Steve Tvedten of Get Set, Inc.'s email to Lyndon Hawkins of the California Department of Pesticide Regulation .

Questions have been asked of the California Department of Pesticide Control since Fontana Unified School District declined to consider a pesticide free IPM program because of the Department of Agriculture's opinion about only utilizing registered pesticides to eliminate pests.  The California Department of Pesticide Regulation has remained silent and not responded to these issues that are pointing out ever increasing scientific and medical information on the damages done by pesticides:

Subject: The ongoing saga of DDT-------------------
       Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 08:18:39 -0400
       From: StephenTvedten <stvedten@earthlink.net>
    Reply-To: steve@getipm.com
 Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
         To: Lyndon Hawkins <hawkins@empm.cdpr.ca.gov>
 

Lyndon, I thought you might like to read about one of your "old" registered poisons that is still giving us many health/contamination problems.  The amazing thing to me is that supposedly intelligent professional people are still using this terrible toxin even though everything (but man and the animals) are already resistant to it.  The other thing that really upsets me is that I have consistantly proven that I can safely remove mosquitoes far more effectively using (GRAS) or non-toxic alternatives.  The Seattle Times company posted this article at 10:49 p.m. PDT; Sunday, August 29, 1999 .

DDT ban in U.S. saves birds, but elsewhere children are dying by Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times

WASHINGTON - It has been 27 years since the United States banned the pesticide DDT, and the payoff is undeniable. The peregrine falcon, once pushed to the brink of extinction, came off  the endangered-species list this month, and the bald eagle may soon follow. Brown pelicans are flourishing in Florida.

Now the United Nations is drafting a treaty that may lead to a worldwide ban on DDT. But the international negotiations, set to resume in Geneva next month, are drawing opposition from an unlikely quarter: public-health professionals, who say DDT is necessary to stop the spread of malaria, a disease that kills as many as 2.7 million people each year, mostly children in poor, undeveloped countries.

 "A child dies of malaria every 12 seconds," said Dyann Wirth, a malaria expert at the Harvard School of Public Health and president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and   Hygiene. "That could go up dramatically if we lose this important control tool."

Wirth is among more than 370 medical researchers in 57 countries who are urging that the treaty allow DDT to be sprayed in small quantities on the interior walls of homes, where it acts as a repellant to the disease-carrying insects. The scientists argue that if the pesticide, which is cheap and effective, must be eliminated, it should be phased out gradually and only if Western countries conduct research on the more expensive alternatives and help pay for them.

An exception ahead?  Some type of public health exception is likely, said Jim Willis, director of chemicals for the U.N. Environmental Program, which is sponsoring the talks. But the specifics are engendering intense acrimony between the public health experts and environmentalists and have created friction in the federal government, as it tries to formulate its policy for the negotiations.

"This poses an unusual dilemma," said a State Department official involved in the talks. "Usually the dynamic is protection versus economics. There, it is very easy for one side to paint the other as the black hat. But here there is a peculiar tradeoff between health and the environment, and those are both very important civil society objectives."

Not used for farming   Most countries no longer use DDT for agricultural purposes (or do not admit to it if they do), but experts estimate that 23 nations still use it for malaria control. The biggest users are China and India. Mexico has pledged to stop spraying DDT by 2007. And the World Bank has lent India $200 million to help devise alternatives to DDT.

The DDT dilemma stems from a U.N. plan to eliminate, or greatly reduce, the use of 12 toxic chemicals classified as persistent organic pollutants. The group consists of eight pesticides, including DDT, as well as chemical byproducts and industrial chemicals. All accumulate in the food chain and can travel thousands of miles through air, water and bird migrations, causing lasting contamination.

In her 1962 book "Silent Spring," Rachel Carson, a marine biologist, chronicled DDT's poisonous effects, showing, for example, how it killed the robins that ate the earthworms that dined on the leaves of Dutch elm trees that had been sprayed with the insecticide. The public outcry was tremendous; the book led to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in1970 and the U.S. ban on DDT in 1972.

The treaty negotiations on the group of pollutants began in 1998 and are scheduled to conclude by the end of next year. The Geneva meeting, which runs from Sept. 6 to 11, is the third of five  scheduled sessions.

 Effects of DDT  Experts are arguing about everything from whether DDT is harmful to human health (the evidence is inconclusive) to whether the recent rise in malaria rates in Mexico is the result of cutbacks in spraying or to last year's hurricanes, which provided fertile breeding grounds for mosquitoes. (The answer is probably both.)

 "Positions have hardened," said Dr. Gerald T. Keusch, director of  the Fogarty International Center, the branch of the National Institutes of Health devoted to promoting scientific research  overseas. "In the heat it has not been possible to step back and look at the light."

