Aerial spraying to kill Zika-carrying mosquitoes in Miami Beach is set to begin on Friday despite growing protests over the use of the controversial insecticide Naled, which is banned across Europe because of concerns over its safety.
Health officials in Florida ordered the spraying as the number of locally acquired cases of the disease continued to rise, with new figures from the state’s department of health on Wednesday recording 56 non-travel-related infections, mostly in Miami Beach and the nearby Wynwood neighbourhood.
But the decision to use Naled, a potent neurotoxin that kills mosquitoes on contact, which opponents claim can cause birth defects and which was blamed for the deaths of millions of honeybees earlier this month following aerial spraying in South Carolina, has prompted fiery protests in Miami Beach. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that Naled is safe.
Several hundred demonstrators, some wearing gas masks and carrying placards denouncing the use of Naled as “lunacy”, attended a lively public debate at Miami Beach city hall on Wednesday. At the meeting, county officials agreed to postpone spraying for 24 hours until Friday, but said it would be followed by another early-morning round on Sunday and others in each of the two following weekends.
“I don’t particularly want to do this, we tried everything not to get to this point,” said Carlos Giménez, the mayor of Miami-Dade County, to jeers from many in the audience.
Testing earlier this month showed that adult mosquitoes collected in Miami Beach were found to be carrying the Zika virus. The county, which has jurisdiction over Zika-fighting efforts, has until now sprayed at street level using the organic larvicide bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (BTi), which does not kill adult mosquitoes.
“We need to do this to knock down this population of mosquitoes and knock down the occurrence of Zika in Miami Beach, and stop this problem here right now,” Giménez said.
He repeated earlier assurances from Dr Celeste Philip, the Florida surgeon general, and from officials of the CDC that Naled was safe.
A CDC information sheet about aerial spraying says the insecticide has been used “extensively” in the US since the 1950s, and has already been effective in countering Zika in Miami’s Wynwood district.
But Naled opponents, including elected officials in Miami Beach, are outraged at the use of an organophosphate banned by the European commission in 2012 and sent back to the mainland by Alejandro García Padilla, the governor of Puerto Rico, in July when the CDC sent a shipment to the Caribbean island to combat the escalating Zika outbreak in the US commonwealth.
“It’s a powerful neurotoxin and the risks associated with it are unknown,” Miami Beach commissioner Michael Grieco, who hosted the public forum on Wednesday, told the Guardian.
“I don’t care if it’s been used for one week, one decade or 50 years, it means nothing when there are studies out there and the jury’s still out on whether even a low dose of Naled can be harmful to animals, children or adults. People just don’t want it.
“A lot of people are pulling their kids from school on Friday and going away for the weekend; a lot have left town and don’t plan on coming back until October. It’s a shame that people have to flee from their own homes.”
The meeting also heard from Wynwood residents, who said they had been affected by aerial spraying in Miami’s arts and design district, which is also a designated “Zika zone”.
“I’m not a scientist and I’m not a doctor, but I know that when I go in my backyard and my tongue is shaking for four hours and I am ready to rush myself to the emergency room, something in that chemical is not right,” said Evo Love, an artist with a Wynwood studio.
Further protests took place at city hall on Thursday as demonstrators stepped up their opposition to the spraying.
“If I was the county mayor, I would listen to the residents that are most directly affected,” Grieco said. “If I was using the cover, as Giménez is, that the Florida governor is going to do it anyway, I would call the governor and stand up for my people.
“I’m speaking for a lot of people and they are very unhappy. What happens if these four doses are ineffective and they want to turn this into a long-term project? I can tell you right now that this will be publicly and repeatedly readdressed if there is any inclination to go beyond the four rounds they are claiming they are going to do. The residents and myself are not going to take this lying down.”
