Tonight should be interesting... the city crews are coming to spray Malathion in my neighbourhood tonight between 10 PM and 6 AM. The last time this happened three summers ago, there were street protests blockading the fogging trucks and a couple of people were arrested. I have no clue what will happen tonight. The difference between then and now is that tonight's fogging has been ordered by the Province of Manitoba due the detection of
West Nile Virus (WNV) (spread by mosquitoes) in dead birds. Last time it was about spraying to kill nuisance mosquitoes that made it unpleasant to be outside.
In order to understand this whole kerfuffle, there are a few things you have to understand:
* Winnipeg has nasty mosquitoes most summers. The city is at the junction of two rivers on flat land that used to be the bottom of an old glacial lake thousands of years ago. The soils have a lot of clay and hold water like crazy. It is prone to flooding and prior to the last 100 years, used to have a ton of wetlands on it. When it gets wet and hot (30C+) in the summer like this year, it's like a mosquito Club Med. A week or so ago trap counts in one part of the city were 3,392. The traps do not attract WNV-carrying mosquitos, which are monitored using a different system by the province.
* Over the last few years, Winnipeg has come up with a new
mosquito control policy which includes a strong belief in Integrated Pest Management. This means that the City Entymologist and crews try to use biological controls and very targetted treatments to try to keep mosquito populations under control. This year, they even tried putting minnows and dragonfly larvae around the city to help eat the mosquito larvae. They also use a more complex formula to decide when they have to spray for adult mosquitos. Rather than just spraying once there were more than 100 bugs in a light trap on any given night, they now take things like soil moisture and the life cycle of the mosquitos into account (or 25 for 3 consecutive nights, which is what happened last summer after our new mayor came in and the old entymologist quit).
* Winnipeg is the only major city in Canada that sprays for adult mosquitos using
Malathion - a nasty chemical which can cause damage to the nervous system and is toxic to fish, honeybees, and aquatic insects -- but which
Health Canada swears is safe if professionals apply it according to the specified directions. Winnipeg's mosquito policy allows residents to register their objection to Malathion and to NOT have it sprayed within 100m of their home. The crews basically plug those addresses into a computer on the trucks and the fogging stops until they get to the end of the buffer zone (go GIS/GPS!!!). My entire neighbourhood has not been sprayed in a few years because so many residents registered for buffer zones (random note: there was some controversy over how activists strategically asked homeowners to register - it only took something like 15% of ths houses to register in order to make spraying impossible in the whole neighbourhood. Some people felt this was rather undemocratic).
* The City's mosquito policy can be overridden if the Province decides that there is a public health reason. West Nile Virus has been declared such a public health emergency - although the information distributed by the province goes out of its way to state "Most people who are bitten by an infected mosquito do not become ill and for those who do, the symptoms are usually mild. In some cases, the virus causes serious illness and sometimes death." In 2003, there were 142 cases of WNV identified; of these 35 were serious, including two deaths. After finding increasing evidence of WNV carrying mosquitos this summer, the province has ordered that Winnipeg has to spray the entire city and that buffer zones are null and void. This means that Wolseley will be sprayed this year.
* West Nile Virus is here in North America for good. There is no evidence from anywhere in the world that you can eradicate it. You can just manage it from year to year.
So what does this all add up to? A serious confusion in my head as to the risks of West Nile Virus vs. Malathion spraying. Both are nasty and can be passed from mother to unborn child. At the end of the day, though, I tend to come down against the spraying in my neighbourhood. Why?
* I can count at least 100 dragonflies zipping around my backyard at the moment eating mosquitos and making me happy. Tomorrow morning, most of the dragonflies will be dead from the Malathion. Goodbye beautiful creatures; goodbye front line of defense for the next batch of mosquitoes that hatch.
* The province has produced no proof that there is a massive infestation of WNV-carrying mosquitos in my neighbourhood. I tend to think that the government owes me data at least before spraying toxic chemicals on my home. Tell me really what my odds are of catching WNV if I am standing in my backyard with (and without) mosquito spray on at different times of the day. I suspect my odds of dying from WNV even if I were standing naked in the yard at dusk are lower than my risk of being killed in a car accident.
* I have an organic garden in my backyard. It's nice to be able to grow your own food and to be able to trust that it is safe. Once they spray out there, I will not feel safe being in contact with my plants (weeding, etc) and will have to take extra precautions washing my lettuce, tomatoes, peas, beans, etc etc to make sure that the chemicals which have settled on them have washed off.
* West Nile Virus is here to stay. At some point, we're going to have to accept it as a new part of our ecosystem - not an emergency crisis. Educate people, yes. But also accept that there will be some deaths and some serious illnesses. Is the province planning on
spraying Malathion over the whole city every year for the next 100 years? That's hardly what I'd call a risk management plan. Or even vaguely cost effective.
I don't know... it's just going to be sad sitting inside the house tonight with all of the windows closed waiting for the trucks to rumble by. It's also going to be sad if the city starts arresting protestors in the street again. I totally understand where they are coming from. But, in arguing with the city to develop the new policy, we all missed the boat and forgot about the Province's ability to unilaterally undo all of our hard-worked for agreements. It's just hard for the average citizen to keep up with and to understand the technical information in enough depth to be able to present viable alternatives to the Province for managing WNV as a public health situation - which is what is really needed now.
