Africa Fighting Malaria: Alternatives

By Rich Kozlovich

This year is the fiftieth anniversary of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's mendacious and flagrantly unscientific book that was the foundation for the ban on DDT (please don't send me claptrap about how she said that she didn't want DDT banned. I am aware of what she said, but I am also aware that the only conclusion one could come to after reading this magnificently written piece of science fiction was that DDT had to be to banned.), it was clearly the most important book that became foundational in starting the modern environmental movement and clearly its effect made it one of the worst books of the 20th century. I will be addressing this 50th anniversary in later posts.

As you read this please be aware that the very products they are working with as DDT alternatives are the very products the environmental movement is trying to eliminate. They have done so with propoxur and all other carbamates for structural pest control uses in the U.S. and they are playing with the regulations and labeling to restrict pyrethroids. The ban of DDT is a symptom of an overall plan of incrementalism.

They wish to eliminate pesticides and they have been successful with every chemical category they have attacked. Chlorinated hydrocarbons (DDT, Chlordane, etc.), Organophosphates (Dursban, Diazinon) and Carbamates (Ficam and Baygon, AKA propoxur).Now they are attacking pyrethriods. The green movement is irrational and misanthropic. We really do need to get that.  It doesn't matter what alternatives we develop they will eventually attack those also.  For this reason the unscientific ban on DDT needs to be lifted.  That ban is foundational to everything that is the environmental movement.  If that can be overturned then all else they stand for can be challenged, including their funding.  

Degradation of insecticides used for indoor spraying in malaria control and possible solutions
The insecticide dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) is widely used in indoor residual spraying (IRS) for malaria control owing to its longer residual efficacy in the field compared to other World Health Organization (WHO) alternatives. Suitable stabilization to render these alternative insecticides longer lasting could provide less controversial and more acceptable and effective alternative insecticide formulations than DDT.

Methods

This study sought to investigate the reasons behind the often reported longer lasting behaviour of DDT by exposing all the WHO approved insecticides to high temperature, high humidity and ultra-violet light. Interactions between the insecticides and some mineral powders in the presence of an aqueous medium were also tested. Simple insecticidal paints were made using slurries of these mineral powders whilst some insecticides were dispersed into a conventional acrylic paint binder. These formulations were then spray painted on neat and manure coated mud plaques, representative of the material typically used in rural mud houses, at twice the upper limit of the WHO recommended dosage range. DDT was applied directly onto mud plaques at four times the WHO recommended concentration and on manure plaques at twice WHO recommended concentration. All plaques were subjected to accelerated ageing conditions of 40degreesC and a relative humidity of 90%.

Editor's Note:  It is important that you see this video until the end. RK