that they could not spray their houses with DDT without having their crops declared "not organic" by the EU, making them effectively unexportable.
So there you have it. Kling believes that the use of DDT against malaria is banned because some random person told his something untrue about the EU policy and Kling isn't going to believe anything to the contrary.
Our Word is Our Weapon has much more on Kling's cavalier approach to evidence, while Ed Darrell notices a pattern in the books on science published by Regnery (who published Iain Murray's book).
Comments
So the EU now only allows the import of organic food?
Posted by: Ian Gould | May 2, 2008 3:27 AM
Without following the issue very closely, I was nonetheless aware of the debate raging in cyberspace over the use of DDT. It was however to my utter amazment, that this issue managed to find its way on to the pages of Dive Log Austalasia. Dive Log is a magazine covering topics of interest to recreational divers. It is distributed to dive shops and clubs throughout Austalia and overseas. One could hardly imagine any issue further removed from the interest of the average recreational diver, than the debate over DDT. Enter Bob Halstead. Bob writes an article for Dive Log under the heading "Adult Section" Anyone who has followed Bob's writings over the years would be aware he has no time for "greenies." Bob as a dive instuctor and former dive charter boat operator is certainly qualified to comment on matters relating to recreational diving. Unfortunately Bob sees his regular piece in Dive Log as a license to comment on issues ranging from climate change to bans on DDT, and does so in a most partisan way. The following is an example from the May issue of Dive Log. "Who was the biggest mass murderer of the 20th century? Hitler? Stalin? No top of the list was a little old lady who would not hurt a fly. That was the trouble. When Rachel Carson wrote 'The Silent Spring' in 1962 she included alarmist stuff about DDT. Instead of a scientific program to examine the truth of her statements there was hysteria." Does some of the rhetoric sound familiar? It goes to show how such propaganda manages to find traction in the wider community. A publication like Dive Log might seem insignificant when compared to a major daily newspaper but when all those dive shops and clubs are tallied up it is read by a significant number of people. Although a lot of the Dive Log readership would not share Bob Halstead's view of the world, if history is any guide, very few would be willing to take him on. I enjoy your blog keep up the good work. Kind Regards Richard McGuire.
Posted by: Richard McGuire | May 2, 2008 8:39 AM
Richard,
Your dive instructor has nothing on 15 year old Kristen Byrnes, http://home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaunder/index.html , who single handedly has destroyed one hundred years worth of dedicated research performed by those pesky real scientists.
Posted by: Joel | May 2, 2008 12:51 PM
Yet another post about the "DDT Ban myth" which does not explain what exactly the difference is to a family whose children are suffering from malaria, whether DDT was not being used in their country because it had been banned, or because the green lobby had persuaded their government and/or the aid agencies not to use it.
Posted by: Romkiul | May 2, 2008 1:41 PM
Romkuil: None, but that's a strawman.
1) There ISN'T a worldwide ban on DDT for malarial control purposes. Which means that the idea of a "ban" would come as a surprise to those countries that ARE using DDT still.
2) Just because a country doesn't use DDT doesn't mean that they aren't using alternative forms of vector control. DDT is not unique or special in it's effectiveness, and other factors, like treated bed nets have been similarly effective.
3) Evolved resistance to DDT is making it ineffective in several countries that have continued using it. Had nations around the world been using DDT for standard agricultural pest control AS WELL as malaria control, this problem would be much greater today.
The whole ban myth is taking a stupidly simplistic idea; that DDT is the ONLY effective malarial control, and that the mean environmentalists took it away for no good reason. In reality, DDT remains one of several methods of fighting malaria, around the world, and the only people propegating this nonsense are those who have a political or economic axe to grind against environmentalists.
Posted by: Left_Wing_Fox | May 2, 2008 2:16 PM
he only people propagating this nonsense are those who have a political or economic axe to grind against environmentalists. Or who have never looked at the work done on the development in mosquitos of resistance to DDT when used on the larger, agricultural scale. I'm speculating, but it might just be possible that any increase in the incidence of malaria is as attributable to resistance as it is to the cessation of its use.
Posted by: donquijoterocket | May 2, 2008 3:14 PM
For forty years the green lobby campaigned against any use of DDT. They were pretty successful in persuading governments and aid agencies not to use it. To point out that the campaign did not actually achieve its aim of a total ban, but instead brought about its non-use in many countries, is an irrelevant nit-pick which misses the point that DDT is - when used correctly for indoor spraying only - a cheap, effective, practical and safe way to combat malaria. There can be no doubt whatsover that if the green lobbies had not succeeded in greatly reducing the use of DDT the disease would not have killed so many poor children.
