State Plans Health Review of Malathion Spray Sites

Countering charges that they have run roughshod over local concerns in their campaign against the Mediterranean fruit fly, state officials said Monday that they will set up a Southern California health advisory panel on the issue and conduct air and water quality reviews in spray areas this month.

State health and agriculture officials disclosed the plans in morning-long meetings with a delegation of Orange County politicians. The local group had traveled to Sacramento to voice their anxieties about the anti-Medfly assault and present a platform for changing the eradication process.

Critics of the state’s handling of the Medfly battle praised the new plans as a positive step in helping assuage public fears over the aerial spraying of malathion, but said it may be too little, too late.

Orange County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, who led the delegation, said of the health panel, “that would have been great if it were done before the fact,” rather than after malathion had been sprayed over the homes of hundreds of thousands of North County residents. State Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), who last week introduced two bills that would halt all aerial pesticide applications pending a review of the spray’s health effects, said the state’s new plan was a step in the right direction but does not go far enough.

“We need not only to monitor the water, but to stop the spraying and monitor the health effects of malathion,” Torres said.

Malathion opponents who have questioned the state’s assurances about the pesticide’s safety have attacked the composition of its current scientific advisory panel in Sacramento, made up entirely of insect specialists, with no one from the public health or medical fields.

State officials said that they are confident that both the health advisory panel and the air and water studies will confirm that the malathion policy poses no health risks and, in the process, may win over critics of the effort to eradicate the crop-attacking fly.

While the state met little resistance in its first sprayings in the Brea area last year, the eradication’s expansion into a 36-square-mile area around Garden Grove and Westminster has sparked widespread protests and ongoing legal challenges by some of the cities affected.

State officials have stood by the spraying policy, calling it a safe and necessary means of protecting the state’s $16-billion agriculture industry from the current Medfly infestation.

But Rex Magee, associate director of the state Department of Food and Agriculture, said after a sometimes-tense meeting with Orange County politicians: “We’ve got to try and calm down the fears.”

The new panel--to be formed as early as this week--would be made up of county health officials from Los Angeles and Orange counties, as well as academicians and medical professionals from around Southern California.

The panel would have the dual mission of advising the state on the health implications of malathion spraying and of educating the public on its findings, said James W. Stratton, medical epidemiologist with the state Department of Health Services.

However, some at the state level were reluctant to pursue the idea, despite its possible public relations benefit.

“A lot of people here just don’t think there’s a need for it,” Rex R. Magee, associate director of the state Department of Food and Agriculture, said in an interview. “When this panel gets finished with its work, the conclusions about malathion safety are the same and you still might not do anything to ease the public’s anxiety.”

In another tactic aimed at quelling public opposition, state officials said they planned to duplicate a study of malathion’s effects on air and water quality that was done in 1981 during Northern California’s Medfly infestation.

Ronald J. Oshima, branch chief of the state’s environmental monitoring and pest management unit, said the state staff will place perhaps a dozen air quality monitoring devices during a two-week period this month in the Southern California spray zones. The units would be placed near hospitals, nursing homes, schools and other areas where there might be people especially sensitive to declines in air quality.

Meanwhile, the Orange County delegation, meeting with local Assembly members and senators, put forth an 11-point plan for legislative reform that included proposals for toughening the state’s environmental review of the spraying policy, and speeding and improving notification of the public about the process. The plan got generally favorable response from more than a half-dozen Orange County Assembly members and senators who met with the delegation.

Later Monday, attorneys for the cities of Huntington Beach and Garden Grove took sworn depositions from state Medfly specialists. The depositions, to continue today in Orange County, are part of the first legal challenge in Southern California to the state’s authority to spray malathion.

A Superior Court judge in Sacramento refused last month to halt the first spraying in the Garden Grove area. But local attorneys, armed with new testimony from this week’s depositions, plan to return to court Feb. 15--the date of the next spraying in the Garden Grove area--to try again.

In four hours of questioning, the lawyers tried to show inconsistencies in the state’s method for determining spray areas and its review of the health effects of malathion. Officials held firm in their testimony that the spraying poses no adverse health effects.

In Orange County, meanwhile, a new organization called Orange County Citizens Against Malathion Spraying announced that it will try to persuade the Orange County Board of Supervisors not to extend the State of Emergency declaration handed down by Gov. George Deukmejian. The month-old organization represents several groups from 10 cities of Orange County that are concerned with the effects of malathion spraying.

“This (spraying) situation is unjustified, intolerable and dangerous to our health and property,” said Bob Taylor, spokesman for the organization. “No government official should have the right to blanket us and our families with poisonous pesticides.”

He said that if the governor refuses to stop the spraying, the organization will consider actions that could include consumer boycotts of California produce and mass demonstrations.

In addition, the city councils of Huntington Beach, Santa Ana and Garden Grove took up the malathion issue in their meetings Monday night. A dozen local residents attended the Santa Ana council meeting, some wielding signs that read: “Stop Medfly Spraying.” Councilman John Acosta had asked the city to place an emergency item on the agenda to examine the Medfly issue.

“For all these years of spraying, nothing has been accomplished,” Acosta said in the meeting. “It seems that the only ones who benefit are the chemical companies.”

The county Board of Supervisors is scheduled to decide today whether to renew the declaration of emergency. And tonight, a group of local residents are to appear before the Fullerton City Council to push for passage of a resolution asking the state to seek alternatives to aerial spraying.

Members of the Board of Supervisors on Monday expressed a wait-and-see attitude on the state’s new plans.

“I will listen to the presentations by the state officials, weigh them and make a decision,” said Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, noting that he has listened to arguments from both sides of the issue.

An eight-square-mile area of North County that includes parts of Brea, La Habra and Fullerton is scheduled for its fifth dose of malathion next Monday night. Parts of nine cities near the areas where two Medflies were discovered in Garden Grove and Westminster are scheduled for their second spraying Feb. 15.

Times staff writers Stephen C. Chavez, Lily Eng and George Frank contributed to this report.

MEDFLY BATTLE IN ORANGE COUNTY Nov. 17--A pregnant Mediterranean fruit fly is discovered in a guava tree in Brea. Nov. 30--State and county officials launch what is thought to be a one-time-only malathion spraying over an eight-square-mile area of North County, including parts of Brea, Fullerton and La Habra. The area is sprayed an additional three times over ensuing weeks. Jan. 10--Another pregnant Medfly is found, this time in Garden Grove. State officials order a round of spraying for a 36-square-mile-area surrounding Garden Grove and including Westminster and Huntington Beach. Jan. 25--A Sacramento Superior Court judge refuses a last-minute appeal from the cities of Huntington Beach, Garden Grove and Westminster to block malathion spraying. Jan. 26--The largest malathion application in the county’s history begins in the 36-square-mile area surrounding Garden Grove. Feb. 5--An Orange County delegation of politicians travels to Sacramento to protest the state’s Medfly assault. State health and agricultural officials disclose plans to set up a health advisory panel and conduct air and water quality reviews in local spray areas. Feb. 15--Attorneys for the Orange County cities are scheduled to go back to court--the same day as the next scheduled application in the 36-square-mile area surrounding Garden Grove. Compiled by Jim Carlton, Times Staff Writer