Taking the lead among the countries of Latin America, the Mexican government on 16 July 1997 unveiled a program designed to phase out all uses of the pesticides DDT and chlordane within 10 years. Calling for an 80% reduction in the use of DDT over the next five years, cessation of additional uses by the year 2007, and elimination of the use of chlordane by December 1998, Mexico hopes its experience will provide a model for other Latin American and Caribbean countries attempting to reduce their own dependence on organochlorine pesticides.
The specific elements of the program as they relate to each chemical are contained in a North American Regional Action Plan (NARAP) for each chemical. The NARAPs were drafted by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), a Montreal-based intergovernmental organization that is jointly administered by Carol Browner, administrator of the U.S. EPA; Julia Carabias, minister of the Environment, Natural Resources, and Fisheries of Mexico; and Christine Stewart, minister of Environment Canada. The CEC was created to coordinate the agenda of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation, which serves as a complement to the environmental provisions established under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
DDT, which has long been banned in both the United States and Canada, still finds limited use in Mexico as part of the country's arsenal in the war against the Anopheles mosquito, carrier of the Plasmodium parasite that causes malaria. Approximately 60% of the Mexican territory, representing an area inhabited by close to 45 million people, provides an environment suitable for malaria transmission. According to Cristina Cortinas de Nava, coordinator of the Union of Chemical Substances and Environmental Evaluation at the Mexican National Institute of Ecology in Mexico City, the NARAP for DDT will build upon the country's existing malaria control program--which has successfully reduced the annual incidence of the disease from 2.4 million cases in the 1940s and 1950s to approximately 5,000 cases today--while simultaneously reducing annual domestic DDT production and use from 25,000 tons to a production rate of approximately 600 tons. The use of DDT is presently restricted to selected government-authorized applications in dwellings.
Much of the success of Mexico's malaria control program (there have been no recorded deaths from malaria since 1982) is due to improvements in sanitation, increased disease surveillance, and integrated pest management schemes that focus pesticide applications on critical habitats and stages in the mosquito's life cycle. According to de Nava, the NARAP will use these proven strategies while conducting experimental pilot studies on alternatives to DDT. Such alternatives include biological control agents such as larval parasites and adult predators, microbial products such as Bacillus thuringiensis, and other less persistent pesticides such as pyrethroids. Additionally, the NARAP calls for increased community involvement in the malaria control program, increased enforcement against illegal uses of DDT, and restrictions on transborder movement of malaria-infected populations.
That Mexico has been able to successfully limit the spread of malaria while simultaneously reducing the use of DDT leaves de Nava hopeful about eliminating the pesticide's use altogether. "I'm very optimistic; the campaign has already made great strides," she said. "The problem is one of economics--alternatives can cost up to three times as much as DDT, and we need to be sure that the alternatives don't pose risks [that are greater than] those posed by DDT."
Use in Mexico of chlordane, which is banned from use in the United States and Canada, is limited to urban applications for the control of termites. Until recently, Mexico imported approximately 45 tons of chlordane annually from the United States (where it is legal to manufacture it). Under the NARAP for chlordane, however, Mexico intends to deplete its existing stocks and will no longer allow imports of the pesticide. Furthermore, Velsicol, the sole U.S. manufacturer of chlordane, announced in May of this year that it had voluntarily ceased production at all of its national and international facilities.
Under the NARAP for chlordane, a multi-phase regulatory program has been initiated that focuses primarily on the development of an integrated termite control strategy, prohibition of importation, environmental monitoring and risk assessment of chlordane-exposed individuals, monitoring of existing stocks, and cancellation of the existing registration for use in Mexico.
According to Andrew Hamilton, scientific director of the CEC, Mexico will look to agencies within the United States and Canada for both technical expertise in implementing the NARAPs and assistance in obtaining funding. "Involvement by U.S. and Canadian agencies will help to strengthen proposals geared toward international lending agencies such as the World Bank," he said. "For example, the U.S. Agency for International Development [USAID] has had significant experience from its work in the tropics." The USAID can be of direct assistance to Mexico in terms of providing expertise in malaria control and they can also help by directly acting as co-sponsors for grant proposals to the World Bank.
Hamilton reaffirmed Mexico's commitment to eliminating its use of organochlorines, and stated that among the incentives for terminating the pesticides' use is a desire to take part in the international effort to reduce the migration of persistent chemicals to arctic environments. "The idea of a tropical country taking an active role in the Arctic won't go unnoticed," he said.
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