THE METRO PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT VIOLATES MOSQUITO CONTROL POLICY TWICE in DONELSON.

The Health Department made claims they sprayed in Donelson because of the large numbers of mosquitoes and other areas of Nashville. Sometimes their claims were correct. Other times they violated their own policy and sprayed even though mosquito populations had gone below their minimum action threshold of 35 mosquitoes.

Under the Tennessee Open Records Law, the No Spray Coalition requested the mosquito trapping results for all areas of Nashville. We discovered two violations of the Health Department's policies in Donelson. Below are the mosquito trapping results given to volunteers by the Health Department:

Quail Run Road, Donelson permanent trap site 37214
Traps were collected on Tuesdays and Thursdays

Date #Culex mosquitoes
5/9... 112
5/11... 28
5/16... 22
5/25... 236
5/31... 105
6/02... 77
6/06... 125
6/8 ... 38
6/15... 120
6/20... 33 SPRAYED Under the current policy, spraying should have been canceled.
6/22... 19 Mosquito numbers were down across Nashville this week whether they were sprayed or not.
6/27... 44
6/29... 46
7/07... 59
7/13... 100
7/18... 166
7/20... 80
7/25... 48
7/27... 23 SPRAYEDUnder the current policy, spraying should have been canceled.
8/1... missing dataIt appears that they stopped trapping twice a week.
8/2... positive test returned from 7/18
8/3... 88 mosquito numbers increase almost 300% after spraying
8/10... 110 mosquito numbers increase over 400% after spraying
8/17... 36
8/22... 65
8/29... 18

See trap results for other areas click here.

The MPHD's Mosquito Control Policy states:

"The primary action threshold for ULV truck-mounted application of Anvil is the identification of a pool of mosquito positive for WNV or the identification of a human case.

However, the minimum action threshold for initiating ULV truck-mounted application of insecticide is a mosquito population density of 35 female mosquitoes in a gravid trap....

In making the decision for ULV truck-mounted application of insecticides based on minimum action threshold, mosquito density data used in make such decision must be from the area of concern and must have been collected within a period not exceeding 48 hours prior to initiation of treatment. "
Source: http://healthweb.nashville.gov

Update: On July 14, 2006, a volunteer spoke with Dr. Brent Hager of the Health Department about this policy. He stated that the minimum action threshold has been 100 not 35 as stated in their policy. This knowledge makes their violation of their policy even more outrageous.