Surely one should be more concerned about the children who have died because of the mistake by the green lobby, rather than the irrelevant inaccuracy in saying that environmentalists were able to ban it - when the effects of the campaign was the same as if it had managed to bring about a full legal ban.
Posted by: Romkiul | May 2, 2008 3:28 PM
Talking point, talking point, talking all the way...
Posted by: bi -- Intl. J. Inact. | May 2, 2008 3:40 PM
Romkiul, DDT is often not effective (which is why it isn't used in some areas for malaria control), while things like bed nets are. Why do you want to push ineffecitve approaches to a deadly problem? Why do you want these people to die?
Posted by: QrazyQat | May 2, 2008 4:02 PM
Romkiul, exactly what countries stopped using DDT due to the "green lobby"?
Posted by: anonymous coward | May 2, 2008 4:20 PM
OK so it is conceeded that whether or not DDT was actually banned is totally irrelevant if:
it is true that it was the green lobby who persuaded many countries and agencies not to use DDT .
it is true that used properly DDT is a safe, cheap, practical and effective way of fighting against malaria.
the actual effect of DDT not being used against malaria was the death of many poor children.
I am quite prepared to argue about each those three issues, they are completely self-evident to me. However to argue that the green lobby is off the hook because DDT was not actually legally banned, which Tim Lambert keeps bringing up, seems simply ridiculous.
Posted by: Romkiul | May 2, 2008 4:55 PM
Romkiul said:
I don't think there is any nation in that category, but I'll grant you benefit of the doubt: Name the nation, name the year, name the "green lobby" organization. Has it ever occurred to you how stupid it would sound were you to try to put that to fact? "Oh," you would say, "Uganda is worse of because the Sierra Club convinced Idi Amin not to use DDT."
And yet, so long as you don't put actual names to it, you say it as if it weren't one of the silliest things anyone ever said.
Name the country, name the date, name the lobbyists. Bet you can't find such an example that stands up to scrutiny.
If DDT were safe, it wouldn't be useful in killing mosquitoes.
If DDT were effective against malaria, governments would have kept using it -- not all Africans are so stupid as to stop using effective means of fighting disease, as you appear to make them out to be.
Do you seriously think you have evidence to back any of those claims? Holy mother of the Wizard of Oz, what have you been reading?
Posted by: Ed Darrell | May 2, 2008 5:37 PM
Shoulda been "worse off."
Posted by: Ed Darrell | May 2, 2008 5:38 PM
Oh, come one and confess: You never read Silent Spring at all, did you? Nor have you ever thought about environmental protection, nor about DDT, before last Tuesday:
Posted by: Ed Darrell | May 2, 2008 5:47 PM
"There can be no doubt whatsover that if the green lobbies had not succeeded in greatly reducing the use of DDT the disease would not have killed so many poor children."
The way the Junk Science "96 million" figure is arrived at is by taking the interval of years and multiplying by the estimated number of malaria deaths. The assumption, then, is that malaria could really have been ERADICATED if DDT had only been allowed to exist.
But this is false for two reasons: (1) There WAS an eradication program, but it failed before the DDT ban was in place simply on its own grounds. Eradication was impossible, world public health organizations decided, and we should focus on vector control. (2) The primary source of modern malarial deaths (Africa, due to the much greater prevalence of P. falciparum there) has grown greatly in the past few decades, and it was precisely in this region that eradication efforts were rejected, simply because it was logistically too difficult. In other words, even if DDT had remained, and eradication efforts had succeeded in the other parts of the world, Africa would have proceeded on more or less the same lines as it did, since there was no eradication campaign there, and a very high fraction of those malarial deaths would have happened anyway.
In other words, the DDT ban has nothing to do with all the malarial deaths in the past few decades.
Posted by: saurabh | May 2, 2008 5:52 PM
This seems to be a pure "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy. Some "green" advocates opposed DDT for malaria control (others did not, and in fact supported restrictions on agricultural use to preserve the value of DDT for malaria control, but never mind that). Some countries stopped using DDT. Therefore, the green organizations forced them to stop.
I'm sure that many "green organizations" wish that they had the power to order governments around. But the reality is that there were other reasons why DDT use declined, including the decision to shift funds away from malaria control and the declining effectiveness of DDT due to rising resistance. It is doubtful whether "green organizations" ever had any actual say in the matter.
