Miami residents fret over pesticide used to fight Zika

MIAMI: People at the epicentre of America’s first homegrown outbreak of the Zika virus are worried that one of the weapons being used to fight it amounts to a cannon rather than a fly swatter.

To wit, a pesticide banned in Europe on health grounds is being used in occasional aerial fumigations to kill the mosquito that carries the virus.

In most people, Zika causes only mild symptoms but in pregnant women it can cause microcephaly, a deformation in which babies are born with abnormally small brains and heads.

Now, people are also fretting over the mist of a pesticide called naled that is drifting down over north Miami every now and then.

“We do not know what it is or what it does, and we do not trust the government,” said Fermin Gonzalez, a 38-year- old graphic designer. “I doubt it is healthy.”

Some merchants in Wynwood, the tourist-popular neighbourhood where the virus was fi rst detected two weeks ago, have organised into a coalition opposed to naled fumigation. Over the weekend, demonstrators staged a protest.

A total of 30 cases of infection with homegrown Zika have been reported in Miami. Environmental activists and some scientists say naled damages the nervous system and respiratory tract, and might be linked to leukemia in children.

It was banned in the European Union in 2012 because of its potential risk for human health and the environment.But MiamiDade County is using it with the blessing of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency. They say it is safe when used in small doses.

But “if it’s not safe to use in Europe, why is it safe to use in Miami?” asks Michelle Harriott, science and regulatory director of a Washington-based NGO called Beyond Pesticides.

CDC director Tom Frieden has said that naled, which has been used in the US since 1959 to combat mosquitos, is not harmful at the low concentrations in which it is used in America. — AFP