In a re­port pub­lished in yes­ter­day's Guardian, the chief med­ical of­fi­cer at the Min­istry of Health, Dr Clive Tilluck­d­har­ry, warned that, "chem­i­cal spray­ing must be lim­it­ed as care­less and ad hoc use could have dis­as­trous con­se­quences." The ef­fects of spray­ing/fog­ging may be worse than the ef­fects of the mos­qui­to-borne virus it­self.

It is con­firmed that the Min­istry of Health us­es a 96 per cent Malathion, four per cent diesel mix­ture in in­sec­ti­cide fog­ging. Malathion has been sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly proven to cause acute neu­ro­log­ic, al­ler­gic and res­pi­ra­to­ry risks in hu­mans.

A sci­en­tif­ic study pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Ur­ban Health: Bul­letin of the New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine, 2001, re­ports that ex­po­sure to Malathion can al­so lead to "de­vel­op­men­tal tox­i­c­i­ty, en­docrine dis­rup­tion, car­cino­genic­i­ty (can­cer), geno­tox­i­c­i­ty (mu­ta­tions) and im­mune sys­tem dam­age."

Malathion is al­so tox­ic to oth­er or­gan­isms such as birds, fish, crus­taceans, snails, worms, toads and frogs.

In­fants and chil­dren are more vul­ner­a­ble to these in­sec­ti­cides than adults be­cause of their im­ma­ture ner­vous sys­tems. New­borns are es­pe­cial­ly sus­cep­ti­ble be­cause their me­tab­o­lisms are less ca­pa­ble of detox­i­fy­ing the tox­ic chem­i­cals used in these sprays. Preg­nant moth­ers and chil­dren should there­fore be es­pe­cial­ly care­ful to avoid ex­po­sure.

While the tox­ic ef­fects of Malathion are well known, what is yet to be stud­ied is the com­bined tox­i­c­i­ty of Malathion and diesel.

FFOS ap­peals to our gov­ern­ment to ex­haust all pre­ven­tive meth­ods be­fore spray­ing tox­ic chem­i­cals and to pro­hib­it fog­ging in rur­al ar­eas where bats–the nat­ur­al preda­tors of mos­qui­toes–may suf­fer neg­a­tive ef­fects due to in­sec­ti­cide ex­po­sure.

Ter­rence Bed­doe, Pres­i­dent,

Gary Aboud, Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary,

FFOS