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| Monday, January 10, 2005 |
| DDT and Malaria |
I was fascinated by Nicholas Kristof's column on DDT and malaria in Saturday's NY Times. I knew nothing about this subject. Of course, in the wake of the tsunami, I'd heard about how malaria kills millions of people a year in poor countries, and how an outpouring of aid, like the one of the tsunami, that purchased mosquito nets would save countless lives.
What I wasn't aware of was the issue of DDT - that it was banned many places because of its supposed effect on the environment. Kristof asserts that relaxing that ban and reducing the stigma against its use would save hundreds of thousands of people from malaria, and actually wouldn't do much harm to the environment, especially if we restricted its use to places where the malaria problem is most serious, while maintaining the ban in places like the U.S.
I'd be curious to know what environmentalists (in addition to those in the article) think about this.
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posted by CB @ 10:05 AM   |
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