08/19/2021
Worried about the toxic and ineffective mosquito pesticides sprayed on our homes and their impact on our children? You should be! Let’s get them banned like South Miami and New York City!
Please join a webinar on August 26th, 6.30pm, with former South Miami mayor Dr Philip Stoddard, Professor of Biological Sciences at FIU.
Dr Stoddard will explain how Miami-Dade’s truck-spraying of synthetic chemical pesticides is not only toxic for our children, our pets and our wildlife, but also ineffective in killing off the biting mosquitos.
Please register below, and share! After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
When: Aug 26, 2021 06:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Topic: Anti-Mosquito Pesticides: Toxic and Ineffective
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qXrk_ik5Q_qtkXwB_wi7SA
Please see below a letter I have sent to the head of Miami-Dade County’s Mosquito Division, Dr Bill Petrie, following a meeting in late June:
Dear Dr. Petrie,
Thank you very much for your time at our meeting in June, when I provided you copies of the two statutes passed in South Miami and New York City mandating the replacement of synthetic chemicals with safer and biodegradable biological pesticides, and invited Miami-Dade County to implement a similar approach in order to cease endangering residents’ health - above all that of our children - as well as that of our fish, butterflies, caterpillars and birds.
I am copying in a number of fellow residents from the Venetian Islands, namely my wife Vilma Tarazona, a reporter at Univision; Melissa Beattie, the president of the Venetian Islands Homeowners Association; Emmanuel Sebag and Michael Krieger, whose pond fish have suddenly died; Dr Sam Gershenbaum, a surgeon, and his wife Andrea Metjova; and Monica Tracy, a real estate agent.
You did not dispute the toxic nature of malathion and chlorpyrifos, the pesticides that Miami-Dade is using to try to kill adult mosquitoes. As I indicated to you, these chemicals were banned in South Miami and New York City as a result of the accumulation of decades of independent evidence which shows they cause us cancer and brain damage, among other chronic conditions which often take many years to manifest. As you know, unborn babies, infants and adolescents are especially susceptible.
In advising me that Miami-Dade County adheres to the guidance of the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) in regards to chemical products and usage, I informed you that because of its proven toxicity the 9th Court of Appeals had just ordered the EPA to ban chlorpyrifos from being sprayed on our fruit and vegetables.
Further, given the weight of the scientific evidence of chlorpyrifos' danger to our health, and given that the precautionary principle is broadly accepted as the best approach in protecting public health, I suggested that Miami-Dade County need not wait for official EPA guidance anyway. Just because a product is authorised by the EPA does not mandate Miami-Dade County to use it. And nor does EPA approval mean a chemical is safe: It only means that at the time of initial EPA approval, insufficient evidence was presented to indicate the chemical's hazards.
In turn, you argued that chlorpyrifos was not toxic at the rate and dosage used when sprayed from the trucks onto our homes - and you corrected me indicating they were not sprayed onto our homes, but onto our streets. Yet while your own warnings tell us to keep 100 feet away, our gardens start only a few feet from the street and even our swimming pools are often no more than 20 feet away.
In any event, independent scientific evidence shows that even at nominal dosage levels both humans and wildlife are adversely affected by these insecticides - even if the symptoms manifest much later on. And of course it accumulates inside us with each, repeated, exposure.
I indicated that the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a landmark 2012 study, wrote: “Children encounter pesticides daily and have unique susceptibilities to their potential toxicity. Acute poisoning risks are clear, and understanding of chronic health implications from both acute and chronic exposure are emerging. Epidemiologic evidence demonstrates associations between early life exposure to pesticides and pediatric cancers, decreased cognitive function, and behavioral problems.” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23184103/)
I further drew your attention more broadly to the increasing incidence of child/teen illnesses. The US cancer rate for children and teenagers has surged 45% since 1975, with the Miami-Dade rate 32% higher than the national rate, and rising. (https://statecancerprofiles.cancer.gov/incidencerates/index.php?stateFIPS=12&areatype;=county&cancer;=515∽̱=00&sex;=0&age;=015&stage;=999&year;=0&type;=incd&sortVariableName;=rate&sortOrder;=default )
It should also be noted that insecticides are tested on rodents, not human children, who of course live much longer, allowing mutations to manifest as cancers long after a lab mouse or rat would have died of old age. Further, lab rodents are not tested for cognitive damage or autism following pesticide exposure.
While multiple factors are likely contributing to the deeply worrying decline in young people’s health, you pointed out that it was your specific responsibility to control the mosquitos because of the diseases they can spread - malaria, dengue, West Nile and Zika.
While these diseases are indeed very unpleasant, they are rare in comparison with other threats to public health. You informed me that in Miami-Dade County in 2020 there were 30 cases of dengue and 60 cases of West Nile. I presume the cases of Zika and malaria were minimal. It was my understanding that no cases were fatal.
