Effect Of Ddt On Mosquito

Control

rpHE new insecticide called for con- X venience, DDT, recently was taken off the Allied secret list and news stories about its efficacy in insect control made the headlines in most overseas magazines simultaneously. So revolution ary has this powder proved that it was regarded by the Allies as a munition of war and all details were kept a close secret. It is said that the new powder “promised to do in the realms of eco nomic entomology what sulpha drugs have done in medicine.”

In Europe it has been used to kill bed bugs, flies, lice, cockroaches, ants and caterpillars. But of particular interest to residents of the Pacific is the way in which it kills mosquito larvae.

In the Fiji “Agricultural Journal” for September, a description is given of how a few ounces were received in Suva by airmail last January, and how the follow ing experiments were made:

Two drums were filled with water, and one was sprayed with a non-volatile oil and the other with a solution of DDT in oil. After seven weeks, mosquito eggs were found in the drum sprayed with oil, but after 12 weeks no eggs had appeared in the drum containing oil and DDT.

A disused air-raid shelter containing water to a depth of two feet was treated with DDT in Diesel oil, and the follow ing day no larvae could be found.

The last experiment was made in a patch of swampy and weedy ground, partially covered with twigs and grass cuttings, which had been reported by the nearest householder as being a breeding place for night-biting mosquitoes. DDT was applied, both in a solution in oil and by dusting the dry powder on the affected area. Two days later the site was re examined and no larvae could be found.

“It is seen from the foregoing,” says the Journal report, “that this substance is quite suitable as a mosquito larvicide in Fiji, even with its rainfall of 120 inches per. year (Suva) and a humidity of 74 to 84 per cent.”

It was reported in Sydney in November that Captain Peter Brewer, of ANGAU, and formerly a well-known member of the Papuan Public Service, had been killed in a plane accident. His wife and child live in Canberra.

Messrs. Vic. Maxwell and Gordon Russell, as members of the Production Board staff (ANGAU), are now trying to get some organisation and movement back into the planting industry, on the north Coast of New Guinea. They are meeting many difficulties.