Letters: DDT not the first option

With reference to Deepak Lal's article, "Bring back DDT" (April 27), the discovery of DDT saved many people, crops and livestock from insect-borne diseases. On the other hand, being an organic pollutant that found its way into the food chains of delicate ecosystems, DDT caused great damage to various organisms as well as humans. The gravity of the problem had reached such a level that birds such as the Brown pelican would have been wiped out by the 1980s had the US not banned DDT in the 1970s.

In nature nothing exists alone; we are all interconnected in its complex web. We must extensively use all viable options to control and prevent the breeding of mosquitoes and use insecticides such as DDT only as a last resort, not the first option. India should embrace the Stockholm Convention guidelines as soon as possible, and ensure a trade-off between human health and the health of ecosystems.

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