Posted by: trrll | May 2, 2008 6:50 PM
I see that nobody is defending Tim Lambert's notion that whether or not DDT was actually banned has any importance at all in the discussion.
The substantive issues are pretty clear:
Did the green lobby seek to stop all use of DDT?
Did this lobbying lead to many countries and aid agencies not using DDT against malaria?
Is indoor spraying of DDT a safe, practical, effective and cheap tool in the battle against malaria?
Did stopping the use of DDT without replacing it with an alternative practical, safe, efficient and cheap method lead to death of many poor children?
Each of those four questions is a serious issue that deserves proper treatment on its own.
However the topic of this thread as presented by Mr Lambert is not one of those questions. We have been invited to read and comment upon the misuse of the term "banned".
This nit-picking about whether or not DDT was actually banned is a very odd way to deal with this subject, since if governments and agencies were persuaded by powerful lobbying not to use DDT, it made no difference to the children who were dying from malaria that it had not been actually banned.
Posted by: romkiul | May 2, 2008 7:16 PM
DDT was banned in Tanzania, nobody ever suggested I should spray my walls when I lived there. In all anti-malaria documentation I received during my stay between 1997 and 2000 I NEVER read ANYTHING about DDT as a possible usable agent for malaria prevention.
The anti-DDT campain was therefore very succesful.
Furthermore I assisted the FAO Obsolete Pesticide programme in Tanzania, which made an inventory of i.a. DDT stockpiles. These stockpiles were not used but incinerated in Wales. But the Welsh didn't like that...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/1902269.stm
Posted by: Hans Erren | May 2, 2008 7:52 PM
However the topic of this thread as presented by Mr Lambert is not one of those questions. We have been invited to read and comment upon the misuse of the term "banned".
you might want to read the topic, before making false claims what it is about.
the wrong use of the term "banned" was one of many errors that have been pointed out.
This nit-picking about whether or not DDT was actually banned is a very odd way to deal with this subject, since if governments and agencies were persuaded by powerful lobbying not to use DDT, it made no difference to the children who were dying from malaria that it had not been actually banned.
why have you failed to name one of the countries?
why not name one of those powerful environmental groups, who can just "ban" the use of chemicals?
Posted by: sod | May 2, 2008 7:56 PM
"Yet another post about the "DDT Ban myth" which does not explain what exactly the difference is to a family whose children are suffering from malaria, whether DDT was not being used in their country because it had been banned, or because the green lobby had persuaded their government and/or the aid agencies not to use it."
Yey another DDT Blood Libel post that fails to provide a single example of a country which banned DDT due to "the green lobby".
Posted by: Ian Gould | May 2, 2008 8:00 PM
http://www.malaria.org.zw/malaria_burden.html#malaria
Hans neglects to mention that Tanzania's death rate from Malaria is lower than for several neighbouring countries.
It's almost as if there were other malaria control which were as effective (or ineffective) as DDT.
Hans has asserted buiy proven that there was a DDT ban in Tanazania.
He offers anecdotal evidence about disposal of obsolete agricultural stores of DDT to support his claim. At no point has he shown that DDT was ever banned from use in malaria control much less shown that any such ban was due to "green groups" rather than, for example, vector resistance.
Posted by: Ian Gould | May 2, 2008 8:12 PM
From the Southern African Malaria Centre website linked to above:
"Qualitative reports as well as surveillance data indicate that malaria deaths are rising in some countries (Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe). If this is the case, it is likely to be due to a combination of factors including late-treatment seeking behaviour, quality of care, inadequate transport and communication for referral systems to function properly, growing drug resistance and, possibly, HIV.'
Funny how they neglect to mention the Green Nazis conspiracy to exterminate Africans by denying them magicalk pixie dust - sorry DDT.
But I guess they've been terrorised into silence by the Green Gestapo.
Posted by: Ian Gould | May 2, 2008 8:16 PM
DDT was banned in Tanzania, nobody ever suggested I should spray my walls when I lived there.
an incredibly stupid sentence, of course.
DDT was NOT banned in Tanzania, but restricted.
http://www.pesticideinfo.org/DetailChemReg.jsp?RecId=PC33482
and if Hans had bothered to go to a local store, he might simply have bought it:
http://www.pan-uk.org/pestnews/Issue/Pn35/pn35p10a.htm
Zanzibar, Tansania is a major study project of DDT RESISTANCE. try a google scholar search on the subject...
