DDT

Bed Bugs Now With Super Bug: Still Just a “Nuisance,” EPA?

by Michelle Minton on June 22, 2011 · 6 comments

in Health and Illness, Nanny State

As my colleague Angela Logomasini noted in a post in January, the EPA has rebuffed the desperate pleas of lawmakers and residents to un-ban certain pesticides for the treatment of bed bugs. When asked why Ohio’s Gov. Ted Strickland’s request for an emergency exemption to use two very effective, but banned pesticides to fight the parasites, Lisa Jackson, head administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency replied that bed bugs were simply “a nuisance.” “We’re lucky – bed bugs don’t carry disease. But if you have to sleep in a bed and worry about being bitten all night, it sort of messes with your mind. And we get that,” said Jackson. How nice.

Clearly Ms. Jackson hasn’t spent much time speaking with people who have had bed bugs. More than a mere nuisance, they can force families to shell out thousands of dollars in repeat treatments, hospital visits (if reactions to the bites are severe), medication such as antibiotics, damaged relationships, damaged psyches, and damaged careers. Despite her sympathy, Ms. Jackson denied Ohio’s request for an emergency exemption.

At the time, Jackson believed that bed bugs do not carry disease. Unfortunately, we know better now. A recent study out of Canada found bed bugs carrying the drug-resistant strain of the Staphylococcus bacterium (also known as the MRSA and a “superbug”). While they have not been able to conclusively prove that the bed bugs are spreading the disease to their human hosts, their carrying the disease while causing the host to scratch the skin certainly seems like it would increase the likelihood of infection. In an article in the June 2011 issue of Emerging Infectious Disease, a CDC public health journal, discussed the possible correlation between increasing rates of MRSA infection and increasing infestations of bed bugs.

[click to continue…]

Human Achievement of the Day: Mosquito-Zapping Lasers

by Michelle Minton on March 4, 2011

in Features, Health and Illness, Precaution & Risk, Tech & Telecom

Post image for Human Achievement of the Day: Mosquito-Zapping Lasers

It’s hard to deny that lasers are cool, but a lasers that can blast mosquitoes out of the sky, protecting us from the malaria spreading insects, is as inventor Nathan Myhrvold, said “very satisfying” to see.

The laser was demonstrated earlier this year during a TED talk (Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) is a non-profit organization) presented by “professional jack-of-all-trades” Nathan Myrvold, the former Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft.

While lasers are fun and cool the impetus for creating the device is deadly serious. As noted in the presentation, malaria, the mosquito-borne blood infection sickens more than 250 million people every year and kills a child every 43 seconds. Though DDT had been extremely successful in eradicating malaria in many parts of the world, baseless environmental concerns ultimately resulted in the banning of the technology, resurgence in the spread of malaria, and skyrocketing numbers of people infected.

While DDT has since been re-legalized, many countries, particularly African nations, are wary of using the chemicals. While DDT is still an option, Myhrvold, who created the laser with his team at Intellectual Ventures Laboratory, has truly created a technology that represents a leap forward in pest-control.

For example, as noted in the demonstration, the technology is actually two-fold. First, there is a non-lethal which tracks and analyses insects in flight. It can tell based on size and wing motion whether the insect it is tracking is “friend” or “foe,” even differentiating between the non-harmful male mosquito and the blood-thirsty female mosquito. The second laser then picks out the female mosquitoes and “shoots them out of the sky.” As Myhrvold notes, technology has become so cheap that, “we can weigh the cost of an individual insect’s life.” With this laser — which was built with parts bought on eBay, scientists can pick off harmful bugs while leaving other insects in the ecosystem alone.

High-speed video of the mosquitoes in flight shows just how deadly accurate these laser are and how devastating it is to the insect.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/death-star-laser-zaps-mosqitoes-dead/

EPA Bed Bug Protection for Elderly “Not Enough”

by Angela Logomasini on January 4, 2011 · 6 comments

in Environment

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.

Afternoon Links: October 7, 2010

by Nicole Ciandella on October 7, 2010

in Zeitgeist

1. New York wants to forbid residents from purchasing sugary drinks with food stamps.

2. Bedbugs are back in America with a vengeance. (Where’s DDT when you need it?)

3. A proposed San Francisco city ordinance would ban toys in McDonald’s happy meals unless the meals are under a certain calorie count and include fruits and vegetables.

4. There really is a market for everything: if you’re lonely, you can easily rent a friend for the day.

5. The National Republican Senatorial Committee is in hot water for casting out-of-state actors to play “ordinary” West Virginians in an ad attacking West Virgina Gov. Joe Manchin (D). The casting call specifically asked for actors with a “hicky” look.

