DDT - RELATED KNOWLEDGE FOR PUBLIC ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS AND ACTION IN UGANDA

 

By

 

F.C. OWEYEGHA-FUNADUULA

Department of Zoology

Makerere University

Kampala , Uganda .

By

F.C. OWEYEGHA- AFUNADUULA

Website: http://www.afuna.org or http://www.afuna.o-f.com

Email:afunaduula2000@yahoo.co.uk or afunaduula@afuna.org

Tel: +256 78 555 222 or +256 71 845461

 

 

5 th February 2005

 

NAPE/SBC Occasional Paper 1-13 on DDT DEBATE IN ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN UGANDA ”, Kampala , Uganda , 5 th February 2005.

 

 

History of DDT

In this article intended for wide comprehension, I attempt to make the citizens of Uganda know and be aware of the history, usage as well as promise or consequences of DDT -Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane -in dealing with our so-called enemy and ecologically legitimate member of our biodiversity of which we are also members -Anopheles mosquito. My background as biologist, ecologist and environmentalist equips me well to do this just as my background as a fisheries officer in the East African Marine Fisheries Research Organisation (EAMFRO) of the then East African Community has equipped me with the legitimacy to comment on water related issues including large dams, energy and emergy.

This is important because if Government persists, like it has often done, in its belief that DDT, if reintroduced in our environment. will conquer malaria, then we are in danger of being exposed to this poison, which the European Community long ago placed on its Black List of extremely poisonous compounds and the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) placed on its Priority List of very poisonous pollutants.

Every Ugandan must know that the environmental menace of DDT started in 1939, long before the advent of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (1972), when Paul Muller discovered the insecticidal properties of the chemical. In his 1978 article titled “An outline of the pesticide situation”, which was published in a Zambian Journal, Professor William Banage of the Zoology Department at Makerere University, states that it was this discovery which triggered the revolution in pesticide use in the world.

 

Because it possesses highly residual properties and a broad insecticidal spectrum and is cheap, odourless and considered safe to humans, it was accepted as an ideal pesticide. It is credited for having been a reliable ally in the 2 nd World War and for having played a critical role in what Professor Banage calls “the apparent success of the Green Revolution of the 1960s” in the South Eastern Asian Countries.

While Wangari Mathai won the 2004 Nobel Prize for Environmental protection, Paul Muller won the 1948 Nobel Prize for Chemistry because of his success in bringing DDT forth in our global environment, which has in fact exacerbated our pollution problems in the agriculture and health sectors.

 

As if to praise, idolise and raise the acceptability of DDT by unsuspecting people, E.F. Knipling (1953) says that the chemical saved 5 million human lives and prevented 100 million serious illnesses due to malaria, typhus, dysentery and more than 20 other insect-borne diseases.

C.A. Edwards (1973) credits DDT for having been the precursor of what are collectively called “Second Generation Pesticides”, which are chlorinated pesticides that include “popular” but very poisonous chemicals some of which are sometimes called the “Dirty Dozen” such as Chlordane, Aldrin, Dieldrin, Heplachlor, Endosulphan and Endrin. DDT itself belongs to the Dirty Dozen. This should remind one of the so-called Dirty Environment-based diseases -tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, dysentery anthrax and food poisoning. Therefore, if the Dirty Dozen and Dirty Environment-Based Diseases are in a country's environment, then that environment is dirty indeed! It is not fit for human survival. This might partly explain our fast declining life expectancy just as we talk of a gross national product (GDP) of 7% per annum.

 

The Dirty Dozen and related types were followed by the introduction of the highly toxic anti-cholinesterases or organophosphoruses, such as Parathion, Malathion, Fenthion and Phorate, and the carbonates such as carbaryl and the Polychlorocaphenes (Toxaphene) in the human environment. Therefore, by the time the global humanity came to grips with the unfolding ecological-environmental crisis when the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (1972) resulted in the formation of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), our environment had become too polluted by these and numerous other chemicals in use in the agricultural and health sectors of the global economy.

We must mention the now famous book “The Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson, which was published in 1962 and really acted as the eye-opener to the unfolding environmental crisis. As Professor Banage puts it in his 1978 article on pesticides, it was Carson 's book, which “unequivocally highlighted for the general public the dangers inherent in the pesticide boom and the gross excesses committed in their use”.

