As New York City relies on pesticides to battle St. Louis encephalitis, it has overlooked new technology for controlling mosquitoes that uses no poisons and eliminates the risk of breeding a pesticide-resistant strain of insect.

Subject: Mosquitoes-----------------
Date:     Wed, 22 Sep 1999 18:35:52 -0400
From:     StephenTvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization:     Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To:     Lyndon Hawkins <hawkins@empm.cdpr.ca.gov>
 

From NYTimes
For educational purposes only!
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September 19, 1999

Lyndon, I thought you might like to read about some other safe alternatives that can effectively solve pest/mosquitoe problems.  (My latest Chapter on Mosquitoes is already being sent around New York with my safe and effective (unregistered) GRAS alternatives. )  --------
New Gun in Mosquito War Gets its Bug Without Poison ---------
Related Article
[Look further down!!!] Lax Monitoring Led to Encephalitis, Experts Suggest By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

     As New York City relies on pesticides to battle St. Louis encephalitis, it has overlooked new technology for controlling mosquitoes that uses no poisons and eliminates the risk of breeding a pesticide-resistant strain of insect.

The device is about the size of a gas barbecue, and it emits a plume of carbon dioxide that attracts mosquitoes. The device then sucks them into a small vacuum, where they dehydrate and die within a day.

American Biophysics, based in East Greenwich, R.I., is marketing the device over the Internet under the name Mosquito Magnet.

The Coast Guard bought six of the devices and has ordered six more for use at its station on Great Inagua in the Bahamas, where the Air Force found the mosquito problem so bad that it decided the island was uninhabitable, said Lieut. Russ Hellstern, a spokesman for the Coast Guard station in Clearwater, Fla.

"Since they put in those mosquito machines, you can actually walk outside without being completely attacked," Lieutenant Hellstern said.  "It's amazing."

The technology was developed during the last seven years by industry and government researchers at the Agricultural Research Service laboratory in Gainesville, Fla., as part of an effort to develop ways to repel insects without using poisons. It was this pest-control unit that invented DEET, the most commonly used insect repellent in America.

"The advances in terms of effectiveness in the last five years are pretty amazing," said Donald R. Barnard, research leader of the Mosquito and Fly Research Unit at the laboratory. He said that about three million pounds of insecticides are released into the atmosphere each year in the United States, and that Americans spend roughly $67 million a year on pest control.

Malathion, the pesticide being used in New York, is considered one of the safest, but Dr. Barnard said a greater risk than the chemical's effect on people was the possibility that mosquitoes might adapt to it and become resistant.

The director of the city's Office of Emergency Management, Jerome M. Hauer, said through a spokesman: "The middle of a crisis is not the time to evaluate new technologies. We are going with technologies recommended by the State Department of Health, the Federal Government, as well as experts in the field." He said the Mayor's office would "be happy to take a look at" alternatives to pesticides in the future.

The model of the device now being produced uses a catalytic converter to turn propane gas into carbon dioxide. A mosquito takes carbon dioxide to be the mark of a blood-bearing mammal, and flies toward what it believes is a meal. Researchers found, however, that an even more powerful attractant was a chemical in the breath of oxen and cattle, and so it was added to the carbon dioxide emitted by the Mosquito Magnet.

Company officials said each machine could control mosquitoes in an area of one acre. Dan Kline, who tests the machines for the Federal Agriculture Department, said the Magnet had been tested only in enclosed areas, where it collected "almost all" the mosquitoes released.

The trap is not likely to solve New York's problem by itself, experts think, but sensible placement of the devices could sharply reduce the need for pesticides and repellents, they say. In a park, for example, they could be put near sewers, drains and ponds, where mosquitoes breed.

A second company, Biosensory Inc., of Willimantic, Conn., is expected to begin producing traps using similar methods next year, said James Nolen, president of the company. His product will look more like an 18-inch-tall bird, and be called the Dragonfly, he said.

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September 19, 1999

Lax Monitoring Led to Encephalitis, Experts Suggest

Related Article
New Gun in Mosquito War Gets its Bug Without Poison
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

     Aside from the loss of life, the most notable feature of the recent outbreak of St. Louis encephalitis in New York City is the virus's ostensible freakishness.

 St. Louis encephalitis had rarely appeared in New York State before the outbreak of late August, in which three people have died, and had never before hit the city. And it swept in with little warning, apparently the distressing but unpreventable result of a bad drought followed by a downpour that bred hardy mosquitoes and an environment in which they  could thrive.

But in many ways, the outbreak is not as surprising -- or as unpreventable -- as officials have maintained.

Indeed, while most experts in health care policy and epidemiology praise the city for deciphering the illness and moving quickly to contain it, they say moves by the city and the  state in recent years may have undercut the governments' ability to fend off the virus.

Long before the virus showed up, for instance, the state had grown lax in its surveillance of mosquitoes and the diseases they carry, said a dozen experts on St. Louis encephalitis.

And in New York City, budget cuts in the early 1990's included a sharp reduction in staff for the Health Department's pest-control unit, despite dire warnings of the health risks that could result, documents show.

