Please send this message to the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District (SLCMAD) Board of Directors (BOD) and Salt Lake City Council Members to oppose mosquito spraying in Salt Lake City:

We, the undersigned, call for a two-year moratorium on chemical pesticide spraying by the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District (SLCMAD), by airplane, truck, or back pack; the adoption of comprehensive, non-chemical strategies; followed by an independent audit of the human health outcome, and that of the Great Salt Lake ecosystem. 

Background

Historically, government agencies have a long history of either lagging behind the science or contradicting the science on the health hazards of numerous environmental toxins. Atomic radiation, lead, mercury, asbestos, air pollution, PCBs, BPA chemicals are just a few of far too many examples where government regulations arrived far too late. We are in that situation now with pesticides in general, including pesticides used to attack mosquitoes. No government should be allowed to spray pesticides on or near populations unless a more dire public health emergency will be averted by doing so. West Nile Virus was never that level of public health emergency, and it is far less now than when it first arrived over 20 years ago.

Because of decades of poor public policy, pesticides are universally found in the blood and urine of almost all human beings everywhere; in amniotic fluid, new-born babies, and in domestic drinking water worldwide. A study of contaminants in human breast milk from multiple countries found every milk sample from every country was contaminated with the most common mosquito pesticide and at levels high enough to cause neurologic and endocrine damage.

While contamination is global, for Salt Lake Valley residents, the most important place to reduce chemical usage is in the Valley itself. With this as a background, Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment (UPHE) are calling on the SLCMAD to cease pesticide spraying in the Northwest Quadrant of Salt Lake City. There are multiple reasons

1. Pesticides in general, including those used by SLCMAD, are harmful to human health, especially for fetuses and infants, even at the low doses commonly found in the environment. The primary concern is neurotoxicity, including increasing the risk of autism. Utah has one of the highest rates of autism in the nation, now afflicting one in every 32 Utah boys. Many different environmental toxins are significant contributors, but pesticides are at the top of the list. The primary chemical used by SLCMAD is banned in Europe, and is even banned by the US EPA for home or residential use.
2. The VOCs volatilized from pesticide spraying are additional health hazards because they contribute to local air pollution, both ozone and air toxics.
3. Pesticides are losing their effectiveness for multiple reasons, chief among them mosquito resistance and the evolution of “super-mosquitoes.” Mosquitoes from sprayed areas can tolerate up to ten times the amount of pesticide as mosquitoes from non-sprayed areas. Predictably, the end result is a never-ending chemical arms race.
4. We must not allow a cure worse than the disease. The incidence of severe outcomes from West Nile Virus (WNV) has steadily diminished for the last decade, and is now so low that trying to prevent those outcomes should not be allowed to eclipse the long list of other health and environmental concerns from pesticide use. The CDC states that spraying pesticides to kill adult mosquitoes should only be a last resort. We are hardly at the stage of last resort. The entire state of Utah only had two cases of WNV last year. Furthermore, spraying does not reduce the incidence of WNV, especially spraying over largely uninhabited land.
5. Claims of safety for pesticide spraying are based on faulty logic, misplaced priorities, and weak and flawed science.  Defenders of spraying ignore virtually all the research in the medical literature on the hazards of pesticides. These chemicals can travel far off site, exposing virtually everyone in the Salt Lake Valley and beyond.
6. Pesticide spraying has adverse impacts on beneficial insects, bird populations, wildlife, the ecosystem of the Great Salt Lake and beyond.
7. Most mosquito species do not carry disease. Spraying in an attempt to get rid of “nuisance” species is no justification for widely spreading biologic poisons from the skies over Salt Lake City. There are better, safer, and more effective ways to control mosquitoes, already in use by other cities.

By sending this message to the SLCMAD Board and the Salt Lake City Council you are also signing on to this petition.

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