The Mosquito Spray Truck

Houston, TX has had spraying operations since the 60s or 70s.

That leaves much of Harris County and the city of Houston under the protection of the Harris County Mosquito Control District.

Yet the district has only 10 trucks, which spray pesticides such as malathion at night.

Harris County has about 19,200 miles of roads. If a truck works all night, it can cover about 40 miles. That means the average house has about a one-in-50 chance of getting sprayed tonight.

...

A lack of spraying may be just as well, argue pesticide-control advocates, who say the county should warn people before they spray a neighborhood with chemicals such as malathion.

"At the very least, people should close their windows, if possible, bring in their pets and don't let their kids into the yard after spraying has occurred," said Stephen King, a toxicologist with Texans for Alternatives to Pesticides.

The Environmental Protection Agency has determined, however, that exposures to even repeated air and ground applications of malathion range from 100 to 10,000 times below an amount that might pose a health concern.

Houston Chronicle Archive

Originally posted by Cyberbian
When I was a little boy 40 years ago, we used to run down the block following the trucks in the cloud jumping up and down!

I once bought an attachment muffler for my lawnmower with a tube you pour the special insecticide into the muffler and it vaporizes.

They are legitimate. The best control method is to pour a little oil in the stagnant water They use special oils which disperse to a very fine skin.


Here is a quote from a Florida web site.
In the past the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District used thermal fogging to apply adulticides. The pesticide was diluted with diesel oil and passed through the engine of the plane or the blower in the back of the truck. This produced a thick cloud of smoke that was easily seen. It also produced a certain level of pollution due to the burning of the oil. Now the district uses ultralow volume or ULV applications. A very small amount of pesticide is applied in droplets about the diameter of a human hair. ULV allows mosquito control to use less pesticide to achieve the same results, while eliminating pollution due to use of the diesel oil carrier.

Yet polluting the air with a chemical that has mild nervegas activity.
Add thatn to the already idiotic amounts of other pollutants and you have a bad health cocktail.
Why humans are so stupid to not see the downside to their ever so slight ups is a mistery to me. Id rather evolve to be able to stand muskitoes, than to have to breathe nervegas against bugs.
We humans have always tried to eliminate parts of nature, only because we are too LAZY to adapt or to live elsewhere. In the Rainforests, the inhabitants have millions of stinging insects that assail them, and still they have adapted to this by changing their diet (or rather by eating the local diet) so they are able to stand the assault by bugs.
Who of the two is smarter and better equipped to survive eh? We who need chemicals and machines or they?
Not much thinking time necessary, I guess.
Its the Amazonians who win with ease.
We westerners have to poison everything and destroy any species that could be of danger to us. We are a cancer to the earth if we stick to this behaviour.
We will soon be the victim of our poisonous behaviour and possibly we will be eradicated by the forces of nature; if we do not destroy nature altogether...and ourselves in the process...

I'm with Cyberbian and lombozo on this one.

Had them back in the early 60's when I was a kid. Between the creosote smell from the freight yards and the mosquito trucks, I tried killing the rest of my brain, with alcohol, when I was old enough to drink at 18.

I would have never thought they would still have these from the threatened lawsuits from groups protecting the mosquitoes (they have a right to life also, you know) and people with health issues who sue for ramps and handrails.

I'm in a small Minnesota town and they spray several times during the summer. They usually do it in the early evening. We don't get official notices, but are smart enough to stay inside when that bugger (pun lol) comes around.

The mosquito is definitely our other state bird up here; big, mean, and relentless.

When I went to Marmaris in Turkey in 1996, the first morning I was there a truck like that went past the hotel spraying a plume of insecticide into the air. It scared the hell out of me, I was only 11 and thought I was being gassed to death!

imo it does not work well here and here is why, the fog as i have watched falls down on the road behind the truck, the mosquitoes live in the grass. so yea they might catch a few flying but overall i doubt if the poison is even reaching the yards and fields away from the road. to really be effective we need helicopters with chemtrails but who wants that lol

I saw a mosquito truck come down my street last week. I've never seen one before in any of the other places I lived. No mention of it beforehand. I was glad my animals were in, and I quickly shut all my windows.

I have to wonder about that nice big garden I put in a few weeks ago. Are my organic veggies now not organic?

We have them here in St. Louis. The noise is ridiculous and scared the heck out of me the first time I heard it. They spray my neighborhood probably once a month during the summer season. I can't honestly say if it helps or not, as they've been doing it ever since I've lived here, so I've never experienced the area without the spray.