Posted by: sod | May 2, 2008 8:24 PM
Romkiul, effective measures against malaria were instituted in places where use of DDT was ineffective, but people like you have been fighting those efforts and backing the use of ineffective measures like DDT use against DDT-resistant mosquitos. Why do you do this, since it causes the deaths of countless people? Why do you want these people to die?
Posted by: QrazyQat | May 2, 2008 8:25 PM
if you are not spraying ddt in your house, then clearly you are part of the conspiracy too, and have no right to comment on others who do not.
Posted by: z | May 2, 2008 10:05 PM
"Yet another post about the "DDT Ban myth" which does not explain what exactly the difference is to a family whose children are suffering from malaria, whether DDT was not being used in their country because it had been banned, or because the green lobby had persuaded their government and/or the aid agencies not to use it."
or because it has lost its effectiveness against mosquitoes after decades of vast overuse on agricultural production, which is what the ban has in fact banned.
Posted by: z | May 2, 2008 10:07 PM
" However to argue that the green lobby is off the hook because DDT was not actually legally banned, which Tim Lambert keeps bringing up, seems simply ridiculous. "
certainly is. something is banned, or it's not. and it's not.
Posted by: z | May 2, 2008 10:08 PM
The following is an excerpt from a 2006 Nature Medicine article (DDT returns, subscription required) by notorious axe-grinding right-wing hack Apoorva Mandavilli (at the time Nature Medicine's senior news editor):
"In theory, any country is free to use DDT. The Stockholm Convention of 2001 sought a global ban on DDT, but many countries and scientists argued against the ban, citing its value in malaria control. The final treaty made an exemption for DDT's use in public health, but called for countries to gradually phase out the pesticide. Still, in places where malaria was still endemic, the treaty spelled disaster. Most African nations are heavily dependent on foreign aid and can ill afford to cross a line drawn by donor agencies. USAID never banned DDT outright, for instance, but nor did it fund DDT's purchase-- which amounts to the same thing. For that reason, the May announcement is widely seen as a change in policy even though the agency doesn't position it as such. The World Bank went one step further, making the ban of DDT a condition for loans. The WHO supported the use of bednets dipped in insecticide over indoor spraying, even though malaria rates continued to increase. DDT was "further ignored and intentionally or unintentionally suppressed," by these agencies, says Kochi. "People are very emotional about DDT, even within the WHO," Kochi says, adding that much of the reaction to DDT was a response to political pressure."
Computer scientist Tim Lambert and his army of armchair experts are not about to be fooled, however.
Posted by: J F Beck | May 2, 2008 10:42 PM
Strange.... the environmentalists never seemed to lobby against the use of Methoxychlor, which is in the same family of Pesticides as DDT, has a higher LD50, and is effective against Mosquitos........yet there is still a Malaria problem.
The problem is Mosquitos began developing a resistance to Methoxychlor, the same as DDT.
To blame a ban or limit on the use of DDT for the problem, one would also have to blame a ban or limit on the use of Methoxychlor.....
In addition, if DDT were banned, it would no longer be manufactured.......which it is.
Posted by: Betula | May 2, 2008 11:28 PM
Wanna bet Betula?
Posted by: Eli Rabett | May 2, 2008 11:31 PM
I had never read anything by Murray before: In the excerpt of Murray's book at Amazon (click on "look inside this book,") you will learn that Al Gore's left-wing goal is "socialist-style central control of the economy," that "liberals demand control over all forms of energy use," that the oil companies have engaged in no price-gouging because the Federal Trade Commission says so; that the climate models are "guesswork based on guesswork," that global warming is better explained by solar cycles than by CO2 build-up, --and the reader may sense too the intimation that economic disaster is certain to follow upon efforts to curtail carbon emission. This, all in the first 6 pages of the book!: a concentrated display of nonsense and self-contradiction from someone advertised by his fellows to "have the facts on his side."
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold | May 2, 2008 11:56 PM
Those commenting on this thread have failed to deal with any of the four questions I posed earlier. There seems some confusion with: some people suggesting that the green lobby was never actually against DDT at all; others that it might be hard to find countries which stopped using DDT; others that DDT is ineffective anyway; and others that when DDT was stopped safe alternatives were always provided. It is very hard to argue against such a mish-mash of responses so for the sake of clarity I repeat the four questions and invite responses.
Did the green lobby seek a total ban on DDT? Yes or No?
Did this lobbying lead to many countries and aid agencies not using DDT against malaria? Yes or No?
Is indoor spraying of DDT a safe, practical, effective and cheap tool in the battle against malaria? Yes or No?
