Last Monday, in the heat of the Southern summer, they quietly attacked the Belmont-Hillsboro neighborhood of Nashville. They slipped up and down the side streets from predetermined site to predetermined site injecting the air with chemicals. They swept through the neighborhood in a matter of hours, these alien invaders, sparing no house or piece of property on their list. Then they moved on. All three of them.
The “they” in this case are the three trained and certified employees of vector control, a division of Metro’s Health Department. The attacked, for the most part, were mosquitoes. The stealth...well, the stealth may have been a mistake.
“I consider that spraying a real violation, a personal violation of my rights,” says Marcia Eden, one of a fairly loose group of concerned neighbors in that area who are questioning the wisdom of this particular form of insecticide as well as the way it’s been distributed. And they have a point.
“My question is, What good does it do to spray one or two yards in any given neighborhood? I mean, don’t mosquitoes move from yard to yard anyway? Along with the chemicals?” Eden asks rhetorically, voicing a common complaint. “And why weren’t we properly notified?” For the last couple of weeks, the Metro Health Department has been bombarded with these questions and more—many more—for one reason and one reason only: the West Nile Virus. At the same time, it’s been experiencing double the calls requesting the spraying.
Everyone knows, at this point, the scary, worst-case-scenario-type of information about the virus: the nine people dead, the encephalitis and the firestorms in human respiratory systems, the spreading of it across the country through mosquitoes, the horses and birds being diagnosed with the virus. But what a surprising number of people don’t realize is that the chances of contracting this virus are microscopically low.
“Only a certain type of mosquito can even carry the West Nile Virus,” says Brian Todd, public information officer at the Metro Health Department. “And from that group, less than 1 percent actually do carry it.” Moreover, according to an excerpt from the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Web site (reprinted on an anonymous, skull-and-bones-adorned anti-spraying pamphlet), even if a mosquito is infected, “less than 1 percent of people who get bitten and become infected will become severely ill. The chances you will become severely ill from any one mosquito bite are extremely small.” So at least we all agree on something: We’re not in any immediate danger from the West Nile Virus.
But, not surprisingly, that’s where the agreement stops—at least for some. And the disagreements, the protests, the varying opinions all revolve around a single question: Which presents the most danger—the eventual (and inevitable) rise in West Nile Virus cases, or the dissemination of slightly mysterious chemicals into our grass, our bushes, our gardens, our lives?
“The risk of the pesticide is astronomical compared to the risk of getting the virus,” says John Connell, a resident of the Belmont-Hillsboro neighborhood. “And I have to believe they’re going to hit every neighborhood in Nashville with this, not just ours.”
This is the cornerstone of concern for the anti-spraying faction in that neighborhood—that the danger in the chemicals used in the spray dramatically dwarfs the possibility of catching the virus.
“We know that the insecticide they’re mostly using in our neighborhoods is Anvil, and we know that at least one ingredient in Anvil has been linked to cancer,” Connell says. “But the scarier thing to contemplate is what we don’t know.” (For the record, the second, less frequently called-upon insecticide vector control uses is called BioMist. It’s used in heavily wooded areas, and doesn’t appear to be upsetting anyone at the moment.)
Another Belmont-Hillsboroite, Dennis Wile, agrees: “It’s really a sad state of affairs. If I want to build a garage in my own backyard that no one would be able to see, I have to jump through serious hoops. But if I want to poison my yard and my neighbor’s yard, I can do that anytime with one phone call.
“There are over 600,000, give or take, chemicals used in the U.S., and another 3,000 are added each year,” Wile says. “I think it’s clear that a traditional way for people to deal with things is to throw stuff at stuff.”
That’s hard to refute. But does that mean the health department’s trying to kill us, neighborhood by neighborhood? Or, less dramatically, are the chemicals actually more dangerous than the mosquitoes? “We use Anvil...because it’s the safest and most effective product on the market,” Todd says. “Does that mean you’d go out and drink a gallon of it? Probably not.” Brent Hager, the director of the health department’s bureau of environmental health services puts it this way: “According to some of the information I’ve seen, people are exposed to more inhalation toxins by opening up their gas tanks and filling them with gas then they would by getting their yard sprayed.” They both admit freely, though, that with insecticides, there’s always the possibility of something going wrong, but, Hager says, “the chances are extremely, extremely slim.”
He’s got history in his corner on that one. The spraying-by-request system has been used with various insecticides for over 30 years in Nashville—a fact the nay-sprayers of the Belmont-Hillsboro neighborhood deem highly suspect, but a fact nonetheless. And in those 30-plus years, there has never been a recorded incident of harmful side-effects showing up in cats, dogs, children or adults. According to Hager, the doubling of requests for spraying this year due to media reports on the West Nile Virus make the program more noticeable than in years past. That, and talk about the virus itself.
One of the biggest problems, both Hager and Todd concede, has been a basic lack of communication between Metro and the communities being sprayed. To that end, they have reset their telephone system so that when you dial vector control (340-5668), you first hear a recorded message that describes the possible risks of the spraying (or fogging, as it’s referred to among the pros) and what you can do to prevent the multiplication of mosquitoes in your yard (get rid of standing water by covering your tires, take in your children’s swimming pool, turn your coverless trash cans upside down, etc.). Then it asks if you’d still like the service—a simple but effective way (health officials hope) to ensure that average, mosquito-swarmed citizens know what they’re getting themselves into.
In addition to the phone message, a new, strictly enforced set of rules has been developed to limit confusion and avoid exposure to areas beyond the homeowner’s yard. And soon the field team will be armed with cell phones so that spraying times can be precisely coordinated. According to health officials and their information from the EPA, Anvil’s risk-of-exposure window lasts no more than half an hour. And as a matter of course, there is never any fogging during inclement whether or when the wind is blowing 10 mph or more.
Another step Hager and health officials have taken is to install a new software system called GIS, or Geographic Information Systems, which will enable the department to map trouble areas—areas that request an unusual amount of fogging service—so that they can be addressed as early as possible before next mosquito season with education, proper property maintenance and so on.
And so Metro chose to “throw stuff at stuff,” just as its critics would have preferred to leave the increasingly problematic mosquitoes alone and hope for the best. As Hager explains, “We learn things, and we’re here to serve the public. If the public—the majority of the public—makes it clear they don’t want insecticides sprayed on their property, we’d stop immediately. But I just don’t feel we’re causing a problem. I think the benefits [of the Anvil] far outweigh the drawbacks. If we did nothing, we’d be irresponsible.”
A member of the Belmont-Hillsboro steering committee who wished to remain anonymous characterizes the situation this way: “The only voices you’re hearing are the few that are making all the noise. The vast majority of us, who you’re not hearing, are fine with it, even like it.”
Meanwhile the truck fogs onward, maybe with a little less stealth, through the rest of the neighborhoods of Nashville.