The failure to monitor the state's mosquito population may have led to this and other outbreaks, like a small malaria outbreak on Long Island last month, health experts said. And other recent health concerns -- a big E. coli outbreak upstate that stemmed from  contaminated water, for example -- raise questions about the state's preparedness for potential threats.

"These things don't directly have anything to do with each other," said Charles Calisher, a professor of microbiology at Colorado State University who worked for 27 years at the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "But if there were really tight controls and surveillance in the public health system, they would not happen. It is pretty primitive not to be testing water, and with mosquitoes, surveillance has to be maintained."

Most people judge government's response to a public health threat by how well the threat is contained.

They focus on the number of people who fall ill, how fast their conditions are diagnosed, how quickly the sick get well, and how swiftly officials move to stop the spread of an illness, like the pesticide spraying that has been going on in New York. But the most important role of public health departments, experts say, is identifying threats and taking preventive measures.

For example, it is more efficient, safer and less expensive to monitor the state's mosquito population than it is to kill adult mosquitoes after a virus has been detected, experts said. And although the state has a laboratory devoted to studying viruses and the insects that carry them, it failed to conduct tests for St. Louis encephalitis, experts said.

The most common way to detect St. Louis encephalitis is to capture birds and periodically take blood samples, said Robert Novak, a medical entomologist at the University of Illinois.

"The other way is to look at the mosquito population," he said. "The idea is, the closer you get to the source, the faster you can activate control procedures.

"What bothers me is that if you are not monitoring mosquitoes for something, you end up using people as a surveillance tool. That is what happened in New York."

Another task of pest control is locating stagnant pools of water and other places where pests reproduce. Houston, for example, extensively monitors its storm sewers, where it traps mosquitoes, tests them and controls their population before infected ones get to humans.

But in New York City in 1993, under the administration of Mayor David N. Dinkins, the Health Department's budget for pest control was trimmed sharply. In 1991, the program had 270 workers assigned to rat and pest control; in 1993, that number was cut to 128. In a letter to the Mayor, members of the Board of Health wrote, "If nothing is done to remedy  this, we have doubts that a minimal level of public health protection from disease and environmental contaminants can be guaranteed for our city's residents."

The number of pest-control workers increased again in 1997 in response to serious rat infestations in several city neighborhoods, and most of the employees worked on combating that problem.

One former city official said the encephalitis outbreak was "completely predictable," adding, "What happened is that the streets became more dangerous for criminals but safer for mosquitoes and rats."

To be fair, New York City is not like Houston, which was built on a bayou and is regularly bedeviled by mosquitoes. And predicting which diseases will surface is a complicated science.

But several epidemiologists said sophisticated public health departments make a point of monitoring the statewide mosquito population.

"You can't get complacent just because things haven't happened there in the past," said Kellogg Schwab, an environmental microbiologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

While the New York City Health Department was focused on encephalitis, the State Department of Health was overwhelmed by an E.coli outbreak that stemmed from contaminated water at the Washington County Fair in Greenwich.

That outbreak has killed two people and has made hundreds ill.

As a result, the State Health Commissioner, Antonia C. Novello, ordered fairground managers to disinfect and monitor water supplies, and will probably make changes in state regulations regarding water supplies.

Officials suspect that heavy rains caused water contaminated with cow manure from a nearby farm to run into a well serving the fair. That well was not chlorinated; of the 61 fairgrounds in the state, 9 have wells with nonchlorinated water, officials said.

While many public health experts praised Novello's quick moves, some questioned why wells were not regularly monitored and treated already, especially given the recent sharp rise in cases of E.coli contamination nationwide.

"Water should be monitored more carefully in areas where there are indigenous cattle," said Philip Tierno, director of clinical microbiology and immunology at New York University Medical Center.

"We are probably the best among nations with regard to food supply and water sanitation, but nevertheless germs lurk," he said.

The New York City Health Department credits its quick diagnosis of the encephalitis cases to improved communication with doctors in the city.

Marcelle Layton, the assistant health commissioner for communicable diseases, said continued vigilance in tracking mysterious illnesses from the minute they are discovered is the key to containment.

Layton said strong surveillance programs at the state, local and Federal levels are most important when there is no health crisis.

"We need good labs to be able to diagnose rare diseases," he said. "We need good information technology and the ability to take in data. Those are investments that are being made and will be made."

Ultimately, scientists say, it will never be possible to eliminate all risk from things as seemingly harmless as a mere mosquito or a drink purchased at a county fair.

"We are not in a risk-free society," said Schwab at Johns Hopkins. "But deciding what is an acceptable risk: That is the real issue."

Lyndon, I would humbly add that there are more and more risk-free and/or far less toxic solutions that can be used in California and New York and all over this great nation instead of volatile pesticide poisons.   But, there are "some" bureaucrats out there that say you can only use their "registered" poisons!   Even though the pests are already resistant to their poisons and the people and the animals they are supposedly trying to "protect" are getting sick and/or dying.  That is (in my opinion) the real issue and mankind's gratest problem.

Respectfully, Stephen L. Tvedten.

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