🚀 go-pugleaf

A concern about standing water providing breeding for mosquitos is at
odds with those environmental regulations that now have developers
providing catch basins for rain runoff whenever site development is
undertaken.  We have all seen water standing in these basins for
months on end.  How do you kick one of these over to drain the
standing water?

Oh but I forget - it's for the environment and therefore has a higher
priority than public health.

Sharon

On Sat, 07 Oct 2000 01:30:46 -0400, "Ken M." <poboxdc@ix.netcom.com>
wrote:

>
>West Nile Virus 'Here to Stay' 
>
>By Michael E. Ruane
>Washington Post Staff Writer
>Saturday , October 7, 2000 ; Page A01 
>
>It has spread more than 300 miles since the initial outbreak in New 
>York. It has infected three times as many types of birds as last year. 
>And it is now being carried by eight kinds of mosquitoes.
>
>West Nile virus, which surfaced this week in the District and in
>Montgomery County � and is in evidence between the Washington area 
>and New Hampshire � is thriving and expanding, experts said this 
>week, and probably will spread across the country within three years.
>
>As officials in the District and the county plan ways to combat the 
>virus, scientists said they now have a portrait of a malady that 
>is a hazard to humans, especially lethal to wildlife and covering 
>ground at an amazing pace.
>
>"Three years from now, I think it'll be over most all of the 
>country," said Ward Stone, New York state's veteran wildlife 
>pathologist, who has watched the virus since it first appeared in 
>the United States last fall. "Three years from now�. . .�it will 
>be a national problem."
>
>Area officials, though, were concerned with the present. Though 
>the threat will disappear with the mosquitoes after the first 
>hard frost, officials hurried yesterday to inform the public 
>about the illness, and arranged to spray pesticide as soon as 
>the weather allowed.
>
>"We are going to spray," Montgomery County Council President 
>Michael L. Subin (D-At Large) said. "And we are going to do 
>so as soon as weather conditions permit. Unfortunately, the 
>spray is ineffective when it rains, when it's windy, when it's 
>below 55 degrees. That's the weather report for the next three or 
>four days.
>
>"Really, all folks need to do right now is make sure that they 
>take precautions," he said. "Get rid of any standing water they 
>may see. If you are going to be outside, stay covered up. Use 
>whatever means they normally do to keep insects away. Citronella 
>candles, or any of the over-the-counter lotions or sprays."
>
>But some people expressed concern about pesticide spraying.
>
>"I'm not going to say it's not a good idea," said Ruth Berlin, 
>of the Maryland Pesticide Network. "If the county or the state 
>are going to spray, I'm recommending that they alert the people 
>living in those areas about the potential adverse health effects�. .
>because the pesticides themselves are also a public health threat."
>
>Last night, about 100 people attended a public forum about the virus
>hosted by the Montgomery County Council in Rockville. County workers
>spent yesterday handing out fliers about the virus at schools, 
>shopping centers and nursing homes near where the infected birds 
>were found.
>
>State and District officials announced Thursday that four dead crows
>infected with the virus had been found: two from the Rockville 
>area and two from separate neighborhoods in the District.
>
>One crow turned in Monday was found along Vallingby Circle, in 
>Rockville's New Mark Commons area, just off Interstate 270. The 
>second was turned in Tuesday from along Melinda Lane, in the 
>Manor Woods neighborhood off Bel Pre Road, about three miles 
>from the first.
>
>The crows turned in Monday from the District were found in the 
>5000 block of Illinois Avenue, in the Petworth area of Northwest
>Washington, and the 5000 block of Just Street, in the Fairmount 
>Heights neighborhood of Northeast Washington.
>
>They were tested � as thousands of bird, human and mosquito 
>samples have been this year � at a state health department 
>lab in Baltimore.
>
>No infected crows, people or mosquitoes have been reported in 
>Virginia.
>
>The virus, which was first identified in Uganda in the 1930s, 
>is normally not very dangerous for humans. But in children and 
>the elderly, it can cause potentially fatal inflammation of the 
>brain and its protective sac.
>
>Transmitted by mosquitoes and transported mostly by birds bitten 
>by the insects, the illness first appeared in the United States 
>last year. It was largely confined then to the New York City region, 
>where it killed seven people and made 62 seriously ill.
>
>It successfully "overwintered," and this year its spread continued.
>
>Though anti-mosquito efforts this year have limited its human 
>fatalities to one and serious cases to 17, it has alarmed 
>scientists for other reasons.
>
>It has, for example, infected many more kinds of wildlife than 
>it did last year, broadening from 20 to 60 the types or birds it has
>attacked and spreading out to mammals like chipmunks, raccoons 
>and bats.
>
>For unknown reasons, scientists say, it continues to particularly 
>ravage crows, producing a 100 percent fatality rate.
>
>It has been found this year in eight types of mosquitoes � as 
>opposed to last year's lone culprit, the bird-loving Culex 
>pipiens � and will probably spread to more. Most such viruses 
>are borne by only a few kinds of mosquitoes, experts said.
>
>In addition, several of the new mosquito types have a particular 
>taste for mammals and humans: Aedes vexans, for example.
>
>"It's one of the most common mosquitoes in North America," 
>said Maryland's mosquito control chief, Cyrus R. Lesser. 
>"From the Arctic to Mexico, it's basically everywhere." It 
>aggressively bites birds, people and other mammals, he said. 
>"Whatever presents itself."
>
>The added mosquito types are worrisome, Lesser said, because 
>they may increase the rate of transmission and involve mammals 
>as well as birds. "It opens a whole new world to the virus," he said.
>
>The most striking change over last year, though, has been its 
>geographic expansion � hundreds of miles from the New York City 
>region to almost all of New England and the mid-Atlantic states 
>this year.
>
>Last year, the virus appeared in New York, Connecticut and 
>New Jersey, said Stone, the New York wildlife pathologist. 
>This year, it also has cropped up in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, 
>New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Maryland and the District, and 
>possibly Canada.
>
>If that pace continues, "It could be a nationwide problem," 
>said Robert G. McLean, director of the USGS wildlife health 
>center, echoing Stone.
>
>McLean said the fear is that the virus is establishing itself 
>in regions north, west and south of its original area around 
>New York. Next spring, when birds migrate northward in their 
>typical fan pattern, they could spread the virus toward the Midwest.
>
>Eventually, if birds carry it to the Gulf Coast, their migrations 
>could then transport it up what is known as the Mississippi flyway 
>and out to the rest of the country, he said.
>
>"I don't want to seem alarmist," McLean said. "But we are 
>concerned."
>
>Stone added: "Because we have a lot of species that have never 
>experienced this virus before, at least in the first few years, 
>we can expect a very heavy mortality rate in these birds.
>
>"We can kind of think, although it's most likely to be on the 
>eastern coast, there's a good likelihood that it will spread 
>to all parts of the country where weather conditions and the right
>mosquitoes are there to maintain it.
>
>"I'm pretty worried about what it's doing and what it's going to 
>continue to do to the wildlife of the country," he said.
>
>Stephen C. Guptill, a Virginia-base USGS physical scientist who 
>has mapped the virus over two years, said: "The thing we know 
>for certain is that the virus has established itself in North 
>America. There was a chance that it could have been a one-time 
>event. It could have gone away.
>
>"We know that's not the case," he said. "It's here, and it's 
>here to stay."
>================================================================
>http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27320-2000Oct6.html
>
>
>-- 
>(ken)
>
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