 

The USA is the land of largest pesticide firms such as Aquatics Unlimited and Mossanto. In fact the USA is the giant in DDT production. Automatically, USA also dominates the pesticides market and would be expected to be aggressive in securing global markets for its pesticides. It would make sense to argue that the USA has been the force behind the efforts behind the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the World Trade Agreement (WTA) because it wants unrestricted markets for its products such as pesticides.

 

Indeed D.G. Finalyson and MacCarthy (1973) reported that the USA is a big exporter of pesticides and exported 30 million pounds of DDT alone in 1945 and 300 million pounds of all kinds of pesticides, including DDT, in 1962, the year Uganda obtained political independence from Great Britain .

C.A. Edwards (1973) recorded that pesticide production in the USA rose from 300 million pounds in1954 to 1,200 million pounds in 1973. According to Professor Banage between 1944 and 1978, the USA is reputed to have produced some 3000 million pounds of pesticides, including DDT.D.G. Finlayson and H. R. McCarthy (1973) reported that the USA was not just a big-time producer but also big-time consumer of pesticides, particularly in its agricultural sector, to the tune of 634 million pounds and 960 million pounds in 1962 and 1969 respectively.

 

The USA , therefore, bears a huge responsibility for environmental pollution via pesticide production, home consumption and export. However, when in 1970 the country's Environmental Protection Agency created its Priority List of Poisonous chemicals, DDT included, just as the European Community was creating its own Black List of highly toxic substances, DDT included, DDT was banned and its production restricted along with many other dangerous chemicals.

 

It should, however, be mentioned that many other countries such as China and Japan have developed the capacity to produce pesticides on a large scale, which they consume and also export. For example, it is known that if Japan exports tractors to a given country it attaches a package of pesticides, which that country must accept and pay for along with the tractors.

 

This is one reason we should be suspicious of the much hyped Modernisation Plan for Agriculture (MPA), which the World Bank supports.

Corruption of agricultural development is possible under the World Bank's SHARE Programme. Under this programme, the Bank encourages exchange of staff between itself and the world's transnational corporations, such as those dealing in pesticides. For example it is known that the Biotech giant Aventis has staff members involved in shaping the Bank's agricultural development strategy and policy on biotechnology. It is not difficult to imagine that pesticides companies could exploit this programme to export these chemicals for PMA, of course with the active knowledge of Uganda 's leaders. Since half of all World Bank funds are distributed directly to transnational corporations, why can't it be possible to benefit from the World Bank funding the import of pesticides?

  DDT Usage in Africa

  According to a 2003 publication by Pan UK titled “The Dependency Syndrome: Pesticide Use by African Smallholders”, several African countries still rely on DDT for the control of mosquito vectors of malaria. I think that the bureaucrats of health in Uganda , with the full political weight of the Uganda Government behind them, are using this fact as one of the justifications for reintroduction of DDT in the country's environment.

There is, however, one thing, which is common to all African countries with regard to pesticides usage. Until now Africa hardly has any pesticides control bodies. Our East African Pesticide Control Organisation (EAPCO) created in 1969 is no more or less than an advisory body, which gives advice if sought and, therefore, has no control function. Even the Uganda Bureau of Standards (UBC) is not known to be concerned with pesticides control. This is dangerous because then it means that pesticides use in Uganda is virtually uncontrolled.

Yet according to G.T, Brooks (1974) in his “Chlorinated Pesticides”, the rich countries “will contribute to the development of the poorer ones by providing them with the cheaper, persistent insecticides, while themselves foreswearing these compounds and then paying more for protection employing less persistent types”. Therefore, here is a case of double standards: less persistent pesticides for the rich countries and more persistent pesticides for the poor, who of course are located in Asia, Latin America and Africa .

In 1962 the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), according to M.T. Chandler, rated Uganda and Tanzania to account for almost 25% of the total pesticides used in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, between 1969 -1974, the three countries roughly doubled their consumption [and, therefore, import] of pesticides from 6.4 to 13.1 thousand tones and were expected to quadruple this by 1985.

