Outgoing Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland says EPA’s response for help in the state’s battle against bed bugs is simply “not enough.” He petitioned the agency to approve an emergency, indoor use of the pesticide Propoxur. But the agency will only allow a one-time application in the state’s senior-citizen residential centers. In Today’s Columbus Dispatch, Strickland says EPA’s plan would “inadequately treat one small extension of the problem rather than the root.”
The product is acutely toxic to people who use it improperly, but it has no reported carcinogenic effects. According to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, the agency won’t allow its use indoor because the possibility of adverse effects on children. She suggests that bedbugs are a serious “problem” and a “nuisance” but that the chemical might amount to “a cure that’s actually worse than the disease.”
She dismisses the likelihood that Propoxur could provide more benefits than risks. “If used wisely and against the right kind of pest, then I think it [Propoxur] will probably offer far more benefit than risk,” bedbug expert Dr. Richard Pollack of the Harvard School of Public Health told The New York Times in 2009.
However, if Jackson really wants to protect kids from toxicity and the “nuisance” of bedbugs, she should approve limited, home-use of the pesticide DDT. It helped eradicate bedbugs in the United States during the 20th century, but they returned a few decades after the EPA banned DDT.
Despite hype to the contrary, DDT is extremely safe for humans. In 1990, the Lancet reported: “The early toxicological information on DDT was reassuring; it seemed that acute risks to health were small. If the huge amounts of DDT used are taken into account, the safety record for human beings is extremely good. In the 1940s many people were deliberately exposed to high concentrations of DDT thorough dusting programmes or impregnation of clothes, without any apparent ill effect.”
But the greens’ campaign against chemicals doesn’t allow for rational approaches. Greens won’t even support DDT use to control malaria’s deadly toll around the world — allowing millions of children to die annually.
The impact such extremism is now being felt in the United States, with bedbugs just one problem. In 1992, a National Academy of Sciences report warned: “A growing problem in controlling vector-borne diseases is the diminishing supply of effective pesticides … Some manufacturers have chosen not to reregister their products because of the expenses of gathering safety data [under EPA regulations]. Partly as a result, many effective pesticides over the past 40 years to control agricultural pests and vectors of human disease are no longer available.” It looks like we may all soon have bedbugs in our homes and possibly many more dangerous pests to control.
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First, almost all bedbugs are resistant or immune to DDT.
Studies from 2005( http://membracid.wordpress.com/2009/02/05/new-res… ) were reconfirmed in 2009; and see this video that shows that DDT primed 'em to be resistant: http://membracid.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/bedbugs…
Second, the greens have been favoring use of DDT for Indoor Residual Spraying — the only effective way DDT is used on mosquitoes to fight malaria — for about 40 years. See, for example, this letter from the Environmental Defense Fund urging the Bush Administration to get off its butt and allow DDT use in Africa:
http://www.edf.org/article.cfm?ContentID=4407 (follow link at the end to see the full letter).
Third, since the U.S. ban on spraying DDT on cotton in 1972 (a ban which applied only to agricultural crops, applied only to the U.S., and greatly increased DDT availability for fighting malaria since 100% of U.S. manufacturing was dedicated to export), the death toll of malaria worldwide has fallen from about 2 million annually to under 900,000 annually — less than half. That's the lowest death toll to malaria in human history. At the peak of DDT use, annual malaria deaths were about 4 million annually. From the numbers alone, it would appear that NOT using DDT works very well to fight malaria. Perhaps you should revisit current statistics on the stuff.
Fourth, the National Academy of Sciences — whom you cite approvingly — issued a report on chemical needs for the future in 1970. NAS noted that, though DDT was one of the most beneficial chemicals ever devised, its harms far outweigh its benefits; NAS called for a rapid phase out and ban on DDT for all uses.
NAS is well aware of the need for more, new and effective pesticides, and has been for years. Their considered judgment on DDT doesn't change though — they still favor getting rid of it.
A few minor errors, but other than that, a good piece.
So, it's okay to kill old people with insecticides, so long as they don't die of cancer?
Activists have used resistance to DDT to argue against its use to control malaria–allowing people to die in the meantime. But where it has been eventually used in recent years, it has reduced cases considerably. Resistance to any product–from antibiotics to pesticides–should be managed. It's not an excuse to not use something that can help people. That's why we don't ban antibiotics. And the idea that senior citizens are going to get cancer from DDT use is an absurd claim. These false claims offer no justification for allowing bugs to feed on our senior citizens–or anyone else–them at night.
It's time to give people freedom to take their own risks rather than ban every product based on unfounded claims. My overview of the issue can be found at http://rachelwaswrong.org/malaria-legacy/. It provides links and information addressing all the issues associated with safety etc.
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i grew up in wva lived with bedbugs ddt did the trick took beds outside and sprayed them.did no harm to families
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