 On one side is the nonprofit World Wildlife Fund and Physicians for Social Responsibility, a doctors' group concerned with environmental health. They argue that even small amounts of DDT  sprayed inside homes are harmful to the environment and cite studies suggesting that the pesticide turns up in the breast milk of  nursing mothers and has other "subtle effects on human health."

On the other side are two scientists' groups, the tropical medicine society and the Malaria Foundation International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting research.

 The debate is occurring as malaria is making a deadly comeback, re-emerging in regions where it was once under control and killing many more people than it did decades ago, at least partly because of a reduction in DDT use. The World Health Organization estimates there are 300 million to 500 million new cases of the disease each year and last year launched a new initiative, Roll Back Malaria, to combat it.

Poverty an obstacle  There are drugs to treat malaria, but some patients cannot afford  them, and drug resistance is an increasing problem. So the best means of prevention is to keep mosquitoes from biting people. At  least one expert, Dr. Donald Roberts of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., argues that  "DDT is the best insecticide we have today for controlling malaria."

In the late 1970s, Roberts, a medical zoologist, traveled to Brazil to conduct experiments in malaria control. He built two houses and sprayed the inside of one with DDT. Hundreds of mosquitoes entered the unsprayed house, he said. None entered the sprayed house. In the years since, Roberts has become an ardent defender of the pesticide. "We have got to stop pressuring countries to stop using DDT," he said. "It is immoral."

 Others, including Malaria Foundation International founder Dr.Mary Galinski, say they have no problem eliminating the pesticide so long as alternatives are in place. But that is a frightening thought to Dr. Wen Kilama, a Tanzanian entomologist who in June presided over an expert panel, convened by the World Health Organization, to debate the future of the pesticide in malaria  prevention.

Kilama says that to get rid of DDT entirely would be a mistake,because one of the biggest challenges in controlling the disease is that mosquitoes develop pesticide resistance. "It's like when you fight, you have a pocketful of arrows and now you have only one arrow left," he said in a telephone interview. "If you pull it out and  lose it, then you have lost it."

Tanzania no longer uses DDT; the country cannot afford it, Kilama said. But with the economy improving, he added, "I can see a lot of hope coming up" that government-sponsored spraying  might resume. In the meantime, some Tanzanians sleep under nets soaked in pyrethroids, another chemical. But the nets cost $4 to $5 apiece, too high a sum for many poor villagers, and Kilama  said they work only when entire neighborhoods use them.

Other reasons not to use it  Farther south, in Botswana, health officials have also abandoned  DDT but for a different reason. Only three countries - China, India and Mexico - still manufacture the pesticide, and Thandie Phindela, a malaria control officer in Botswana's Ministry of  Health, said the country could not get a reliable supply this year.  "The environmentalists are trying to put pressure on the use of  DDT," she said. "We had to resort to pyrethroids."

But pyrethroids are more expensive. According to Kathleen Walker, an entomologist with the EPA, the cost of treating one house with DDT ranges from $1.60 to $8.50, compared with  $4.20 to $24 for pyrethroids. In the end, she said, some countries  may have to abandon house spraying altogether and begin  research on other, cheaper alternatives.

That is the World Wildlife Fund's view: Its contaminants expert, Richard Liroff, urges "more creative thinking about moving away from DDT." He points to an experiment in India, where gambusia  - a larvae-eating fish - were deposited in bodies of water where  mosquitoes breed. But Kilama, of Tanzania, said such steps are not practical in a country where a hippopotamus footprint after a heavy rain can create an instant breeding ground.

The World Health Organization is drafting its own plan to help countries cut back on DDT. But the organization has no idea how much the effort will cost; the price tag will vary from nation to nation. As to who will pay, said Jenny Pronczuk, a chemical safety expert, "Well, that's a problem."

Copyright © 1999 Seattle Times Company.

Lyndon, the real problem is the "professionals" who simply will not admit there are many, many "alternatives" to their "registered" poisons.  One of the simplest solutions would be fans to simply blow the mosquitoes away.  You can sit outside in the breeze of a fan and never be bothered with mosquitoes.  I have many, many hundreds of proven (but, unregistered) pest controls that are safer, more effective, cheaper, quicker and will NEVER create resistance or toxic contamination as your "registered" poisons do.  But, people in "regulation" apparently all over this sick old world, have decided we need to be poisoned rather than to safely solve our pest problems!  Why is that, do you think?  When will it be "legal" (in your opinion) to wash your can in California? and in so doing to kill the flies and maggots with unregistered soap and water?

Respectfully,  Stephen L. Tvedten.