http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/000809/4553778.html
West Nile virus 'more of a scare
than a problem'
Massive pesticide spraying would be worse
than the disease, expert says
Laura Landon
The Ottawa Citizen
As West Nile virus wends its way closer to Canada, experts emphasize that
it poses a minimal public health threat and overzealous attempts to stave
it off
-- such as massive pesticide spraying -- could pose a greater risk than the
virus itself.
"Right now, it's more of a scare and a worry than a problem," said Bill Fong,
head of infectious diseases at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto.
"It's unlikely we'll have any major problems with this. And most people who
get the infection won't even know it."
Pesticides -- which Health Canada says it will consider spraying if the
disease is detected in Canadian birds or mosquitoes -- stand to affect more
people than the virus, say other experts and environmentalists.
"People getting sick or having serious consequences (from West Nile virus)
is far lower than the diseases they cause by spraying all those poisons,"
said
Edith Angelopoulos, an entomologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
"We're hurting more than we're solving."
On Sunday, U.S. health authorities identified West Nile virus in a dead crow
about 15 kilometres from the Canadian border, prompting a new rash of
reports and speculation that the virus was already in Canada.
Health Canada and provincial ministries of health have been on alert since
the virus turned up in New York a few months ago -- the second season the
exotic, mosquito-borne virus appeared in North America. As yet, it has
never been detected in Canada.
New Yorkers bearing witness to the West Nile virus-inspired fear currently
sweeping their city issued a warning to Canadians this weekend: "This virus
rarely kills people. Don't let the media scare you. Think for yourself.
Examine the evidence," said Elizabeth Shanklin, secretary of the New York
arm of the Green Party. While the New York City department of Health
reports that roughly 2,600 people die from the flu and pneumonia each year,
West Nile virus poses a comparatively small threat, critics say.
"Children in this city die from asthma in record numbers. They die from
poverty," said Ms. Shanklin, who opposes New York's attempts to stave off
West Nile virus by spraying the city with pesticides. "We have serious issues
(and) West Nile virus is obscuring serious issues."
West Nile virus -- which can cause potentially deadly encephalitis -- first
appeared in North America last summer. It killed seven people in New York
-- including one Canadian tourist -- and caused serious illness in 55 others.
Hundreds of others tested positive for West Nile antibodies -- proving they
had been exposed to the virus. But they never became ill, since the virus is
mainly a threat to people with lowered immune systems. Of the seven people
who died from the virus last year, three were receiving cancer treatments and
one was HIV-positive, though hadn't been diagnosed with AIDS. All of the
victims were aged 68 to 87.
Similarly, the median age of those who became seriously ill with the virus
was 68.
So far this year the virus has infected one person. On Aug. 4, authorities
said
a 78-year-old Staten Island man, who had been hospitalized days earlier,
was home recovering from the virus. Several dead birds and some
mosquitoes in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and
Maryland have tested positive for the virus as well.
And although the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Canadian and U.S.
health experts maintain the disease poses a relatively small public health
threat, West Nile paranoia -- fuelled by the media and strong government
precautionary measures -- is reaching a fevered pitch.
New York's mayor, as well as health authorities in Boston, embarked on
controversial pesticide spraying programs in an effort to kill virus-carrying
mosquitoes. Authorities in New York's Orange County also dropped
larvicide in 30,000 municipal storm drains.
The spraying raised the anger of local environmentalists and people sensitive
to chemicals, including several women with breast cancer.
"It's an arrogant disregard for the potential health effects associated with
pesticide exposure," said Jay Feldman, executive director of the National
Coalition Against Pesticide Misuse. His organization is filing a lawsuit
against
the city of New York, saying its extensive pesticide spraying is endangering
people with weak immune systems -- ironically, the same people most at
threat from West Nile virus.
The objections to mosquito spraying are rippling further than Manhattan.
The New York Times reports that lobster fishermen in New York and
Connecticut are also blaming malathion -- a pesticide the city used to quell
West Nile virus last year -- for causing the biggest lobster kill ever to hit
Long Island Sound. Roughly 11 million lobsters -- more than 90 per cent of
the full-sized population -- mysteriously died last fall.
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Associate Professor
Department of Public Health Sciences
Graduate Department of Community Health
University of Toronto
McMurrich Building, Room 101
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5S 1A8
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