Backyard Mosquito Spraying may be more impactful than we think....
Droege, Sam
All
Recently while traveling on what is day-to-day ordinary road to Damascus I had the scales fall from eyes when I had conversations with a homeowner regarding home spraying impacts on the bees in their neighborhood, drops in the pollinators in their garden and was asked whether I thought they should remove the garden as they felt that they were attracting bees to their doom.
So I started doing some research…
Previously I was aware of the article:
Bonds, J.A.S. 2012. Ultra-low-volume space sprays in mosquito control: a critical review. Medical and Veterinary Entomology. 26: 121-130.
I assumed this applied to backyard spraying, but it does not.
The municipal sprays covered in the review use ultra-low volume sprays of known down chemicals (i.e. the spray hits the target, kill target, and chemical goes away quickly). The basic story was that such spray has probably minimal impact on bees (that probably needs more investigation).
Since the spraying is done by municipalities on a large scale one hopes that their spraying is more rigorous and open to outside inspection.
None of this, I found, is true for back yard spraying.
This relatively recent phenomenon uses chemicals that are synthetic pyrethrenins (note these are often called “natural” by companies even though they are not, because Pyrethrin comes from a species of Chrysanthemum, while the synthetics do not…and it really doesn’t matter in either case in terms of impact).
The objective is different here than in municipal spraying, the objective is to use large droplet sizes to spray everything in yards and make the yard toxic such that mosquitoes (and all insects) that land on a treated surface are killed.
Additionally, these chemicals are all designed to last for days/months (Scion, for example, says you get 90 days of activity outside).
That said, EPA has done its testing. And yes, very toxic to bees, and yes there is a warning to not spray on blooming plants and weeds.
But do people read and follow those directions?
The short answer is no they do not….of the 46 videos reviewed showing pro and homeowner applications not a single one followed the label correctly (see summary below). I repeat, not one followed the label instructions.
In those videos you had professionals saying things like … , look how high up into trees, my devise can get this chemical, it kills everything, it is good because it kills bees, you should target flower gardens because that is where mosquitos live, etc. One professional demonstrated their technique using a flower garden and acknowledging to the audience in case anyone had any queston that it was indeed a flower garden. Another showed pictures of flowers as things to treat….
Here is the quick summary of those reviews:
- 46 Videos Evaluated
- 6,956,200 views
- 91% Used/Recommended Pyrethrinoids (up to 90 guaranteed days of outdoor toxicity)
- Pyrethinoids kill all insects
- 1 recommended Sevin, 3 did not name a specific pesticide
- Only 17% mentioned to avoid pollinators
- Of the 8 mentioning pollinators,6 showed video of them actually spraying open flowers
- 38 of the 46 showed as least a short video clip of them spraying; many directly spraying open flowers
- Many targeted lawns
- The flowering weeds found in lawns and the residual toxicity of the chemical on soon to bloom shrubs indicates all shown applications would kill bees
- Blooming weeds in lawns are never mentioned
- Shrubs that bloom after application are never mentioned
So, what is the take home here when you have a required labeling that you should not spray flowers, but yet everyone does and many actually target flowers?
Also one has to ask that what are the thresholds for action when several homes in an areas are using such sprays and your yard is filled with lovely native plants. Do your plants become a problem, an insect black hole, dying as they sample flowers from the neighbor’s yards?
Should we actually look at suggesting that flowers be removed from suburban and urban areas to minimize impacts on bees?
I have always shrugged my shoulders at notions of the insect apocalypse, acknowledging the fact that wherever humans go we inevitable negatively impact native species biodiversity (e.g. pavement and houses are not habitat). But, this seems like a good way to truly eliminate much of the residual arthropod fauna surrounding our homes.
So, run your own google searches ….
I am glad to send a file of links and our scorings.
I am not taking this any further as that is not my science lane, but I do hope others will.
Side note: I recently had conversations with a local vineyard owner. Spotted lanternflies have moved into the area and they love grapes in ways that make the unsalable. Some of the advice he was getting was to use pyrethrinoids to spray all of the surrounding many acres around the vineyard to kill the lanternflies and create a toxic barrier to diminish the impact on the vineyard….unclear how much such things are happening, but everyone should be concerned.
If anyone knows of studies of these applications, that would be great, please post.
Sam
The Simplon Pass
—Brook and road
Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy Pass,
And with them did we journey several hours
At a slow step. The immeasurable height
Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,
The stationary blasts of waterfalls,
And in the narrow rent, at every turn,
Winds thwarting winds bewildered and forlorn,
The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,
The rocks that muttered close upon our ears,
Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside
As if a voice were in them, the sick sight
And giddy prospect of the raving stream,
The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens,
Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light—
Were all like workings of one mind, the features
Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree,
Characters of the great Apocalypse,
The types and symbols of Eternity,
Of first and last, and midst, and without end.
- WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Be Kinder than Necessary
BARBARA ABRAHAM
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Russel Barsh
--
Carrie McLaughlin
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Carrie McLaughlin
Aaron Anderson
Thank you for bringing this up — mosquito sprays, including these mosquito barrier sprays, are something that we’ve been thinking about a lot here at the Xerces Society and we actually just conducted a research study looking at their impacts. As you mention, these sprays seem like a huge risk to invertebrate communities in residential landscapes, and we’ve been trying to message about their potential impacts when conducting outreach to individuals and communities. We also often get questions from people who are concerned about their neighbors’ mosquito spray services and are wondering how these sprays might impact their pollinator gardens.
As you noted, there isn’t a lot of information in the literature about the non-target impacts of these barrier spray services. So, in the summer of 2023 we performed a study to get a sense of the risk of residential mosquito sprays to pollinators. We recruited volunteers in three different states (GA, IA, and MA) who either 1) hire these services themselves, 2) who have neighbors hire these services, or 3) who experience municipal control districts sprays near their properties. Volunteers placed silicone bands as sentinel monitors to capture drift from these sprays in their yards.
The chemical analysis of our samples has been completed, and we’re in the process of writing our study up for publication, so please stay tuned! But, I can quickly share some broad results. Yards who hired these services had very high pyrethroid loads — up to many times the honey bee LD50s. Yards that were adjacent to a sprayed property were generally lower than the sites where applications occurred, and for the most part the monitors did not collect amounts that reached known risk levels. But, in some instances pyrethroid drift from neighboring yards was detected at levels that were concerning, which reinforces that steps to mitigate neighbor sprays are important for people creating pollinator habitat. Finally, other insecticides were occasionally detected — including IGRs and neonics. I should note that we only captured single spray events, so don’t know potential residues or impacts from repeated treatments.
We’ll be sure to share our results with this listserv once they are published. Sam, thanks for sharing the summary of your video reviews — it really underscores how label precautions aren’t enough to protect pollinators and other invertebrates in residential landscapes.
Aaron
Aaron Anderson, PhD
Pesticide Program Specialist
Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
Pronouns: he/him/his
polli...@sc.rr.com
I've seen huge drops in total foragers of bumble bees, Melissodes bees, and honey bees following spraying in cotton a quarter of a mile away. I'm not in suburbia, but the principle is the same. I'm sure drift is not involved. One application during bloom has an impact that lasts several years.
Generally the labels are designed around the effect of a pesticide on the nectar, the pollen, and the bees themselves as they forage. This is good. If they were enforced, they would go much father to protect bees, than any focus on drift. As it is, the label directions are rarely enforced; they only give the manufacturer protection from liability.
If your study focused on the forage, and on compliance with label directions, it would be far more useful.
Dave Green
Retired pollination contractor and consultant .
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Kit Prendergast
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Rosemary Malfi
Rosemary Malfi, Ph.D.
Director of Conservation Policy
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
484.802.5553 | rosemar...@xerces.org
Pronouns: she/her/hers | Time Zone: Eastern
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Droege, Sam
Warning: Dictation Software Used, odd word choices may result
Thanks Rosemary
Yes to all of what you mentioned.
My impression from listening to many of the videos and the little summary was that the people applying pesticides were not doing so out of some sort of specific animosity to pollinators (though many were doing it out of a sort of I hate all bugs philosophy) but out of lack of understanding of the impacts that they were having, how the chemicals were working in their yard, how the chemicals would be working on the plants in their yard, and an inability to read or find information about such things in the tranche of information in tiny print without any privatization that is included with each model of chemical.
I am glad that you guys are working on this it seems right in your pocket.
I hope to come out in the next two days with a small study design that someone (other than me) can initiate that will look at things very directly in terms of mortality.
Sam
Future Talk
Germs, viruses and parasite
gathered in the classroom
to discuss the beginnings of
intelligent life. They discussed
the stupid dinosaurs, who,
they agreed, were dumber than
dirt and deserved to die out.
They recalled the passenger pigeon,
the whale, the owl, the wolf,
and, while they admired each
for something, none of these
apparently had the right stuff.
Then the talk turned to mankind,
and there was some disagreement
as to the meaning of "human."
There was the usual shaking
of heads, up and down, over
how easy it had been to overcome
the kind of man that mankind
had been, since it was
merely necessary to penetrate him
and then to mutate before
each new weapon: biological,
chemical or radiological. Of course,
these were the ultimate
biological weapons, and now they
smiled at the utter simplicity—
the naturalness—of it all.
Everyone said that mankind,
whatever it was, was certainly
unfit for lengthy survival,
and of course to say so was so
so obvious that the teacher
warned them against pride,
which they did not have or need.
- Marvin Bell
From: Rosemary Malfi <rma...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2024 10:14 AM
To: kitprend...@gmail.com; Aaron Anderson <aaron.a...@xerces.org>
Cc: rlb...@gmail.com; beemonitoring <beemon...@googlegroups.com>; Droege, Sam <sdr...@usgs.gov>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [Beemonitoring] Backyard Mosquito Spraying may be more impactful than we think....
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