Did stopping the use of DDT without replacing it with an alternative practical, safe, efficient and cheap method lead to death of many poor children? Yes or No?
Incredibly enough there are still some who do not understand that whether DDT was the subject of a legal ban, or simply not used as a matter of government or agency policy, has any relevance at all to the debate. So to those I add another question:
What difference does it make to poor people who were unable to use DDT because their governments and aid agencies have been persuaded not to provide it by the green lobby, whether or not it was actually "banned"?
Posted by: romkiul | May 3, 2008 6:13 AM
No, No, No and No
This has been another in the series of short answers to stupid questions.
Posted by: John Quiggin | May 3, 2008 6:39 AM
No. In fact in Silent Spring Rachel Carson argues for a ban on the agricultural use of DDT precisely because it was accelerating the development of resistant pests and making DDT less effective for malria control.
No. DDT has been using is many countries throughout the developing world during the entirety of the so-called ban. Some governments stopped using DDT - not because of green pressure but because the emergence of resistant strains of mosquito. If we'd listened to Carson earlier and stopped the use of DDT in agriculture sooner, resistance would have developed more slowly. THAT has probably killed millions of people.
It depends.
In many areas it is - which is why it has continued to be used in those areas.
In areas where DDT resistance has emerged it obviously isn't effective.
In some areas it isn't effective because because people live in mudbrick or pressed-earth homes. The interior walls of such homes need to be resurfaced each year -which covers the DDT and makes it ineffective. In other areas its ineffective because there's no effective government to pay for spray teams. Bed nets are more effective in these areas.
The cost issue re. DDT as compared with other insecticides (and in most areas DDT WAS replaced, spraying wasn't simply stopped) depends on several factors.
DDT is much cheaper on a per litre basis than, say, Malathion. But the effective dose of DDT is also much higher - you need about ten times as much DDT to spray a house. This higher dose means transport costs are higher, it also means that when you're using back-mounted spray-packs, a spray team can spray far fewer houses in a day with DDT than with other insecticides.
Determining whether DDT is the most cost-effective insecticide in a given area depends on the interaction between material cost, transport costs and labor costs. In Thailand, studies show that Malathion is actually cheaper than DDT because of these factors.
No. In Sri Lanka and numerous other areas, the malaria death toll was rising again BEFORE DDT was withdrawn.
Furthermore bed-nets ARE "practical, safe, efficient and cheap". As are Malathion and the other insecticides used in place of DDT.
But hey it's obvious much more fun to say "Rachel Carson is worse than Hitler and the Greens area bunch of crazy baby killers therefore global warming can't be true so I should buy a new SUV and vote the straight Republican ticket - and that Obama fella's really a Muslim anyhow."
Posted by: Ian Gould | May 3, 2008 6:42 AM
Furthermore bed-nets ARE "practical, safe, efficient and cheap". As are Malathion and the other insecticides used in place of DDT.
The problem with Malathion is that it is extremeley toxic to aquatic life, and as an organophosphate, is a Cholinesterase inhibitor. This is why we don't use in in Connecticut as a tool against West Nile Virus.
Synthetic pyrethroids such as "Scourge" are used here.
The point Ian makes is a good one however, as there are tools other than DDT that are available, and the problem still exists.....DDT was not and is not the Panacea.
As far as the last part of Ians comment.....vote McCain.
Posted by: Betula | May 3, 2008 7:47 AM
Tim wrote: "Kling believes that the use of malaria against DDT is banned because..."
Shouldn't that be "Kling believes that the use of DDT against malaria is banned because..."?
[my emphasis]
[Yes it should. Thanks. Tim]
Posted by: MH | May 3, 2008 8:36 AM
Romkiul posts:
There's a lot of doubt about it. In fact, most people who have studied the question think it's not true. It's a right-wing fantasy.
Posted by: Barton Paul Levenson | May 3, 2008 8:37 AM
Romkiul posts:
No. They lobbied against routine use of it in agriculture.
No. Lobbying on obscure pollution issues in the US has little or no effect on other countries, many of whom make a big local propaganda point about not going along with the US on anything.
Darned if I know. But since it's not banned, go ahead and do it.
No. And there are all kinds of alternatives, so your question rather makes some counterfactual suppositions. One early method of combatting mosquitoes was draining swamps. Nowadays we try to preserve wetlands. Other alternativies include pesticides like methoxychlor, importing mosquito predators, pesticide bed nets, treatment with quinine, etc., etc., etc.
