The health community continues to focus on malaria (see our recent post on new malaria detection technologies), as governments, health organizations, and non-profit organizations hope to eradicate this deadly disease. Almost 1 million people die from malaria every year, and the majority of deaths occur in children living in sub-Saharan Africa. DDT is the pesticide that is commonly used to target mosquitoes, which are the vector for the parasites that cause malaria.



Scientists at the National Institute of Environmental Sciences (NIEHS) have concluded that DDT “should be used with caution, only when needed, and when no other effective, safe and affordable alternatives are locally available.” The scientists also reported that the adverse health effects associated with DDT include genital birth defects, breast cancer, and diabetes. (See full article and research here.)



While most of the world banned DDT in the 1970s (in the US, DDT was banned in 1972), DDT continues to be used in Africa and Asia to curtail the spread of malaria. In 2006, the first President Bush created the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI). The initiative, while producing marked results, includes a program called Indoor Residual Spraying, or IRS.



IRS is a routine anti-malarial program, used by many organizations. Because of this, DDT use is on the rise in Africa and Asia. Only one study has been conducted to study the effects on individuals living in areas where IRS is employed routinely. In this study, conducted in 2007, men in South Africa who were continually exposed to DDT were found to lower sperm counts, lower semen volume, and high levels of DDT in their blood. DDT is also known to accumulate in other bodily fluids, such as breast milk.



“DDT is now used in countries where many of the people are malnourished, extremely poor and possibly suffering from immune-compromising diseases such as AIDS, which may increase their susceptibility to chemical exposures,” said panel member Jonathan Chevrier, a University of California at Berkeley post-doctoral researcher in epidemiology and in environmental health sciences.



The authors of the study from NIEHS hope that the scientific community can find a suitable, and safer, pesticide to use in the war against malaria. In the meantime, we hope that DDT will be used as more sparingly in Africa and Asia, while other methods of prevention against the spread of malaria, such as bed nets and anti-malarial drugs, will be more readily available to those who need it the most.