Poisoning the big apple.

• Author: Cohen, Mitchel
• Position: Pesticides: A Chemical Weapon

Widespread and indiscriminate pesticide spraying, purportedly for West Nile Virus, began in New York City two years before 9-11. Such spraying is now recommended policy for urban areas throughout the country. Spraying was, and remains, one important but neglected piece in the biological warfare puzzle.

Mass spraying of dangerous insecticides on the entire population and environment of New York City more closely resembled a military operation than a public health program. City officials whipped up hysteria about the West Nile Virus to circumvent civil liberties and to gain acceptance for the indiscriminate spraying of malathion and pyrethroid pesticides over the largest population center and urban ecosystem in the country. No such crisis mode was ever established for the far more dangerous flu epidemics or over ailments such as asthma with vastly disproportionate casualties when compared with West Nile encephalitis.

In 1999 and 2000, helicopters buzzed below the tree line, spraying the malathion concoction over children playing in parks and people strolling through their neighborhoods. No one was warned to get out of the parks or stay off the streets. Heavy spraying occurred over the New York City subways, sewer system, schools, and daycare centers. Spraying also occurred over or near open waterways, poisoning fish and marine life and wreaking havoc with delicate ecosystems. Pesticides were released over lakes and rivers, eventually making their way into the Atlantic Ocean, in reckless disregard for the warnings on the labels.

Thousands of people were made sick by the spraying, but that didn't stop officials from the City and the federal Centers for Disease Control from ordering the City sprayed repeatedly with a toxic barrage of Fyfanon ULV (96.5 percent pure, extremely fine lung-penetrating droplets of malathion) and the synthetic pyrethroids Scourge (resmethrin) and Anvil (sumithrin), which contained large amounts piperonyl butoxide.

Instead of a pesticides hotline, the City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene set up an undependable "West Nile Virus information center" telephone service. These phones were answered by non-unionized, ill-informed operators two-hundred miles away in Pennsylvania.

The City took no precautions to warn asthma sufferers, people with compromised immune systems, cancer survivors, people with allergies, or those facing repeated exposure (homeless people, subway workers, spray truck drivers), let alone everyone...