Uganda had no recorded entry in the FAO 1976 Year Book on pesticide usage, but, according to William Banage, its use of chlorinated hydrocarbons and organophosphoruses doubled from 1967 -1971, with 70% -85% of these being used in Agriculture. However, Cyclodiene Organochlorine insecticides have been used in large amounts against pests of public health and those, which attack crops. Also, apart from DDT, which has not been used in the country for a long time, large quantities of Dieldrin, BHC and Toxaphene have been used in our environment to fight tsetse fly, mosquitoes and ticks, while chlorinated hydrocarbons, organophoruses and carbonates have been used against pests of cotton, coffee, tea, sugarcane, maze, grain legumes and forest trees.

The Secret DDT Spraying Policy and Strategy

  In November 2004 the Uganda Government through the Ministry of Health released what still remains a secret document in the sense that, though a public document, it is accessible to a restrictively small number of people in the Ministry of Health and may be NEMA and the Office of the Prime Minister, and by extension Cabinet. The document by the title “Policy and Strategy for Indoor Residual Spraying Malaria Control Programme” (IRS-MCP) is targeting reintroduction of in our environment, ostensibly to fight Anopheles mosquito, the vector of Plasmodium, the causative agent for malaria and thereby control the disease where other methods have failed.

This proposed instrument, which the Ministry of Health is very keen to implement or apply without adequate public discussion of its merits and demerits or costs and benefits and which I accidentally came across recently does not mention what role the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA), the institutional governor of our country's environment, played in its conception and design. Neither does it give any evidence that both environmental impact assessment (EIA) and cost-benefit analysis of DDT usage to fight malaria in the country were done to establish the comparative advantages or disadvantages of each of the available methods and how DDT emerged the most appropriate and most effective in our fast-changing environment. However, lobbying by the Ministry of Health among some Members of Parliament earned statements in the Press by some legislators who were ready to put their reputations at stake by expressing support for DDT usage without taking advantage of critical and reflective thought.

Apparently lack of critical and reflective thought in Uganda 's Parliament is a growing cancer largely responsible for legislation that has produced many laws that have ended up disempowering citizens in diverse ways, to the detriment of their being fit to be part of 21 st Century humanity. Broad public questioning of dubious policies and strategies is extremely rare and so government can always do some anti-people things without expecting a serious backlash except a little inconvenience from the excessively politically-developed Hon. Ken Lukyamuzi. At every opportunity Lukyamuzi has come up against anti-people actions of Government knowing fully well the less politically developed Ugandans -who in my view are the majority -will always ridicule him the same way Jesus was ridiculed in his time by people who had never seen God.

NEMA was reported to have participated in a research undertaking, which supposedly “scientifically” came to the conclusion that there was no serious problem with DDT usage against our obviously stubborn four species of Anopheles mosquito. Actually what was said to be a joint statement by researchers from the Ministry of Health and NEMA who ostensibly composed the research team on DDT was carried in the Press. However, for reasons not revealed to the public, NEMA, without accusing the Ministry of Health of smuggling its credibility into the DDT quagmire, said that it had not made a decision on whether or not to endorse the DDT option, but instead a committee chaired by the Prime Minister had been set up to make that decision.

What NEMA hid from the public were the facts that (i) it was not aware of the Ministry of Health having carried out an EIA and cost-benefit analysis on DDT usage that could be submitted to the public for review; and (ii) the said committee is actually a permanent “political” policy committee of NEMA composed of every line Ministry, including the Ministry of Health.

Therefore, there was no way the Ministry of Health would have gone on with its plans to reintroduce DDT in our environment without the knowledge of the Prime Minister and his entire Cabinet, let alone the bureaucracy of NEMA itself. It is my well-considered view that all were an integral part of the circle of secrecy on the planned DDT usage.

Critiques of the DDT Policy and Strategy  

In fact Minister of Information, Nsaba Buturo, told the world that “Government believes that DDT is very useful in the fight against malaria” and went on to say that tests had been done to prove that “the chemical is not harmful as long as it is sprayed selectively”. Then to complete the circle of conspiracy, Alex Kamugisha, who was Minister of State for Primary Health, was reported in the Press saying that “All problems and adverse effects put against DDT have never been proven, therefore, they are untrue” and adding the big lie that “we are going to train special people with the method of use; DDT will never come anywhere near the food chain”. It was, therefore, clear that the DDT plot against the health of Ugandans was a government idea, not just the Ministry of Health.