Bed Bugs Bite Liberals: Will They Call for DDT?

by Angela Logomasini on August 20, 2010 · 1 comment

in Environment

As bed bugs gnaw on liberal reporters at CNN, perhaps there is a chance some will reconsider their views of DDT. CNN offices apparently have an abundant supply of these annoying and disturbing little creatures.

Before it were banned in 1970′s, DDT helped reduce and eradicate these once common bugs in the United States. But they are back with a vengeance–but DDT is long gone from U.S. markets. Now the bugs are so hard to control that they are infesting cities around the nation–in hotels, homes, and offices.

Yet many people support DDT bans, regardless of the consequences in other countries. Millions of children die every year in developing nations from mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria that could be controlled with limited use of DDT. Yet advocating its increased use there is too politically incorrect for many Americans on the left who wrongly think DDT cannot be used in a safe and effective manner.

But now that the misguided DDT ban has hit home (and the office)–albeit in a much less serious, but very annoying way–will the left reconsider?

The Excellent Powder — DDT

by Angela Logomasini on April 22, 2010

in Odds & Ends

Today, many people celebrate Earth Day, and for most, that simply means enjoying the beauty of the natural world. And what a perfect day it is here in D.C. for going outside! However, Earth Day has less innocuous roots. It is better understood as a political holiday, one that has advanced an anti-progressive ideology–a philosophy has done considerable harm.

That was certainly the message of an event yesterday hosted by Africa Fighting Malaria at the National Press Club. AFM released its new book: The Excellent Powder: DDT’s Political and Scientific History, authored by Donald Roberts, Richard Tren, Roger Bate, and Jennifer Zambone. It tells what amounts to horror story that started around the first Earth Day event, which took place on April 22, 1970.

DDT was originally condemned by Rachel Carson in her 1962 book Silent Spring, which claimed it was dangerous to public health and harmed wildlife. Carson, who is considered the mother of the modern environmental movement, went as far as to categorize it as “an elixir of death.” And her followers echoed those views at the first Earth Day. A brochure published by Environmental Action for the first Earth Day read:

“A disease has infected our country. It has brought smog to Yosemite, dumped garbage in the Hudson, sprayed DDT in our food, and left our cities in decay. Its carrier is man.”

Yet the real disease threatening people was not man-produced technologies like DDT, it was malaria. And this “excellent powder” was a potential solution.

Yet the anti-progressive drumbeat continued against DDT and June14, 1972, it was banned domestically. Many other nations and the World Health Organization would follow suit by discontinuing its use despite the fact that this insecticide was needed to fight malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

According to author, and AFM President, Richard Tren, DDT was “unfairly vilified” and the book attempts to set the record straight, addressing both science and politics. Co-author Don Roberts, Ph.D., concurred, noting that activist campaigns against DDT use have imposed “severe and grievous harm” on poor people in developing countries. Millions have died needlessly because DDT use was drastically curtailed, allowing malaria-carrying mosquitoes to flourish. When DDT was used malaria rates dropped dramatically around the world, and malaria disappeared from many western nations like the United States. After it was discontinued, rates have skyrocketed into the hundreds of millions, particularly in Africa, with several million people dying every year, mostly children under five.

A medical entomologist, Roberts explained that his contribution to the book stems from his decades of research starting in the 1970s regarding malaria and DDT in the field (in developing nations around the world), in the laboratory, and in the literature. He saw first-hand the extraordinary power that DDT had in the 1970s in efforts to control disease outbreaks. On DDT’s health impacts, Roberts explained that it is toxic–but not very. In fact, modern pesticides are hundreds of time more toxic. Yet we find no human deaths from environmental exposures of from them or DDT. DDT posed no health issues even though DDT was used in extremely large qualities in the United States, including in the home. Roberts remembers his mom using it in the kitchen to kill flies.

Roberts’ research eventually showed that DDT had the ability to repel mosquitoes, a fact that is more important than its toxic effects. If used to repel rather than kill mosquitoes, the insect’s resistance to the substance would remain low and DDT could be used long-term to protect humans from deadly mosquitoes.

Tren elaborated on this point during the question and answer portion of the event. He explained that DDT resistance was a problem when it was used in large, toxic doses to protect crops. But the use of relatively small quantities of DDT to repel mosquitoes from homes to prevent malaria poses a very minor threat of resistance. In any case, Tren explained that where resistance exists, it is best combated by constantly introducing new pesticides rather than imposing bans. Unfortunately, in addition to bans, government regulations make it increasingly difficult to get new pesticides on the market. In fact, the number of public health pesticides available is in decline.

