Get set for some sky-is-falling rhetoric from a few people anxious about the spraying process (which they don't understand). It follows these stories as reliably as the night doth follow the day. That reaction is part of a larger bahavior pattern: see the first comment to another recent Voice story Web Link for the more general template.

...yawn...

@Common Sense, it's been about 24 hours. So far the only predictable post was the "Get ready for those silly people to post" post that you made
In a way, you were right before your post was even completed.

@Common Sense, the reason "they don't understand" is because they are given no information and are basically being asked to "trust" them. What is being sprayed? What other insects and animals does it affect? What are the known side effects and risks of this chemical? How does it work? are our pets safe? should we bring them inside? Should we make sure our windows are closed? Were the scientific studies saying it is safe, funded by the manufacturers or independent organizations? etc... None of the important information was communicated in this article.

Not everybody is content to be a sheep. Not everybody believes that government and chemical manufacturer employees always operate with competence and with the publics best interests in mind.

So what exactly is being sprayed and does it kill mosquitos and harm nothing else? Maybe after the spraying, the Voice will try to find a BEE or backyard DOG to interview. They may have some horror stories to report.

"Trust," this is a perennial Summer topic in MV. Please don't read too much into any limitations of this one particular article: these articles often cite the Vector Control website's informative link: Web Link In addition, abundant general background information is available by search about the considerations and alternatives, and the historical use of this highly selective insecticide class (which has _centuries_ of history -- originally, it was extracted commercially from Chrysanthemum flowers which evolved it as a natural insect defense). However, getting the value of all the information out there requires approaching it actually to learn -- not just mining for rhetoric to support pre-existing broad-brush anxieties over concepts like "toxins" or even "chemicals." Which, unfortunately, has proven time and again to be all some people do, no matter how much information is available. (It is part of a more general human behavior pattern I cited in the first comment here.)

Past example typical posted anxious-emotional comment: "This mosquito spraying is horrible and toxic."

Past example typical posted informed-consumer comment: "The most hazard is during the mixing and loading phase of the equipment. The operators are suitable attired to keep them safe. The dilution of this life-cycle interrupter is so minute that there is virtually no risk to anything but mosquitos between 11 pm and 2 in the morning. Bees are the primary concern and they are all safely tucked away for the night. I will be glad for the tradeoff of successfully-documented fogging versus unpredictable disease-carrying mosquitos breeding with abandon. Don't take a walk between 11 and 2 and you will be fine. Pets and plants are not affected by such a miniscule amount of material. What homeowners CAN do to minimize the risk of mosquitos breeding in their neighborhoods is to monitor standing water, scummy ponds and anything bigger than a bottle cap where the little critters can breed. If your neighborhood does not have enough of the monitored populations they will not need to fog. Individuals can help the situation. WNV is here! Being proactive pays off."

Hello Concerned Citizens,

West Nile fogging begins July 13, 2015 for the summer of 2015 signaling another summer of pesticide terror, especially for pregnant women, small children, anyone who hopes to have children in the future, and chemically sensitized people.

The Board of Supervisors is on vacation until August 11, 2015. Last fall the Vector Control District was given explicit instructions by the Board to find non-toxic alternatives to the pesticide spraying. Nevertheless and absolutely against the Board directives, and with the Board on vacation, Vector Control is now scheduling massive pesticide fogging for parts of Mountain View and Palo Alto to occur on Monday night-Tuesday morning.

The details and map they have related are here: Web Link

These are zip code areas 94043, 94303, and 94306.

The pesticide they are using, Zenivex E4 is "96% undisclosed trade secret." It kills bees and the predators of mosquitoes: frogs, fish, birds, mosquito eaters, dragonflies, other mosquito predators including likely bats, leaving just the mosquitoes and black flies to multiply without predators. It does not kill the mosquito larva so mosquitoes rebound within hours. It is 100% counterproductive.

Here is the link below on Zenivex E4 RTU MATERIAL SAFETY DATA SHEET that says it is "HAZARDOUS TO HUMANS AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS". A very small amount is toxic and hazardous. We have 1068 pages from the Dept of Pesticide Regulation that shows how harmful this pesticide is! Web Link


Our group has filed a lawsuit against Santa Clara County Vector Control.

At this particular time, there is no Board of Supervisors to turn to and no court to turn to since they are on summer vacation.

We cannot stop this poisoning. Flyers warning residents have been printed. No official notice will even tell the residents to close their windows! Children walking to school Tuesday morning will be poisoned.


A little history: Last summer, 2014, Vector Control poison-fogged 79 square miles of Santa Clara County urban area killing birds, bees, many insects including mosquito predators such as dragonflies, frogs, and the fish in Vasona Reservoir, in addition to poisoning the population. All this with no Environmental Impact Report!


Only by acting together can we stop this.

We have received through the public records act evidence that Vector Control receives cash rebates for these pesticides. The more pesticides they spray the more money!


THERE IS NO EMERGENCY TO SPRAY A KNOWN TOXIC PESTICIDE!!!
According to the statistics the chances of you dying from West Nile Virus is: 0.000007.

