One key chemical tool used to control mosquito-spread malaria in the developing world -- DDT -- has harmful environmental consequences. Now a new article in the journal Nature tells of research on chemicals that may promise to be effective mosquito repellants by blocking the insects' ability to detect carbon dioxide. Malaria kills some 900,000 people a year, most of them children.


Cornelia Dean reports for Dot Earth in the New York Times August 26, 2009. [2]