Evidence of impacts from DDT in pelican, cormorant, stork, and egret eggs from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Associations between prenatal exposure to DDT and DDE and allergy symptoms and diagnoses in the Venda Health Examination of Mothers, Babies and their Environment (VHEMBE), South Africa

“…For instance, residues of DDT, dichlorodiphenyl dichloroethane (DDD) and dichlorodiphenyl dichloroethylene (DDE) (DDT"s breakdown products) were found in water, sediment, vegetables and tissue samples collected from domestic chickens, wild birds and fish in the Limpopo Province of South Africa (18)(19)(20). Other parts of South Africa also reported high concentrations of DDT in birds (21)(22)(23), bird eggs (23)(24)(25), and fish (26,27).…”

Regional Scale Risk to the Ecological Sustainability and Ecosystem Services of an African Floodplain System

“…If the RRM‐BN are unpacked the key determinants of these response are considered to be habitat availability and the vulnerability of selected components of the ecosystem to disturbance to wildlife and toxicity drivers (Birds_habitat and Birds_tox_exposure nodes). This has been confirmed through hypotheses development and testing (Bouwman et al., 2019; Smit et al., 2016). Although the endpoints for the maintenance of bird and fish biodiversity as well as the subsistence fisheries considered here are similar, the bird biodiversity is relatively more intolerant of the stressors associated with resource use in the floodplain (Smit et al., 2016).…”

“…This foundation research has contributed to the understanding of the dynamics of ecosystem functioning and the impacts of the dam and associated altered flood and flow releases on the integrity of the system Merron et al., 1993 Then in the 1990s and 2000s a shift in research occurred toward the social and ecological interactions, with a new emphasis on the characterization of ecosystems services, local community requirements, threat of pollutants to the health of communities, and the management of conflicts between regulators and local resource users (Bouwman et al., 1990; Breen et al., 1998; Heeg & Breen, 1994; Jaganyi et al., 2008; McCartney et al., 2003; Thompson et al., 2017; Yohannes et al., 2017). In the 2000s and 2010s many gaps in our understanding of specific biology, ecology, ecotoxicology, and socioecological issues were addressed (Bouwman et al., 2019; Coetzee et al., 2015; Dube et al., 2017; Evans & Bouwman, 2000; Nkhata, Breen, Hay, & Wilkinson, 2017; Volschenk et al., 2019; Wepener et al., 2012; Wolmarans et al., 2018). This research has culminated with ecosystem service and poverty alleviation plan development (Lankford et al., 2011) the implementation of South African water resource management measures to establish the Ecological Reserve and associated Environmental Flow requirements for the Phongolo Floodplain (Brown et al., 2018; Dube et al., 2015; DWS, 2014).…”

Agrochemicals in freshwater systems and their potential as endocrine disrupting chemicals: A South African context

“…Most OCPs have been extensively applied in the agriculture sector since the 1940s in South Africa ( Araki et al , 2018 ) and are known EDCs ( Olisah et al , 2019 ; Martyniuk et al , 2020 ). In 2004 South Africa became party to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and banned the unregulated use of OCPs, although regulated use of DDT as a vector control for the eradication of malaria is still permitted (Bouwman et al, 2004, 2019 ; Buah-Kwofie and Humphries, 2017 ; Yahaya et al , 2017 ; Pheiffer et al , 2018 ). Organochlorine pesticides were the most widely applied pesticides and can be divided into three main classes: dichlorodiphenylethanes (DDT and its metabolites, dicofol, perthane, metolachlor), chlorinated cyclodienes (aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, chlordane, endosulfan, heptachlor), chlorinated benzenes and cyclohexanes (chlordecone, hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), mirex, and toxaphene) ( Taiwo, 2019 ).…”