The plotters in the highest echelons of political power were, therefore, determined to ignore voices like that of Professor William Banage or Dr Sandrah Cooper who urged restraint, warning that DDT would accumulate in vital organs like liver and exacerbate risks of cancer or Alaster Taylor, Country Manager (Uganda) of Export Promotion of organic Products from Africa who was quoted in the Monitor of December 20 2004 advising that “If Government wanted to use DDT, they have to think about the side effects it will bring. The Ministries of Agriculture and Health have to work together to find an alternative drug”.

What has happened in the case of DDT is reminiscent of the circle of secrecy and conspiracy involving the Uganda Government, NEMA, the hydropower energy consulting firms, such as Acres International of Canada, the World Bank and AES Inc concerning the construction of the ill-fated Bujagali dam, and another involving the Uganda Government EIA consultants and the American pesticides firm, Aquatics Unlimited, to spray Lake Victoria, ostensibly to eradicate water hyacinth.

The “partners in energy development” are busy evoking the same circle of secrecy and conspiracy to try and revive the Bujagali dam project without tackling the concerns raised by environmental groups such as Save Bujagali Crusade (SBC) and the National Association of Professional Environmentalists (NAPE). In fact on December 21 Ministry of Energy and Minerals Development, Kaliisa-Kabagambe, reiterated, in a dialogue at the Offices of the World Bank in Kampala between the World Bank, NAPE and Government, and in which permanent Bank's Chief Financial Analyst, Karen Rasmussen, participated by teleconferencing from Washington, that the Uganda Government had already invested too much in Bujagali and was, therefore, determined to go ahead with the project.

Without any reflective thought, Kaliisa-Kabagambe, who was leader of the Government side in the dialogue, responded to NAPE's suggestion that it was imprudent to proceed with justifying Bujagali using an aging EIA that in the first place was engineered for the purpose of environmentally whitewashing the project by saying that “It [the EIA] is still alright and since it is too expensive to carry out another EIA Government will simply have the old EIA patched up and proceed with the dam”!

 

Fortunately when the Ministry of Health announced that it was to commence its chemical assault on Anopheles mosquito in citizens' homes without first consulting them, there were some Ugandans who were not ready to take this at its face value. They questioned the hurried manner in which the proponents of DDT usage wanted to implement their project, which they were baptising a “national undertaking”.

In his article “What is driving DDT use in malaria fight” published in the Monitor of December 27 2004, Frank Mutagubya asked, “If it is not corruption-driven interests that are driving Uganda Government's (Read Ministry of Health officials) to push for the importation and utilization of DDT to spray mosquitoes despite strong criticisms and warnings both from within Uganda and from some countries that buy our agricultural produce, then what is it?” He listed some of the reported negative attributes of DDT that should be reason enough for halting the DDT plot, including: chronic toxicity, carcinogenic effects, organic toxicity and its tendency to transform slowly in animal systems. He then wondered why the Uganda Farmers Association and the Uganda Export Promotion Board were buried in dead silence yet if the DDT project was implemented, it would be they to face the greatest threat in case our products were rejected by, say, the European Community. Apparently the EC has warned Government twice about DDT usage.

Makerere University Environmental Planning and Management lecturer and an avid environmentalist, Oweyegha-Afunaduula, in his article “An environmentalist's view of the Great DDT Debate” carried in The Monitor of 22 January and continued in The Monitor of 24 January 2005 under the title “An environmentalist's view of DDT usage” re-echoed Mutagubya's views from the environmental viewpoint. He said, “…spraying [of DDT] never saved me from now and again succumbing to malaria until the chemical was withdrawn from the market more than four decades ago. I still succumb to malaria….our domestic friends -mosquitoes, cockroaches, bedbugs, houseflies and others…contributed to the biodiversity of the time, somehow learnt how to defeat the chemical and are still going along with as. He then observed that in the official Ministry of Health statement exonerating DDT from causing any harm to humans, there was no mention of why DDT failed to eradicate the known four species of Anopheles mosquito. Reminding readers of the Japanese nuclear catastrophe in the 2 nd World War involving the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose descendants are the ones suffering the consequences of biomagnification of nuclear pollution, he warned similar consequences with DDT pollution.

