Posted on 05/07/2003 8:19:33 PM PDT by Oorang
Activists protest use of pesticides against West Nile
OTTAWA (CP) — A new coalition is calling for a non-toxic strategy to deal with the West Nile virus, warning that chemical pesticides will do more harm than good.
Spraying chemicals such as malathion to kill adult mosquitoes doesn't reduce their populations for more than a few days, Meg Sears of the Canadian Coalition for Health and Environment told a news conference today.
"When you spray mosquitoes with malathion you have a very temporary lull in the mosquito population and the population comes back in three or four days," she said.
"In the meantime you have affected all the predators of mosquitoes."
The coalition of more than a dozen regional and national environmental groups came together specifically to advocate for safer ecological strategies to fight the mosquito-borne virus.
Sears said Winnipeg's reputation as the mosquito capital of Canada "may not be unrelated to the fact that they spray more pesticides for mosquitoes than anywhere else and they've been doing it for decades."
Larvicides such as methoprene, proposed for widespread use in Ontario, kill not only mosquitoes but also beneficial insects, she said.
Environmentalists say it would be preferable to use Bt, a naturally occurring bacterium. "Bt is specific to mosquitoes and black flies whereas methoprene will affect all invertebrates."
In Toronto, city officials insisted that methoprene is the least toxic of all pesticides available for use against mosquitoes.
Sheela Basrur, Toronto's medical officer of health, said the larvicide will be put in 175,000 catch basins this summer as part of the city's $1.6-million West Nile program to combat the disease.
City officials said the chemical is not expected to reach natural water bodies "in any amount that would have a negative impact" but promised an impact assessment after the mosquito season.
Sears said some municipalities would prefer to use Bt but methoprene is the only larvicide approved for use against mosquitoes by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment.
She said methoprene will be put into thousands of catch basins in Ottawa and Toronto, and there won't be monitoring at the outfalls.
And she argued that if methoprene makes it into water treatment plants, it mixes with chlorine to create long-lasting toxic chemicals.
The coalition says the best strategy is to eliminate standing water, which can be used by mosquitoes for breeding.
"One of the most important things is for everybody to clean out their eavestroughs and make sure that there is no standing water on their roofs, pick up all the coffee cups under the bushes in the park."
Environmentalists say cosmetic use of pesticides should be discouraged because it kills mosquito-eating insects such as dragonflies.
"We need as allies the myriad of species that are much better at killing mosquitoes than we are," Sears said.
"In Toronto there are enough pesticides running off all the lawns to kill all the dragonflies and to seriously harm all the amphibians in the Don and Humber rivers."
"People need an immune system to fight West Nile virus and the environment needs an immune system — and the environment's immune system is biodiversity. Every time you add pesticides you decrease biodiversity."
pick up all the coffee cups under the bushes in the park :-)
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