SCIENTISTS SAY DDT INCREASES RISK OF EARLY BIRTH
LONDON (Reuters), 12th July 2001 - DDT, a pesticide that has been banned for decades in Europe and the United States, may be causing premature births in nations where it is used to control mosquito-borne diseases, U.S. scientists said Friday.
More than 30 nations have prohibited the use of the toxic chemical which has been shown to cause chronic ailments in humans.
Although the amounts people are exposed to during mosquito control programs to beat diseases such as malaria are thought to be safe, scientists at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in the United States have shown it could be dangerous for pregnant women and their babies.
"Our findings suggest that DDT use increases pre-term births, and by inference, infant mortality," Matthew Longnecker and his colleagues said in a report in The Lancet medical journal.
They added that the benefits of mosquito-control programs using DDT may need to be reassessed in the light of their findings.
The researchers used information from a large U.S. study to compare the number of pre-term births in more than 2,000 children born between 1959 and 1966 and the levels of DDE, a derivative of DDT, in stored sample of the mother's blood during pregnancy.
DDT was widely used in the United States in the 1960s.
The scientists found the average concentrations of DDE in the mothers' blood samples was much higher than current U.S. levels and the risk of having a premature baby, or full-term small infant, increased in line with the concentrations of DDE in the blood.
Medical studies have shown that premature babies are more likely to suffer from some type of disability and behavioral and learning problems than full-term infants.