Attempting to eradicate mosquitoes with chemicals toxic to human health is a disproportionate response whose risks far outweigh the benefits.
Furthermore, it doesn’t work. The adult mosquitoes recover. And they recover fast - suggesting a natural control has been lifted. The mosquitoes’ predators like dragonflies (which hunt in the evening and at night) as well as spiders are unfortunately killed very effectively. This phenomenon is evidenced in the attached paper, by Rhoades and Stoddard (2021), suggesting the rapid recovery of mosquitoes after adulticide spraying may result from incapacitating their natural predators.
The same effect was seen in Miami following attempts to control Zika with adulticides, per the attached 2018 paper by Philip Stoddard, Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University, and former mayor of South Miami.
Further, the attached paper in the Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association by Clifton et al. (2019) shows that spraying of adulticide insecticides has no effect on the number of gravid/egg-bearing mosquitoes or egg production. As seen in the paper's figures, spraying temporarily knocks down the number of host-seeking mosquitoes but they bounce right back in higher numbers than before, while gravid/egg-bearing females are entirely unaffected.
These papers show that spraying adulticides is ineffective at mosquito control. Much like scratching at a mosquito bite, spraying adulticides provides only temporary relief and makes the underlying problem worse.
Early last Saturday morning, July 31st, you sprayed our homes on the Venetian Islands with Bayer’s DeltAGuard, which contains deltamethrin, a pyrethroid also toxic to humans and other animal life. Last night, we were woken up once more by the sinister growling of another truck as it sprayed us yet again. It is our impression that you are ramping up the spraying because it simply is not working, for the reasons outlined above and further below.
Deltamethrin may not yet be banned by the EPA for use on farms but it is highly toxic to the environment, especially to aquatic life forms like fish and crustaceans. It is again also known to be toxic to humans. As a neurotoxin, it attacks the nervous system and causes a variety of negative side effects, including autism, and even fatality.
In the area of Miami Beach itself, the mosquito that carries dengue and Zika, Aedes aegypti, has evolved high resistance to synthetic pyrethroids, per the attached 2018 paper by Estep et al, "Quantification of permethrin resistance and kdr alleles in Florida strains of Aedes aegypti (L.) and Aedes albopictus (“Skuse"). Meanwhile, black salt marsh mosquitoes in the Florida Keys have evolved resistance to a number of adulticides including the organophosphates such as malathion.
The fish of some neighbors have died suddenly, coinciding with the spraying by your department. And since rain will sweep the deltamethrin from the streets into the storm drains and into the sea, it will contribute further to the killing off of marine life in Biscayne Bay.
Given the synthetic pesticides’ proven dangers to the health of humans, of our pets and of our already highly stressed wildlife, and given the pesticides’ ineffectiveness, would it not be safer and would it not be wiser to focus solely on the application of natural biocides targeting the larvae, which you are already doing? And to adopt the same statutes as in New York and South Miami?
And would it not be safer and wiser to utilize more of Miami-Dade Mosquito Division’s $10 million annual budget (which you told me is up from $1 million in 2015) to engage in a more comprehensive and effective public relations campaign to promote sensible and practical prevention techniques - such as continuing to urge people to remove bromeliads and other water collectors, to cover up in the evenings, and to use non-toxic repellants?
Last year, my family replaced most of the trees, shrubs and plants in our garden with native species in order to bring back the wildlife that was in far greater abundance when we moved here 20 years ago. Those of us who have lived here that long have all observed the crash in our bird population - particularly in recent years. Enough is enough.
Each time we are sprayed with the adulticides our dragonflies vanish and the few birds around seem to back off, their berries and caterpillars poisoned. Meanwhile, neighbors report an increased incidence of illnesses afflicting their cats and dogs - so we worry for our cat as well, who inevitably will pick up the pesticide on his coat, bring it into the house, clean himself and ingest it.
As for us humans, we ingest the chemical pesticides by bringing it in on our shoes, on our hands from the handles of our cars, from our mailboxes, from our swimming pools, and - in the case of our children - from the ground.
Meanwhile, I attach a picture of 13 blue cichlids found dead this morning at Emmanuel Sebag’s home, just hours after your department’s latest spraying.
I look forward to your reply,
Simon Strong
Copied supporters:
Vilma Tarazona
Melissa Beattie (president, Venetian Islands Homeowners Association)
Emmanuel Sebag
Sam Gershenbaum
Andrea Meitova
Michael Krieger
Monica Tracy
New York City statute:https://www.beyondpesticides.org/assets/media/documents/Int.%20No.%201524-A.04.14.21.pdf
South Miami statute:https://legistarweb-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/attachment/pdf/434973/Ord_re_Herbicidepesticide_Second_Reading_10-1_CArev.pdf