Join Our Cause: Web Link

Contact us at: info@healthyalternativestopesticides.com

". . . as reliably as the night doth follow the day." Sheer stubborn hysteria and demagoguery, willfully uninformed as always.

Depite both demonstrated efficacy and safety of the dilute pyrethroid used (a type of insecticide with, as I already pointed out, CENTURIES of history), the Vector Control agency is quoted in the Palo Alto Daily Post this week to the effect that they'd much rather not spray at all, but are obligated to do so as the imperfect but legally necessary public-health alternative to letting disease-carrying mosquitos breed unchecked. (Insect-vectored WNV has already killed over 100 Californians and it's far from the only or worst disease mosquitos can carry.) Vector Control personnel offered to assist residents and neighborhoods pro-actively to avoid the necessity of fogging, by instead identifying and eliminating standing-water sources, and providing mosquito-larva-eating fish for landscape ponds and disused swimming pools. Those measures can remove the need for moquito fogging, if people care enough.

In the real (as opposed to fantasy) world, you must choose between imperfect but actual alternatives. The best current informed compassionate expert consensus is that this type of limited, dilute, short-acting fogging is preferable to allowing free growth of disease-carrying mosquitos, which is the real alternative.

Someone posing as "Common sende" asserts that the pedticide being used is "highly selective." tell us how it kills mosquitoes and whether is also kills or harms other creatures. Go ahead "Common sense." Oh. And don't bother is identity your employer. No one would believe you.

I am just a concerned local resident who bothered to learn something about the background and details of mosquito fogging (instead of complacently relying on uninformed emotional anxieties) -- never had any business connection to it whatsoever -- and everything I post serves the message "do some REAL homework, and understand the situation for YOURSELF." Yet, inevitably, some people don't like where that leads; their desperate efforts to defend ill-informed anxieties (against sobering and empowering reality) reduces them to childish speculations even about ME. (Word-to-the-wise: "Informed" doesn't mean "I googled the subject and picked up these shocking alarmist factoids, oh my!" as a few posters seemed to think, in past-years' comments threads on this perennial topic.)

Samples of gross, demonstrable misinformation posted above by "Concerned Citizen" of Shoreline West:

1. "(The fogging agent) kills ... birds" The whole main reason pyrethrin-type agents are used today is that they are NOT toxic to most species. (The exception is fish, so Vector Control is to avoid large live bodies of water.) 50 years ago in mosquito-infested regions, fogging employed organophosphorous insecticides with broad-brush toxicity, or others that persisted in the environment (DDT). The pyrethrins are a far subtler class, used precisely because of their minimal ecological impact.

2. "It kills bees..." Just like the anti-vaccination fanatics (their close kindred spirits!) who insistently repeat the "autism" misinformation from a famously discredited British medical paper (repudiated even by its main author), the pesticide-anxious love to repeat "it kills bees," though they know that's misleading, if they know anything at all. SCC Vector Control uses a contact-acting fog that only affects insects flying at the time (11AM - 2 AM), then rapidly decomposes in air and sunlight after it settles. Because bees are not airborne 11AM - 2AM, the fogging DOES NOT AFFECT BEES. People like the poster above either know that fact (yet lie), or they don't understand it (so have no business advising anyone about the issue).

3. "especially for pregnant women, small children, anyone who hopes to have children in the future..." Pure speculative paranoia, CONTRADICTED by the very same Materials-Safety document the same person eagerly claimed showed "how harmful this pesticide is" -- ! -- Web Link Read the document FOR YOURSELF and understand it. "Concerned Citizen" never did, apparently. Excerpts: "Etofenprox is not a teratogen. It does not have adverse effects on reproduction. / "Etofenprox is not a mutagen." (Among many other things, "Concerned Citizen" may wish some day to learn what teratogen and mutagen mean, before posting more inaccurate information contradicting your own authoritative source.)

4. "The pesticide they are using, Zenivex E4 is '96% undisclosed trade secret.' " This kind of desperate, eager grasping at misunderstood ambiguities for sheer rhetoric really reveals the mind-set at work here. If you read the actual data sheet, the product is 4% active insecticide (what the rest of the anxious diatribe above dwells on). The rest is "non-hazardous and/or trade secret," meaning in plain language, carrier: solvents, water, and/or soap. Manufacturers have no incentive to be more specific UNLESS these other components pose materials hazards beyond those already named in the data sheet, which they don't, here. End of issue. If "Concerned Citizen" is so anxious about miscellaneous organic carrier solvents (to be vastly diluted before use, don't forget) in Zenivex, then s/he is logically far MORE worried about the undiluted corresponding carriers in countless (even "green") household spray products and cleaners. Many spray bottles in your home also say "Inert [or "Other"] Ingredients: 96%" and the makers aren't required to be more specific. Yet those nearer-to-home, far more concentrated examples of "undisclosed trade secret" somehow never cause eager, anxious, clueless accusations on Town Square.

Anonymous poster calling himself "common sense" did not answer my questions. There is some hope the poster does not work for Vector Control as he (or she) seemingly has not even read the warnings on Vector Control's own doorhanger.