Posted by: Barton Paul Levenson | May 3, 2008 8:48 AM
romkiul,
You've stated it was "self-evident" that green lobbying stopped the use of DDT for insect vector control, yet when you are asked for any evidence, you don't give any. I assume you have no evidence. The fact that you would believe something without evidence is quite telling.
Posted by: Boris | May 3, 2008 8:51 AM
So, the real story is that the Green Lobby is responsible for Hans being too dumb to visit a local store? It's those brain rays we're emitting from our evil machines, coupled with the Green Lobby worldwide ban on tinfoil (go to your store, you'll only find aluminum foil!), that did the trick?
Posted by: dhogaza | May 3, 2008 9:13 AM
I understand that the U.S. exports DDT so to hell with their environments and non-users of DDT get a lot of it back on our food, e.g. 48% of coffee imports are contaminated with pesticides. I don't have citations; the was from a TV documentary.
Posted by: Monado, FCD | May 3, 2008 11:08 AM
1) Did the agricultural and chemical industries use enormous quantities of DDT in the third world without regard for anything other than maximizing crop yield? Yes or No?
2) Did this vast blanketing of the ecology with DDT lead to malaria vectors in many countries becoming resistant to DDT? Yes or No?
3) Did an end to this wholesale selection of DDT resistant malaria vectors preserve a window, however reduced in capacity, for the use of DDT against malaria in those regions where resistance had not yet taken hold? Yes or No?
4) Did the ban on AGRICULTURAL use of DDT therefore actually result in a reduction in malarial "death of many poor children"? Yes or No?
"The outcome of the treaty is arguably better than the status quo going into the negotiations over two years ago. For the first time, there is now an insecticide which is restricted to vector control only, meaning that the selection of resistant mosquitoes will be slower than before." http://www.malaria.org/DDTpage.html
"unwise use of DDT, rather than improving life, actually resulted in a resurgence of malaria. According to Chapin & Wasserstrom (page 183) 'Correlating the use of DDT in El Salvador with renewed malaria transmission, it can be estimated that at current rates each kilo of insecticide added to the environment will generate 105 new cases of malaria.'"
http://info-pollution.com/ddtban.htm
Posted by: z | May 3, 2008 12:09 PM
I don't think the US manufactures DDT, but there are in fact quite a few pesticides which are illegal in the US and, in fact, do contaminate our imported food. Including some which are manufactured in the US and illegal for use in the US but legal for sale abroad.
Posted by: z | May 3, 2008 12:11 PM
"The results of our annual market basket survey are in excellent agreement with similar surveys conducted by other regulatory agencies (See Figure 1, Table 4). The percentage of samples containing residues and violations is remarkably similar to those found by the FDA (FDA, 1999), and the states of California (California Residue Monitoring, 1999) and Florida (Florida Division of Food Safety, 2001). Even more remarkable may be the fact that overseas laboratories in countries such as Portugal (Portugal, 1999) find similar percentages of samples containing residues and similar violation rates. Consistently in all these surveys, approximately 36% of the samples tested contained at least one pesticide residue. About 1% of the produce tested which originated in the United States contained violative pesticide residues, while approximately 4% of the produce tested which originated outside of the United States contained violative pesticide residues. Due to the higher number of foreign violative samples, it is important to continue this market basket survey and to increase the number of imported samples analyzed in the survey." -Connecticut Agricultural Experimental Station Bulletin
As they say, they come up with remarkably consistent results for this every year.
Posted by: z | May 3, 2008 12:18 PM
Betula, I tend to use Malathion as a short hand for alternative pesticides because it was the oen mentioned in the couple of reports on the issue I read.
There are, of course, a whole range of pesticide alternatives to DDT. All have their positive and negative features.
Z, my understanding is that while agricultural use of DDT is banned in the US (and it isn't currently used for malaria control there) it is still manufactured in the US for export to developing countries - you know the countries which have supposedly been forced to stop using it. I guess they just like filling up warehouses with pesticides they never intend to use.
Posted by: Ian Gould | May 3, 2008 8:25 PM
Eli notes that Betula does not want to bet. He awaits her withdrawing her claims about environmentalists never lobbying against the use of Methoxychlor.
