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Proposals to ban the pesticide DDT by 2007 have been dropped for fear of
harming efforts to fight malaria. Instead, countries negotiating to limit
persistent organic pollutants agreed in Geneva last week to “achieve elimination
over time”, on condition that poor countries get help finding alternatives.
Cliff Curtis of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) says combinations of safer
insecticides, bed nets and draining of mosquito breeding areas control malaria
just as well. But the WWF dropped calls for a ban by 2007, he says, because
arguments over the date “got in the way” of the more important goal of helping
poor countries adopt alternatives.