Children Fear Sprayings for ‘Madfly’ May Hurt the Caterpillars : Malathion: 5-year-olds tell teacher they’re afraid of chemical’s effects. City attorneys are trying to speed a hearing on the aerial assaults before the next dousing.

Ever since a pregnant Mediterranean fruit fly was found in northern Orange County in November, state and county agriculture officials have been trying to persuade residents that the pesticide malathion is harmful to the insect but not to humans. But the kindergartners in Eleanor Stafford’s class are not convinced.

The morning after five helicopters completed the most extensive pesticide spraying in county history last week, about 20 kindergartners marched into Stafford’s class at Lampson Elementary School full of questions and concerns about the use of chemicals to eradicate the Medfly--or “the Madfly,” as one little girl in the class called it.

“They wanted to know if it (the malathion) would kill their pets, if it would kill the worms and the bugs and the caterpillars and the birds,” Stafford said. “They wanted to know why their parents had to cover up their cars.”

While the children spoke of their worries in class, parents in parts of Garden Grove, Westminster, Santa Ana, Stanton, Cypress, Los Alamitos, Huntington Beach, Anaheim and Orange spent the morning uncovering their cars and hosing down their lawns after the record spraying that lasted nearly five hours.

From 8:42 p.m. Thursday until about 1:30 a.m. Friday, five helicopters based at El Monte Airport swooped down on the cities and dropped 2,200 gallons of malathion mixture--a combination of one part pesticide to three parts corn syrup used as bait--over a 36-square-mile area, said Anita Brown, a spokeswoman for the state Medfly Project.

The spraying got under way four hours after a Sacramento Superior Court judge denied a last-minute appeal to block the spraying for at least 10 days. The next round of spraying in the Garden Grove area is scheduled Feb. 15. Attorneys in Garden Grove, Westminster and Huntington Beach are exploring ways to move up a Feb. 23 hearing in Sacramento to a date before the next spraying.

Stafford said her pupils expressed their fears of the potential health hazard to humans and animals through drawings. One rendition, she said, showed malathion-spraying helicopters hovering above the school with the children cowering inside, while another depicted the choppers spraying the pesticide while a turtle lay dead on the ground beneath them.

“The children have been coming to school all week talking about the Medfly spraying,” Stafford said. “I had the children talk about it--they were all worried. I just think sometimes we underestimate how these things affect children.”

Parents were concerned too, Stafford said. Ten of her pupils were kept home by worried parents, and several others called to ask if their children would be participating in outdoor activities.

“Several of the parents told me if I was going to take them outside, they would take the kids home,” she said.

Tom Neill, a spokesman for the Orange Unified School District, acknowledged that there were “a few parents concerned about their children going to school” after the spraying. But he said that classes, including outdoor activities, for the most part went on as usual.

He added that the district sent emergency crews to Lampson--the only school in the district in the spraying area--to hose down outdoor equipment and turn on lawn sprinklers to saturate the ground “so the malathion wouldn’t leave a sticky residue.” The crews also wiped drinking fountains and sprayed down areas where children were likely to play or congregate before classes Friday morning, Neill said.

Other school districts in the spray zone took similar measures. Most reported no unusual activity or absences because of the malathion spraying.

“We consider this a normal school day, with some extra precautions,” said Alan Trudell, a spokesman for the Garden Grove Unified School District. “It is business as usual.”

While the cleanup was wrapping up at schools and homes throughout the area, city attorneys in the spray area began seeking ways to prevent another round of spraying. Although they were unsuccessful in their efforts Thursday, the attorneys expressed confidence that they will be able to present a better case at the next hearing.

“The problem with the hearing (Thursday) was that you have a higher burden of proof at a hearing like that, where it’s scheduled on short notice,” said Garden Grove City Atty. Stuart B. Scudder. “In the future hearing, the burden of proof will be on the state to show good cause for continuing the spraying.”

Deputy Atty. Gen. Charles W. Getz IV, who is representing the state in the malathion case, said that under the law the burden of proof technically is on the cities, but he added that “the reality is any careful court would demand that the state would have to show why the spraying is safe in an urban area.”

Getz said he expects attorneys for the cities to request a hearing before the spraying scheduled Feb. 15. “I have no objection to an earlier hearing date,” Getz said. “We’re ready to go to trial tomorrow.”

Anaheim city attorneys also are exploring legal grounds to stop the spraying, and said they may join the Huntington Beach-Westminster-Garden Grove case. “We’re very interested in seeing their pleadings--there are some arguments they’ve used that certainly have merit,” said Bob Franks, a senior assistant city attorney in Anaheim.

Franks, who said “a united approach” may be the most effective in the legal battle against the state, said his office will explore all of the legal options and will submit a recommendation to the Anaheim City Council at its Feb. 6 meeting.

Times staff writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.