[tn-bird] Re: DDT NOT BAD, ENVIRONMENTALISTS BAD

Public health officials in places like Amazonian Brazil (I've 
interviewed one from Manaus) say DDT is the pesticide of choice and is 
used there for malaria control.

The reason it kills birds is that it does not break down and is thus 
passed on from insects to fish to birds that eat fish, like bald eagles. 
The immediate effect on them is egg shell thinning, so the egg breaks 
while being incubated by the weight of the mother.

They use it in the rain forest for the same reason: it does not break 
down in an environment where it rains every day. Of course it does get 
washed downstream. The public health people have identified malaria as 
the number one health hazard and are willing to go to extreme risks to 
fight it.

 In the tropics there are bromeliades that collect rain water and breed 
mosquitoes, sometimes high in the trees. No amount of spraying DDT in 
the backwaters of the Amazon will ever eradicate malaria, and 40 years 
of it just proves that. Deeper in the jungle, indiginous people run 
naked and are not affected by malaria until white man's civilization is 
intruded upon them. We might do better to ask why this is so.

This business of ecology is complex and requires us to think things 
through rather than reaching for the nearest band-aid in the form of a 
poison spray or powder. What are the consequences of our actions? Is a 
crises, or something perceived as a crises going to spur us to take 
actions sensible people would not normally take?

Has anyone thought about how West Nile virus came into this country in 
the first place? It appears to be a more serious problem for bird 
populations than for humans, where it seems to mostly affect people in 
my age class who have already lived a lifetime or so. They have a 
vaccine for horses and probably will be testing a version for humans 
next year. In our part of the country it will pass for now with first 
frost.

Think it through. Does it make sense to come up with an old means of 
destroying mosquitoes when there are newer, safer, and probably more 
effective larvacides on the market? Have you cleaned out your gutters 
yet? Does it make sense to use something that kills large birds in order 
to protect them from a disease that is mostly killing large birds?

James Brooks
Jonesborough, TN


Bill Darnell wrote:

>Aren't the only countries in the world with Malaria still using DDT?  This
>is just a BS argument! Do we even have any cases of Malaria in the US?   DDT
>is still the #1 pesticide in countries where Malaria is still rampant!
>
>But, on the other hand, I don't put a lot of stock in Rachel Carson either.
>Bill Darnell
>Savannah, TN
>
>


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