Posted by: Eli Rabett | May 3, 2008 9:59 PM
USAID policy
"USAID has never had a "policy" as such either "for" or "against" DDT for IRS. The real change in the past two years has been a new interest and emphasis on the use of IRS in general, - with DDT or any other insecticide - as an effective malaria prevention strategy in tropical Africa. (Recent successful applications of IRS, particularly in the southern Africa region, have also contributed to the keen interest among donors and among African malaria control programs.) For example, in fiscalyYear 2005, USAID supported less than $1 million of IRS in Africa, with programs utilizing insecticides purchased by the host government or another donor. For fiscal year 2007, in the PMI and in other bilateral programs, USAID will support over $20 million in IRS programs in Africa, including the direct purchase of insecticides. This dramatic increase in the scale of our IRS programs overall is the greatest factor in DDT's recent prominence in USAID programs."
In other words, Mandavilli may not be a "notorious axe-grinding right-wing hack" but Jeff Beck is.
I am also fascinated by the idea that the (supposed) failure of the US government ot fund DDT amounts to a ban. Presumably Bck et al believe there's a world wide ban on condoms and abortions.
Posted by: Ian Gould | May 3, 2008 11:23 PM
I documented all the things Mandavilli got wrong here.
Posted by: Tim Lambert | May 3, 2008 11:51 PM
Ian Gould,
The following is the full text of a letter from Environmental Defense's John Balbus to USAID:
"As the organization that led the successful campaign to ban use of DDT in the United States in the early 1970s, we have read with concern recent reports that US AID is unwilling to consider even limited use of DDT in anti-malaria programs in developing countries. According to the New York Times Magazine, you recently stated that part of the reason US AID doesn't finance DDT is that doing so would require a battle for public opinion. 'You'd have to explain to everybody why this is really O.K. and safe every time you do it. (What the World Needs Now Is DDT, April 11, 2004).
"We acknowledge your concern, as quoted in the article, that 'For us to be buying and using in another country something we don't allow in our own country raises the specter of preferential treatment,'' and your view that ''We certainly have to think about 'What would the American people think and want?' and 'What would Africans think if we're going to do to them what we wouldn't do to our own people?'' While these are important questions, we urge you not to allow them to take precedence over the key public health question namely, how best to combat malaria with the tools now available.
"While Environmental Defense sees absolutely no justification for re-introducing use of DDT in the US, we believe that indoor spraying of small quantities of DDT in developing countries areas where malaria is spread by indoor-dwelling mosquitoes is an important tool given the limited alternatives now available. But it is not a silver bullet. Without an effective public-health system one that tracks and treats infected people and safeguards against DDT misuse malaria control will be at best partial. The Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPS) treaty expressly allows limited indoor use of the pesticide for malaria control until viable alternatives are found.
"We urge US AID not to forego consideration of indoor spraying of small quantities of DDT in developing countries areas where malaria is spread by indoor-dwelling mosquitoes. At the same time, we urge US AID to support rebuilding the public-health system in developing countries, and efforts to find better alternatives to DDT use. For example, it appears that indoor use of DDT may function primarily by repelling mosquitoes rather than killing them (see e.g., Grieco et al., J Vector Ecol. 2000 Jun;25(1):62- 73). Development of less-toxic repellents should thus be a priority."
http://www.edf.org/documents/5046_DDT-letterUSAID.pdf
Balbus says USAID refused to fund DDT IRS but you know better, do you?
Lambert's critique of Mandavilli's article is misleading, as usual.
Posted by: J F Beck | May 4, 2008 2:22 AM
No more need be said to all the vile lying fascists who infest science blogs than this:
You are all, with no exceptions, creepy little death cultists. You live and die by the feudal model where the CEO is God's chosen royalty and you may get some perks or treats by being a particulary obsequious and bullying henchman - a paradigm kiss up, kick down sociopath.
The people whose water you carry and whose coats you hold are the ones, if any, who killed hundreds of thousands, or millions, with malaria. This is simply their usual defensive strike of projection to hide their own psycopathic behavior. In order to save a few pennies per hundred acres of crops, they decided to breed resistant strains of malaria. And you are their goons, their thugs, their lynch mob.
Very similar people decided to breed resistant strains of bacteria and kill thousands of people all over the developed world with them. This enabled their meat factories to produce water-weighted animals in unsanitary conditions. They even chose to sue a powerful celebrity simply for saying the words "I've eaten my last hamburger" on her own TV show.
It's very interesting that you are willing to be the brownshirts for people creating resistant malaria (and even denying that evolution itself is possible) AS LONG AS they take species like the national bird of the United States down with the people they kill.
I'm not sure Satan's lapdogs quite covers it, really.