Originally posted by Mad_Hatter


I just read a news article from the local news channel down here in Alabama that says Mosquito Spraying has begun here. I was wondering, do they have trucks anywhere else like in the north that go around pouring mass amounts of insecticide into the air like they do here? And this stuff can't be healthy. Really though....it doesn't really decrease the amount of mosquitoes in my opinion. Of course, they spray all the time so I don't really know what it would be like without it. Do you think the pros of mosquito spraying outweigh the cons?

Areas of Michigan use Mosquito "control" trucks. The spray stinks awful and it has been shown to kill many varieties of insects, not just mosquitos. Lightning bugs/firefly larva are supposedly also killed by this spray. And if you have been around long enough you can attest to the decrese in lightning bugs over the years.

Ive seen them here in dallas before, although the last time I saw one was a few years ago. It's was an interesting sight to see. It went right down my street and the only thing I could think of to say was " goodbye ozone layer"

reply to post by roadgravel

Same here in Florida. I have lived here since the 1950's (born here) and I remember prior to every baseball game, the trucks would spray.. I was told they were spraying Malathion. Some Florida counties use planes as well as trucks to spray for mosquitoes.

They have been spraying in the wee hours of the morning on the Mississippi Gulf Coast for as long as I have known. It's absurd. There is no excuse plausible for it. Not malaria, West Nile, or any other fear-based reason they can come up with. Screwing with nature only creates more problems. A good example of this is with agriculture, Round Up, Monsanto's pesticide/herbicide products. All of nature is linked to one another. If you eliminate mosquitoes, then you create a biological break in the chain of life. The predator of mosquitoes will drop off and thus their predators. The insects below mosquitoes and their predators will increase dramatically, furthering the dramatic biological chain-break problem. It's a domino effect. It is man acting like he can be God to think he can control all aspects of his life and nature and curb everything to his will and his life. Absurd and egotistic at the least.

reply to post by Mad_Hatter


seen it here in south carolina many times. when i lived in beaufort it never made a diffrence that i saw. but i live in columbia now and cant recall a misquito bite in almost two years now. seems worth it to me...

I use to live across the bay from Langley AFB in VA. There they use to use a C-130 to fly around the bay area and spray 2-3 times a year.

I've seen those from time to time ever since I was a kid here in Maryland.It is usually done when they are expecting a abnormally bad mosquito season.We have had a tremendous amount of rain this year so far here.It is not toxic to humans but I would close the windows for about 30 minutes while they are spraying in your neighborhood though. It's not the kind of stuff you want to be breathing in in quantities.

reply to post by Mad_Hatter


OMG that takes me back! LOL I remember the mosquito truck that would spray our neighborhood when I was a kid was such a piece of crap. You could hear it coming long before you smelled the stench of chemicals, which were absolutely noxious. We always laughed about the old mosquito man though. Haha last time I was in my hometown in SC that old man was still driving that same old truck (circa early 70s pickup) around with the jury-rigged tanks bolted to it. I can't believe it still runs.

As to whether or not it works...well the mosquitos did either die or take their leave for at least a few hours when he would come around.

I think it more inhibits their ability to breed rather than kill them off like a standard bug spray.With a lot of moisture they tend to breed more causing swarms of mosquito's

In Texas as a child the trucks would come and spray. Back then they used a poison called DDT. Many times I could not run home fast enough when I heard the truck approaching and would get sprayed. I am still amazed that I have not grown a long tail from the toxin.

We have those trucks here in Indiana
Small town of about1,200 people.
Scary thing is...when we were kids,as soon as we heard the distinctive and undeniable sound of "the skeeter truck" coming...all the kids in the neighborhood
would run out of their homes and run behind the fuming truck, breathing in the insecticide as they had the time of their life being engulfed in the fog.

Must have been a conspiracy between the town leaders and our parents...we were never told that it WAS insecticide...just be home before midnite!

I spent part of my early childhood in the suburbs of NJ; this was in the late 60s-early 70s. We lived about a block and a half from a swamp, and less than 1/2 mile from a river. I remember moms calling us kids in from outdoors when the truck was coming by. I remember the smell, and the fog so thick it was impossible to see through it. I remember an elderly gentleman who lived next door to us had to fill in his fish pond because the fog would kill his fish.

I was told the fog contained some sort of neurotoxin.