oh, rachel carson was just a wacko environmentalist anyways..prolly a terrorist also

[Guest guest]

World Health Org. clears DDT spraying for malaria

Fri Sep 15, 2006 12:59pm ET

Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - DDT, the long-banned insecticide blamed for

killing birds and other wildlife, is now approved for use indoors to

fight malaria, the World Health Organization announced on Friday.

 

" One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual house

spraying, " said Dr. Arata Kochi, director of the World Health

Organization (WHO) malaria department. " Of the dozen pesticides WHO has

approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT. "

 

For about $5 per house, indoor spraying with DDT is a cost-effective

response to malaria, which kills about a million people annually, most

of them children under five.

 

 

In parts of Africa and Asia where malaria-carrying mosquitoes spread

the disease, 85 percent of home dwellers approached by health workers

allow their houses to be sprayed, global health officials said at a

news conference.

 

DDT came into common use in the 1930s as an agricultural insecticide.

It became notorious after biologist and ecologist Rachel Carson's 1962

book " Silent Spring " exposed how DDT entered the food chain, killing

wildlife and threatening humans.

 

In 1969, the National Cancer Institute announced findings that DDT

could cause cancer, and a U.S. federal ban was imposed in 1972.

 

Richard Tren, director of the group Africa Fighting Malaria, stressed

the difference between agricultural DDT sprayed outdoors and the

residual spraying meant to act like a giant mosquito net over

individual houses.

 

" The environmental impact associated with spraying insecticides --

whether it's DDT or other insecticides -- indoors is minimal, it's

negligible ... This is as unrelated to 'Silent Spring' as anything, "

Tren said. " The science is very clear that there are no harmful human

effects. "

 

 

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances,

there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in

such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest

we become unwitting victims of the darkness.

William O. Douglas