Fighting Malaria with DDT: A Decades-Long Debate
Posted by Editor at Jun 26th, 2008 in Green Trends
The global campaign to eradicate malaria in the 1950s and ’60s successfully vanquished the disease from the United States and Europe and substantially reduced it in others – in India and Sri Lanka, for instance, malaria cases decreased by 99 percent . Malaria transmission was nearly wiped out in the subtropics , and it was significantly reined in in parts of the Soviet Union, Latin America, and Asia.
About the insecticide that served as a cornerstone of the campaign, the National Academy of Sciences wrote in 1970: “To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt.” But the same insecticide has become one of today’s most infamous chemicals. It is DDT. read more
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Fighting Malaria with DDT: A Decades-Long Debate
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Tags: earth, environment, malaria
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