Development and Promotion of Non-POPs Alternatives to DDT
Globally, DDT was widely used in agriculture to control pests during 1940-1970s. In addition, DDT was effectively used as an insecticide for the control of insects and disease vectors. DDT was initially used by the United States military in World War-II to control malaria, typhus, body lice, and bubonic plague. Being very effective, relatively inexpensive to manufacture, and stable for a longer period, DDT was effectively used by several countries to control malaria and other vectors (Turusov et al., 2002). DDT played a major role in the malaria eradication efforts of Italy and USA (IARC, 2015). In Italy, cases of malaria decreased from 4,00,000 in 1946 to virtually none in 1950. DDT was also used to control an epidemic of typhus in Italy and Germany during 1943.
In India, DDT is used mainly for “Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS)” for the control of malaria vectors. IRS has been very effective in bringing down the mortality due to malaria from 932 in the year 2000 to a meagre 96 in 2018 (NVBDCP, 2016). The number of malaria cases also drastically reduced from 2.03 million in 2000 to 0.34 million cases in 2018 (NVBDCP, 2016).