04-15-2002 Chlorine: Saving Lives Against Disease

Since it was first used on a large scale to disinfect water in America in 1908, chlorine has helped defeat some of the deadliest diseases of the past 100 years.

Cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery and other waterborne diseases were serious health issues at the start of the 20th century, but the chlorination of water has virtually eliminated these threats and helped increase life expectancy in America by more than 50 percent.

Deadly illnesses such as malaria and encephalitis have also been all but eradicated in many areas, thanks in part to the use of chlorine-based pesticides – one of the most effective and inexpensive ways to deal with mosquitoes and other insects that spread disease.

Making Water Safe to Drink

Waterborne diseases are relatively rare in the United States, where Life magazine hailed the chlorination of public water supplies as one of the 100 most important health advancements of the 20th century.

However, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 25,000 people throughout the world die every day from waterborne diseases. Every year, nearly 1.5 billion people – mostly children under five – suffer from preventable waterborne diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, amoebic dysentery, bacterial gastroenteritis, Giardiasis, schistosomiasis, and viral diseases such as Hepatitis A.

Chlorine offers a proven and affordable method for providing safe drinking water. As one of the most significant successes in public health protection, chlorination has played a critical role in eliminating waterborne diseases and protecting the world’s drinking water supply and public health for more than 100 years.

A World Without Chlorine
Case Study: Peru

A recent example of the continuing public health threat from waterborne disease outbreaks occurred in Peru in 1991, where a major causative factor was the absence or inadequacy of drinking water disinfection.

The result: a five-year epidemic of cholera, its first appearance in the Americas in this century. The epidemic spread to 19 Latin American countries and has been only partially abated through public health interventions and technical assistance. More than a million cases and 12,000 deaths have been reported.

A Powerful Weapon Against Infectious Disease

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), infectious diseases account for 63 percent of the deaths of children under four years old, and more than one-third of all deaths in the global population. Many of these diseases, including malaria, dengue fever, lymphatic filarisis, leishmaniasis, river blindness, sleeping sickness and Chagas disease are transmitted via insects or parasites.

Most of the pesticides that play a vital role in preventing the spread of such diseases use chlorine in the manufacturing process. The few that do not are usually prohibitively expensive for developing countries. Less developed areas of Africa, Asia and South America rely upon the limited use of substances such as DDT to protect the public from disease-carrying pests.

By WHO’s most conservative estimates, more than 500 million people are infected with malaria every year and more than one million children under the age of five die from malaria or related complications. That’s roughly one child every 30 seconds. As strains of the disease become increasingly drug-resistant, the use of organochlorine pesticides remains one of the most effective ways to prevent infection.

Over the objections of local doctors and scientists in the affected regions, environmental activists have promoted policies to stop all uses of organochlorine pesticides. In areas where DDT and other pesticides are no longer used, malaria rates have soared.

In Sri Lanka in 1948 there were 2.8 million cases of malaria annually. The use of DDT brought this number down to just 17 cases in 1963. However, when the substance was banned malaria rates skyrocketed within five years back to more than 2.5 million cases per year, and have remained high ever since.

With international travel becoming more and more common, public health and disease control must be regarded from a global perspective. The United States, while safer than many countries, is not invulnerable to diseases that may travel from abroad, as the spread of the West Nile virus has illustrated.