By Lori Kurtzman, The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS – Usually, the goal is to drive mosquitoes away, or to kill them in their tracks. Spray, bam, drop dead.
But Columbus Public Health has one tool in its mosquito-destroying arsenal that doesn’t quite work that way. Attractive, toxic sugar bait, as it is so seductively called, actually lures mosquitoes with a gift of sweet syrup. Then, it poisons them with surprise garlic oil.
READ MORE: In The Columbus Dispatch
“Their systems can’t tolerate it,” said Kelli Dodd, vector control program manager for the city health department.
The agency tested out the spray last year and is bringing back more this year to Clintonville’s Whetstone Park. The department can’t use its usual, more-effective chemicals there, Dodd said, because part of Whetstone is considered a nature preserve.
Spraying at Whetstone began this week, and today, the city will begin early-morning spraying at the rest of its parks using a chemical that kills mosquitoes on contact. Columbus does that every year, marking the unofficial start to the mosquito season by trying to obliterate the insects that are the bane of July Fourth cookouts.
See map for scheduled spraying areas.
Mosquitoes seem even more sinister this year because of fears of the Zika virus, which has plagued much of the world south of the United States and is threatening to creep past its borders this summer.
Nearly 500 Ohioans have been tested by the state and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for Zika, which can cause serious birth defects in babies. So far, only 16 people in Ohio have tested positive. Every case was tied to travel. One woman in Ohio contracted the disease after having sex with someone infected while traveling.
The virus has put added burden on the Ohio Department of Health, which has spent about $30,000 in federal grant money so far for testing supplies and equipment, said Kevin Sohner, special microbiology lab supervisor for the department. Still, officials here seem to have a handle on the local problem. Ohio has been testing for Zika since March 16 — a duty that previously fell to the overburdened CDC —and is capable of performing hundreds of such tests a week.