Our respectful advice to Chester County:

Now is the time to stop the poisoning of our environment and jeopardizing the health of people and planet. Minority communities are hardest hit by poor air quality. To save lives, call a halt and go organic. Other counties, cities, in fact whole countries have done it. We are happy to provide models for Chester County on request. A first step would be to stop the spraying of any poisonous substance by the County and that includes all pesticides and herbicides. If it has -cide in the title –it kills.

Summary of research by Liam Hudgings: A significant number of studies have found a strong positive relationship between air pollution and the mortality rates due to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndromes, and more specifically Covid-19. Polluted air leads to an increased proclivity to chronic respiratory disease and inflammation, which in turn leads to a susceptibility to SARS viruses.

A Harvard study found that: “if Manhattan had lowered its average particulate matter level by just a single unit, or one microgram per cubic meter, over the past 20 years, the borough would most likely have seen 248 fewer COVID-19 deaths by this point (April 13, 2020) in the outbreak.”

Furthermore, multiple papers cited below found that even short-term exposure to air pollution had a significant effect on the coronavirus mortality rate. Thus, as the threat of a second wave and even an endemic adoption of COVID-19 into our community remain likely, it is pertinent to evaluate the actions that can be taken to avoid air pollution and other airborne irritants of the respiratory system.

One such irritant is Permethrin, an insecticide that Chester County has sprayed in a fog to kill mosquitoes. Exposure to sprayed pesticide has been proven to cause and exacerbate respiratory issues. Specifically for Permethrin, there is evidence that exposure can induce short-term breathing problems, and higher levels of toxicity have caused irregular breathing patterns in animal test subjects.

While this evidence is by no means conclusive, erring on the side of caution is always advisable, particularly in this case. The spraying of Permethrin is largely justified as a preventative measure for West Nile Virus despite the fact that very few WNV cases are reported in the area.

As the utility of Permethrin spraying is dubious at best, and spraying the pesticide itself presents the possibility of increasing the local COVID-19 mortality rate, it is in the public’s best interest to refrain from spraying.

Air Pollution and COVID-19/ SARS mortality rate, references:

Chen, Bing-Heng. “ Relationship Between Air Pollution and Daily Mortality of Sars in Beijing,” 2005. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.ede.0000276437.22928.b8.

Conticini, Edoardo, Bruno Frediani, and Dario Caro. “Can Atmospheric Pollution Be Considered a Co-Factor in Extremely High Level of SARS-CoV-2 Lethality in Northern Italy?” Environmental Pollution 261 (2020): 114465. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2020.114465.

Cui, Yan, Zuo-Feng Zhang, John Froines, Jinkou Zhao, Hua Wang, Shun-Zhang Yu, and Roger Detels. “Air Pollution and Case Fatality of SARS in the People’s Republic of China: an Ecologic Study.” Environmental Health 2, no. 1 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1186/1476-069x-2-15.

King, Amanda. “Linking Air Pollution To Higher Coronavirus Death Rates.” Department of Biostatistics, April 13, 2020. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/biostatistics/2020/04/linking-air-pollution-to-higher-coronavirus-death-rates/.