Texas officials watching mosquitoes after Harvey

‘Probe Monsanto influence’

DALLAS, Oct 8, (Agencies): Health officials in Texas will be on watch in coming weeks for any increases in mosquito-borne diseases including the West Nile and Zika viruses after Harvey’s heavy rains and flooding brought water that filled ponds and ditches and crept into trash and debris that piled up.

“We’re not out of the woods. I still think we don’t really know what we’re going to see, so that’s why we’ve got to monitor it,” said Dr Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “The next month is going to be the critical time,” he added.

Officials are hopeful, though, that aerial and ground spraying done after Hurricane Harvey made landfall on Aug 25 will help ensure that populations don’t swell. The Texas Department of State Health Services said more than 7 million acres (2.8 million hectares) were sprayed by plane across areas inundated from Harvey.

“It looks like they’ve gotten pretty good results,” said health department spokesman Chris Van Deusen, adding, “Hopefully it will prevent any kind of uptick.”

Of particular concern is West Nile. Texas trails only California this year in the number of cases of the virus, which is transmitted from infected birds to humans by the common Culex mosquito. Most people don’t develop any symptoms, but those who do may have fever, headache, vomiting and diarrhea. In rare cases, people develop severe illnesses such as encephalitis and meningitis, which can be deadly. Texas has had at least 100 human cases this year, including three deaths.

While there’s currently no evidence of ongoing transmission of mosquito-borne diseases including Zika, dengue or chikungunya in Texas — all three spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito — officials are watching on guard for any emergence. That could happen if someone who had traveled to a place with active cases got the disease, returned to Texas and was bitten by a mosquito that in turn bites and infects someone else.

Van Deusen said that after a brief reprieve as heavy rains and floods from Harvey washed away mosquito eggs, “nuisance” mosquitoes emerged. Those don’t typically carry disease but can have an impact on recovery efforts by swarming people as they clean up and repair. Any remaining standing water is an issue because Culex mosquitoes tend to lay eggs in larger areas of still water like ponds and ditches, while the Aedes usually breeds in small water-filled containers near homes.

“So all of that debris and trash that you see around Houston as the floodwaters recede, there’s going to be pockets of water in there — old discarded TV sets, old discarded tires — and that could easily led to an increase in Aedes aegypti,” Hotez said.

As expected in the Houston area, an increase in mosquitoes came about two weeks after the storm. But Dr. Umair Shah, executive director of Harris County Public Health, said officials were able to get those numbers down with aerial and ground spraying.

A US firm pursuing a lawsuit against Monsanto is urging the European Parliament to examine its claims that the agro giant has hidden the dangers of its weedkiller, according to a letter obtained by AFP.

The letter from the Los Angelesbased firm comes amid intensifying European Union debate over whether Brussels should renew in December the license for the weedkiller glyphosate for another 10 years.

EU states have been deadlocked for more than a year over whether to declare that the chemical — used in Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Roundup — is safe.

The Baum-Hedlund-AristeiGoldman firm sent a letter dated Wednesday with documents attached which it said bolstered its claims of “corporate malfeasance” by Monsanto.

The letter charged that Monsanto has been “ghostwriting scientific literature designed to make glyphosate look safe, bullying scientists that publish anything negative about their billion-dollar product, and colluding with regulators to ensure ‘positive’ assessments.”

It urged the European Parliament to examine Monsanto’s “relationship” with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which ruled earlier this year that glyphosate should not be classified as a carcinogen.

The European Commission, the executive of the 28-nation EU, proposed after the EFSA ruling that the glyphosate license be renewed for 10 years.