RECYCLING WINGER LIES

On today's Glenn Beck radio show, a guest claimed that because rabid environmentalists have succeeded in completely banning the use of DDT, millions of Africans have died of malaria. I've heard this claim many times before and I decided to do a little research.

The U.S. banned DDT for most (not all) uses in 1972. One of the exceptions was the use for public health. From the EPA's site:

DDT Ban Takes Effect
[EPA press release - December 31, 1972]

The general use of the pesticide DDT will no longer be legal in the United States after today, ending nearly three decades of application during which time the once-popular chemical was used to control insect pests on crop and forest lands, around homes and gardens, and for industrial and commercial purposes.

An end to the continued domestic usage of the pesticide was decreed on June 14, 1972, when William D. Ruckelshaus, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, issued an order finally cancelling nearly all remaining Federal registrations of DDT products. Public health, quarantine, and a few minor crop uses were excepted, as well as export of the material.

Worldwide, DDT is still in use and it is only this year that the U.N. is considering a global ban BY 2020:

U.N. seeks to ban DDT pesticide and still fight malaria
Wed May 6, 2009 11:38am EDT

OSLO (Reuters) - The United Nations announced a plan Wednesday to rid the world by around 2020 of DDT, an outlawed toxic crop pesticide still used to spray homes to fight malaria-spreading mosquitoes.

DDT is one of a "Dirty Dozen" chemicals banned by a U.N. 2001 Convention after it was found to be a toxin that can suppress the immune system. It is infamous for threatening bird populations by thinning eggshells.

But exemptions have been allowed in many developing nations because it so effective in killing mosquitoes.