Posted by: Marion Delgado | May 4, 2008 6:18 AM
There is obviously no point in debating this issue on this site if everyone believes that the green lobby never sought a total ban on any use of DDT. The amount of re-writing of history required to believe that the green lobby has always been in favour of DDT in the fight against malaria is Orwellian.
I regret wasting my time, and promise never to return.
Posted by: romkiul | May 4, 2008 7:03 AM
@romkiul:
What is this monolithic "green lobby" of which you speak? Where is your evidence that every commentator on this blog believes that no green group has ever sought a total ban on DDT use?
Posted by: Robin Levett | May 4, 2008 7:18 AM
There is obviously no point in debating this issue on this site if everyone believes that the green lobby never sought a total ban on any use of DDT. The amount of re-writing of history required to believe that the green lobby has always been in favour of DDT in the fight against malaria is Orwellian.
take some lessons with you:
it is hard to argue AGAINST the FACTS.
it helps when you are able to NAME the "green lobby" you are talking about...
Posted by: sod | May 4, 2008 7:47 AM
Romkiul.
Don't let the door slam on your backside as you leave.
Oh, and on your way out, look up "Dunning-Kruger effect" on your favourite search engine...
...the whole 'DDT was scuttled by greenies' canard is one of the classic examples of the conservative, denialist, blogopsphere pseudo-expert expression of this condition.
The carcass of this DDT myth refuses to die, it seems. Just goes to show how the denio-zombies replicate like the magician's apprentice's brooms, all without adding even a sprinkle of education-dust or a whiff of essence-of-objective-research.
Posted by: Bernard J. | May 4, 2008 8:28 AM
"Eli notes that Betula does not want to bet. He awaits her withdrawing her claims about environmentalists never lobbying against the use of Methoxychlor."
ELI is being a bit presumtuous in assuming he knows the gender of someone who goes by the name Betula.
Eli, when you stated "Wanna bet Betula?"......you failed to mention what you were refering to....you could have been refering to my comment about DDT still being manufactured.
Now that you have clarified the subject of your challenge, it will be easier to reply.
My statement could be wrong, environmentalists may have lobbied against the use of Methoxychlor. In retrospect,I wouldn't be surprised.....
I do know that here in the U.S.,it is no longer used, but as far as I know, not due to lobbying. Here in the U.S., Methoxychlor was ineligible for reregistration due to the insufficient data needed to meet the EPA registration standards, and was voluntarily canceled under FIFRA section 6(f).
If environmentalists lobbied against it....I wave the white flag.
Posted by: Betula | May 4, 2008 8:41 AM
JF Beck says:
Well yes, since he quoted the actual policy from USAID, rather than get his information from an error-filled NYT story.
Posted by: Tim Lambert | May 4, 2008 10:43 AM
DDT Ban - killed millions. Biofuels - Will starve to death millions.
Environmentalists = death to humans
Posted by: Bruce | May 4, 2008 11:44 AM
"Silent Spring took Carson four years to complete. It meticulously described how DDT entered the food chain and accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals, including human beings, and caused cancer and genetic damage. A single application on a crop, she wrote, killed insects for weeks and months, and not only the targeted insects but countless more, and remained toxic in the environment even after it was diluted by rainwater. Carson concluded that DDT and other pesticides had irrevocably harmed birds and animals and had contaminated the entire world food supply. The book's most haunting and famous chapter, "A Fable for Tomorrow," depicted a nameless American town where all life -- from fish to birds to apple blossoms to human children -- had been "silenced" by the insidious effects of DDT.
...
Her careful preparation, however, had paid off. Anticipating the reaction of the chemical industry, she had compiled Silent Spring as one would a lawyer's brief, with no fewer than 55 pages of notes and a list of experts who had read and approved the manuscript. Many eminent scientists rose to her defense, and when President John F. Kennedy ordered the President's Science Advisory Committee to examine the issues the book raised, its report thoroughly vindicated both Silent Spring and its author. As a result, DDT came under much closer government supervision and was eventually banned."
http://www.nrdc.org/health/pesticides/hcarson.asp
Posted by: Bruce | May 4, 2008 11:55 AM
Aw, when you can't provide evidence, you whine. Everything is "self-evident" to you and we should just swallow all the right wing garbage you can spew. You complain about "rewriting history," but you can't even point to the history that's ostensibly being rewritten.
Again, if there were any evidence you would have provided it by now. It is just stupidity to complain that people won't agree with you when you offer no proof. Go sow your magic beans elsewhere.
Posted by: Boris | May 4, 2008 11:56 AM