Tren’s point about new pesticides brings us full circle. Conservation and public health are laudable goals, but the anti-progressive goals of Earth Day are not. Rather than condemn chemicals or business, we should celebrate the progress that mankind has made in making life healthier and safer. Indeed, human ingenuity and modern technologies should be credited for finding solutions to environmental problems as well as enhancing the human condition. Political approaches taken by modern-day greens have done the opposite.

Not sure what DDT does to birds, but I know how it helps people

by Michael Fumento on November 19, 2009

in Health and Illness, Precaution & Risk

There’s been much in the news lately about the brown pelican being delisted as an endangered species since its recovery from the effects of DDT. I happen to know people whose work I trust who disagree as to whether DDT actually thinned bird eggshells and thus led to declines in various species. That said, all of them are agreed as to the value in saving lives in poor areas – including parts of Africa today.
A poignant reminded comes in Rick Atkinson’s wonderful history of the Italian campaign in World War II, The Day of Battle. He first describes the typhus epidemic in recently-liberated Naples that carried off a fourth of its victims. “Carts hauled away the dead at night, as in medieval times. Typhus, which had killed three million people in Russia and Poland during and after World War I, is spread by lice, and 90 percent of the civilian population in Naples reputedly harbored head lice.”
Then:

Mass delousing was planned for the entire populations, which would be spayed “on the hoof” at fifty “public powdering stations.” Transport planes brought emergency supplies of . . . DDT . . . and eventually sixty tons would be shipped to Italy. At one commandeered palazzo, MPs carrying sacks of the stuff stood by with spray guns . . . . “The men were sprayed from head to foot,” [as one witness described it]. “The women were shot down their bosoms and backs and were sprayed back to front” Other spray teams prowled caves and shelters, and soon the typhus epidemic ended.

Chemical Blacklist Growing

by Angela Logomasini on May 11, 2009

in Environment

Apparently, not only are state lawmakers in Minnesota as noted earlier today blindly banning useful consumer products. International bureaucrats are working on misguided bans as well.

We here at CEI have noted the dangers of ill-advised chemical bans, such as the bans by nations around the world related to the pesticide DDT. Such bans have impeded the battle against malaria-carrying mosquitoes—contributing to millions of deaths every year.

The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (known as the POPs Treaty) has already banned 12 chemicals. Among them was DDT. But after public health officials protested an outright ban, the treaty negotiators provided a limited exemption for DDT. It allows some use for malaria control, while imposing bureaucracy that makes use needlessly more difficult.

Now world bureaucrats have added 9 more chemicals to the list of POPs Treaty bans—which will take effect as each nation acts to ratify them.

There isn’t much of any data showing any significant, adverse public health impacts from trace exposures to these chemicals. But there’s lots of evidence that they provide important public health and safety values today. Unfortunately, treaties like this one do not adequately consider the benefits of the products they ban, just theoretical risks.

Accordingly, international negotiators are now going after chemicals that help put out fires, help prevent fires, remove head lice, and make our computers run safely. To add insult to injury, they plan to phase out the limited exemption for DDT—threatening to further undermine the battle against deadly malaria.

For information on the health implications of trace-level chemicals see the chemical risk sections of CEI’s Environmental Source.

(photo source: millenniumpromise’s photostream)

Bed Bugs Bite

by Angela Logomasini on May 4, 2009 · 1 comment

in Environment

Don’t let the bed bugs bite was always a frightening thought when I was a kid. But today, it’s even scarier since bed bugs are back. The origin of this phrase is grounded in history, going back to a time when tiny bugs would live in wooden bed frames ready to feed on unsuspecting humans as they sleep. Many believed that bed bugs were thing of the past having been brought under control—and essentially eradicated in the U.S.—in part to the pesticide DDT. But now that DDT has been banned for more than three decades bed bugs are making a resurgence absent pesticide effective enough to zap them and thanks to increased global travel.    The bugs can travel in your suit case, and apparently are even more creative as they recently have been reported to be found living in a cell phone.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recently held a summit to discuss on what to do about the bed bug resurgence.  And they should.  This is a very good time to reconsider our approach to pesticide regulations.  Not only is DDT gone, but many other useful products have been regulated out of existence without weighing the risks of not having them.  And bed bugs are not the only pests that are re-surging and wreaking havoc.