Crystallising anti-DDT usage into civic action, environmentalists Ken Lukyamuzi and Oweyegha-Afunaduula co-led a peaceful demonstration in the streets of Kampala on 28 th January 2005. One placard read “Even Idi Amin did not like DDT”. The demonstration culminated into speeches at the Independence Square near the Queen's Clock Tower. Virtually all speakers condemned corruption of Government's Malaria Control Programme and the planned intentional poisoning of citizens by the Ministry of Health. Ken Lukyamuzi intimated that Government was conspiring with the American Pesticides firm, Mossanto, to reintroduce DDT for business and profit purposes on the part of some Government officials and the firm. He revealed that the firm had just been fined heavily for bribing Government officials in the Philippines to secure market for its deadly chemicals. On the other hand Oweyegha-Afunaduula led the demonstrators in a 5-minute episode of crying for Uganda 's wantonly and senselessly degraded environment. He said that this degradation should be attributed to ill-conceived, self-interested, profit-motivated development policies and projects that are, therefore, anti-social and anti-people.

Public Ignorance on DDT

  Unfortunately much public ignorance about DDT and its negative effects on humans and the environment still remains. It is this ignorance, in my view, which the Uganda Government and Mossanto in general and the Ministry of Health in particular want to exploit as a resource in their push for reintroducing DDT in Uganda 's environment. Apparently this ignorance is widespread among academics, intellectuals, policy-makers, legislators, the Uganda Farmers Association and the Uganda Export promotion Board, among others. This seems to partly explain why there is a deep sea of silence on the looming DDT menace, although even before the advent of the DDT debate there were concerns that there was politically-created silence and fear and, therefore, painful docility among Ugandans.

The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants  

As I pointed out in my previous article on DDT, this chemical is one of the persistent pesticides –pesticides that show complete stability in the environment if purposely or accidentally introduced and, therefore, recalcitrant. Because of this property, these pesticides are often referred to as recalcitrant chemicals. However, there are degrees of recalcitrance defined by the reference time-scales employed, The herbicide 2, 4-D, which was the candidate chemical against water hyacinth on Lake Victoria, is readily biodegradable. I stated in my previous article that if used at recommended field application rates it is removed from the environment over a period of 2-4 weeks. However, DDT is extremely recalcitrant in the environment, taking 3-15 years to degrade.

Every Ugandan should be aware that there is what is called “the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants”. Every Ugandan should also know that under this Convention, DDT is being phased out internationally. The chemical is no longer permitted for use in agriculture. However, the Convention does not seem to apply to the health sector.

Furthering the DDT Debate

During a recent Monitor Kfm DDT debate, which pitied Professor Francis Omaswa and others from the Ministry of Health against Professor William Banage of the Zoology Department, Makerere University , the bureaucrats of health reasoned that since DDT was prohibited for use in Agriculture there was no reason why it should not be used in the health sector in Uganda . In a veiled attempt to mislead citizens, the Omaswa group evoked the near successful stories of DDT use against Anopheles mosquito in Greece , South Africa and parts of Asia, but failed to mention that these areas were menaced by only one species unlike Uganda which has four species of the Anopheles mosquito, which survived chemical assault before.

Speaking the broad language of ecologists and environmentalists, which emphasises the survival value of even those species regarded as pests that accrues from coexistence, interconnectivity and interdependence in the ecosystems, Professor Banage reasoned that, like before, DDT will not win

a chemical warfare, however prolonged, against Anopheles mosquito. He re-echoed Oweyegha-Afunaduula's view that being part of the complex food chains and food webs, which may be so stable, it is close to wishful thinking to say that DDT would only harm Anopheles mosquito without doing the same to other members of the food chains and food webs, let alone to future generations of humans and other being through biomagnification.

The natural-ecological reality of the preponderance of sickle-cell anaemia in parts of Buganda and Busoga is also ignored in the spraying strategy of the bureaucrats of health. People who mildly suffer from sickle-cell anaemia do not suffer from malaria. Therefore, as Oweyegha-Afunaduula intimated in his The Monitor article of 22 nd January mentioned elsewhere in this particular article, nature is unlikely to cooperate with forces seeking to completely eradicate Anopheles mosquito.

