Medical Assn. to Hear Call for Spray Ban

A proposed California Medical Assn. resolution that calls for an immediate halt to malathion spraying passed a major hurdle Friday when the group’s executive committee voted to discuss the statement at the annual CMA meeting at the Disneyland Hotel.

The resolution, which alleges that the state has not proven the safety of the pesticide used in Mediterranean fruit fly eradication, is scheduled to be discussed today by another committee, which will take testimony and possibly modify the measure.

The resolution can still be killed by a majority vote of the reference committee, but supporters saw the executive board as their most significant roadblock and expressed confidence that the measure would prevail in a final vote of the 440-member House of Delegates.

A delegate vote on the statement will probably come early next week.

“I’m very optimistic now,” said H. Rex Greene, the Pasadena doctor who brought the resolution before the CMA. “I think we have a good chance.”

In sending the resolution to the reference committee, the executive board agreed that the issue is important enough to warrant a hearing, not that the statement should necessarily be passed, officials said.

The CMA does not have a formal policy statement on malathion spraying. When Medflies infested parts of Santa Clara County in 1981, the association decided that the issue was a “matter best addressed” by local medical associations, according to a CMA staff report released Friday.

CMA spokesman Chuck McFadden said he is aware of no other medical agency that has taken a position on spraying.

The resolution calls on the state to halt spraying until the safety of malathion can be assessed. The measure also asks the other 38,000 members of the nation’s largest medical association to write letters to lawmakers asking them to support the ban on spraying.

The vote on the measure coincided with a speech to the CMA by Dr. Kenneth W. Kizer, director of California’s Department of Health Services.

Kizer said he is not taking a position on the malathion resolution because had not seen it and he is not a CMA member.

But he repeated his earlier position: “I don’t feel this presents a significant public health hazard.”

Kizer conceded in an interview that “this is a very unusual circumstance, for the health department to be suggesting that this pesticide’s OK. We’re not so enthused about pesticides in general.”

He also said that although malathion at full strength is “an acutely toxic chemical,” in highly diluted form--sprayed at a 2.8 ounces, or about one third of a cup, of malathion per acre--it should not harm anyone.

He noted that homeowners might want to take general precautions, covering a child’s sandbox before the spraying, for instance.

But he added that “there’s a much greater risk” for sandboxes than malathion: fecal contamination by cats and dogs.

Staff writer Lanie Jones contributed to this report.