Contaminated Insides? Capturing the histories and toxicities of DDT in Africa

• In Event: Time-Scapes of Toxicity (1): Making Boundaries

Abstract

In 2006 the WHO announced the reintroduction of the insecticide DDT (Dichloro- Diphenyl-Trichloroethane) as a preventive technology to globally control malaria. As part of a public health technique called Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS), DDT kills mosquitos inside habitations. In 2008 the Government of Uganda was sued by a local NGO claiming the overall risk to human health and the environment would be too high. This was preceded by the experimental deployment of DDT in two northern districts as a result of which thousands of organic cotton farmers lost their contracts with the trading companies.
In order to examine the conflicts between Global Health and Organic Farming the paper traces the historical detours as well as inherited histories of DDT (non-)use around the world. I will show how the conflict of DDT use for malaria control was sparked of by the need to separate the (environmental) toxicity of the chemical from its public health benefits. Secondly, taking the local practice of storing cotton indoors as an ethnographic entry point the paper analyzes how the deployment of DDT/IRS transforms habitations into a bio-political space. The paper discusses the contingencies and difficulties that determine the inscription of healthy or hazardous effects into the deployment of the chemical. It is argued that the question whether DDT is enacted as public-health tool or a potentially hazardous pesticide indoors is not so much decided by compliance with WHO guidelines but rather by legal action of multinational companies, global regulatory conventions, and western consumption patterns.

Author

• Rene Umlauf, Martin-Luther University Halle