A call to halt mosquito spraying
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This is an open letter to the V.I. Department of Health's Division of Environmental Health:
I am alarmed by your plan to spray our towns during the evening hours with Permanone 30-30. For many reasons, I ask you please to cancel this plan.
How dangerous this toxin must be if you've warned citizens with compromised immune systems to stay indoors with windows closed!
In a community where most of us live and work in open air, please consider the danger to public health, for example to the hundreds of visitors and locals, elders and children who are currently fighting the flu.
At the height of our tourist season, consider the impact on people working in or walking through town or dining in open restaurants with no protection.
Further, this pesticide will not target the dengue-bearing mosquitoes, which live mainly indoors and are active only during the day.
Instead, it will affect only the "nuisance mosquitoes," which are active after dark - and it will indiscriminately kill whatever beneficial insect or shoreline marine life it contacts.
Please look at the name of this product and think about what lasting damage it will make permanent in our fragile eco-system.
I ask the Department of Health to abandon this plan that will poison St, John and its people
- Paula Myles, St. John
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