Originally published September 8 2005
Pesticide spraying for West Nile in Sacramento causes concern among residents
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Residents of Sacramento are shutting themselves in at night while trucks cruise their neighborhoods spraying pesticide in an effort to reduce the risk of West Nile virus spreading through infected mosquitoes, but Sign On San Diego reports that some residents are complaining that they don't get enough warning about the sprayings and they fear the health risks from exposure.
It's just after dusk when three municipal pickup trucks, orange lights flashing, begin their slow roll through a quiet neighborhood, pumping out a fog of sweet-smelling pesticide.
It is a scene displayed almost nightly in California's capital, which has become the epicenter of the state's fight this summer against West Nile virus.
Advertisement The program to control disease-carrying mosquitoes also includes the state's first aerial spraying of pesticides over an urban area in more than 20 years.
Many residents have resigned themselves to the nightly intrusion, but others have denounced the pesticide program as raining toxins on their homes with little warning and few safety assurances.
By Friday, authorities had documented 47 West Nile infections in Sacramento County, nearly twice as many as any other county in the state, according to the state Department of Health Services.
Mosquito control officials say that in some areas as many as 20 of every 1,000 mosquitoes carry the disease, an infection rate four times the level considered to be an epidemic.
Agency Director David Brown ordered airplanes to blanket 71,000 acres of northern Sacramento County with 765 gallons of the pesticide known as pyrethrin and an activation agent called Piperonyl butoxide.
Brown said he hoped to exterminate nearly 80 percent of adult mosquitoes in the spray zone, which includes the city, surrounding towns and unincorporated pockets of the county.
Californians haven't seen a widespread urban aerial spraying campaign since 1981, when the state's battle against the Mediterranean fruit fly sparked a public outcry and political firestorm for then-Gov.
Brown's critics said the Medfly spread across California because he subsequently gave in to neighborhood activists and environmentalists, delaying the spraying program.
The pyrethrins used in the Sacramento area are derived from chrysanthemums and are common in bug and flea sprays.
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