We in Don’t Spray Me! are in favor of scientific knowledge.

We would like public officials to share more background information with the public.

We find it disrespectful of taxpayers and residents when public employees do not reveal information that they should have, even when we file Right To Know requests as specified by state law.

How does the Health Department decide when and where to spray pesticides on private and public spaces?

How does it implement its promise of “exhausting all other available mosquito control strategies” before spraying?

Where has the County been applying larvicide (the most effective means of mosquito control)?

The short answer we keep getting is: no answer. But we will get answers, because we believe in an informed public active in asserting its rights against policies whose own implementers cannot or do not care to justify them.

In case you are wondering: spell “larvicide” or “larvacide,” “mosquitoes” or “mosquitos.”

“Spraying” refers to an air-borne mist, spread by trucks in streets in the case of mosquito control in inhabited areas, that kills adult insects (not eggs, larvae, or pupae) that happen to fly into its droplets and can harm others like amphibians, fish, and cats.

“Larviciding” involves dropping in standing water a biological agent that kills mosquito larvae right where they are growing; larvicide is harmless to people and other organisms (except another pest insect species).

Don’t Spray Me! wants more larviciding and less spraying!