There is no evidence to show that the bureaucrats of health ever planned to deal with these issues in their DDT spraying strategy. Therefore, it is as if the proponents of DDT have simply declared chemical warfare against all life in general and the future generations of humans in particular.

One would have expected to hear voices of restraint from the academic environmentalists at the Makerere University Institute of Environment and Natural Resources (MUIENR) or the bureaucrats of science at the Uganda Council of Science and Technology (UCSC), but like has been the case in earlier debates on water hyacinth, large dams, Namanve and Butamira forests, and the Kalangala Oil Palm project, among other debates of environmental interest, the two institutions have kept 100% silence. Is it a case of the conspiracy of the elite? True silence can be golden but it can also be extremely harmful as the Hitler and Rwanda debacles vividly taught humankind.

  Futures

  If we go by press reports, the politicians and bureaucrats of health are determined to reintroduce DDT in our environment as equally as environmentalists are determined to see that this does not happen. It is as if development and environment are enemies yet they are two sides of the same thing: progress. Environmentalists have seen Government bull-dosing ill-conceived projects such as the polio immunization project at the end of the decade of the 1980s, Owen Falls Extension Dam, Water hyacinth spray project and, recently, the testing of AIDS/HIV vaccine without broad public approval. The costs of such projects have proved to be far in excess of their benefits thus making them emerge as white elephant projects.

And Government has tended and continues to perceive and to believe that by questioning the development value and human content of such projects, environmentalists are simply against development. Yet the environmentalists want to enhance the development relevance and social responsibility of and, therefore, reduce the tendency of Government to undertake, anti-people, anti-social projects. It is the belief of environmentalists that Government is a public trustee that does not own the country's environment but is expected to work with the owners -the citizens -to ensure that it remains conducive for them and other beings to survive in. In this case, environmentalists want to ensure that Government plays its role in such away that development is a public rather than a corporate good and that, therefore, it is humanly and environmentally relevant.

Going by the facts on DDT use in Ethiopia , however, Ugandans of ecological and environmental orientation are likely to continue being apprehensive of DDT usage. The Ethiopian Ministry of Health, like the Uganda Ministry of Health has chosen to do, introduced Indoor residual Spraying (IRS) of DDT to fight malaria. Like Uganda 's politicians and bureaucrats of health intend to do, their counterparts in Ethiopia combined this method with environmental sanitation, anti-larval chemical control and insecticide treated mosquito bed nets. According to PAN UK study mentioned elsewhere in this article, misuse of DDT in Ethiopia has been a problem on farms and in households. Some peasants applied mixtures of concentrated DDT, often with Malathion, to combat head lice and even attempted to cure open wounds by applying the chemical. It will be interesting to learn how the Ministry of Health in Uganda intends to prevent all this happening.

In Ethiopia , personal protective equipment and facilities were inadequate, thereby the spray team staff being highly exposed to DDT risks. Also (i) DDT stores had no washing facilities; (ii) first aid kits or fire extinguishers were lacking; (iii) some stores were totally inadequate for pesticide storage or poorly managed; (iv) record-keeping on DDT usage was poor; (v) quality and quantity of health service information on control operations was incomplete and inadequate for proper analysis for proper analysis; (vi ) actual dosage of DDT sprayed on interior walls was often found higher than the recommended 2g/m2; and (vii) DDT diversions through thefts from the malaria programme to private sale for other purposes were common.

These observations are very relevant to Uganda where health workers are underpaid and corruption has become both a cancer and national catastrophe in virtually every sector of the economy. Here money has been easily diverted from socially-relevant projects to anti-social uses such as war or construction of houses for the corrupt that of course tend to be highly placed in Government.

The TEN MILLION DOLLAR question is how has the Ministry of Health in Uganda planned or arranged to tackle these multiple, interconnected, interdependent and complex issues related to DDT usage? This question must be adequately answered in view of the mushrooming concern about DDT usage. Moreover, just like as found in the case of Ethiopia, current malaria policy may be acceptable to some in the short-term, but the hazard of DDT to humans, livestock and the natural environment, including soil, water and all other living things, in the long term must be borne in mind. This is what bothers environmentalists: no one in the Ministry of Health or Government is taking all this as critical.