Possible Malathion Sufferers to Be Tested : Health: Officials plan to set up an examination and referral program in an effort to document the pesticide’s impact.

Caught off guard by a flood of complaints of illnesses in recent months, officials overseeing the state’s Medfly battle have quietly made plans to begin referring possible malathion sufferers to local clinics for tests in hopes of documenting the pesticide’s health effects.

The $65,000 project marks the first time in Southern California’s 10-month-old battle against the Mediterranean fruit fly that health officials have sought to substantiate claims of illness and could begin as early as next week. It is now pending approval in Sacramento.

Under the plan, people in Orange and Los Angeles counties who believe they have experienced breathing problems, allergic reactions or other symptoms because of malathion spraying will contact their local health departments and be referred to a clinic for urine and other tests to try to determine the cause.

But health officials appear confident that the tests will confirm what they have long asserted--that the low dosages of malathion-bait mixture used in ongoing aerial spraying represent no long-term health threat and, even in the short term, pose a risk only to people with extremely sensitive allergic conditions.

In an April draft proposal for the new testing program, Los Angeles County health officials made it clear that, despite more than 300 medical complaints a month, they believe only a sporadic few reports “appear plausibly related to the spraying.”

The new testing program “is one more way of saying that malathion is not going to cause these adverse health effects and removing any doubts and uncertainties,” said Isi Siddiqui, assistant director of the state Department of Food and Agriculture, who has headed the Medfly eradication effort.

Health officials began talking about a testing and referral program in January, in the midst of criticism that they were responding haphazardly to public medical concerns. But because of bureaucratic snags and differences of opinions over exactly what was needed, the program has not moved toward implementation until now--just weeks before most Southland spraying is supposed to end.

Anti-malathion activists said the state’s new strategy is too late in coming. Still, for residents such as 62-year-old Shirley Chase of Garden Grove, it was good news.

Chase says she has suffered congestion and breathing difficulties after each spraying in her neighborhood, and the symptoms have gotten worse after each application. It has gotten so bad, she said, that she has given up her gardening and is thinking about leaving the area during the next two scheduled applications over Garden Grove--May 23 and May 30.

Chase, a retiree, said she contacted Orange County health officials soon after the symptoms developed but that she got a run-around. A health worker referred her to another number and offered no real answers, she said, adding, “I just don’t think they cared.”

In past months, Orange and Los Angeles county health officials acknowledge, they have had no formal strategy for dealing with health complaints. Part of the problem, they say, has been the unexpectedly numerous complaints.

In Orange County, health workers have taken more than 1,000 calls since the start of spraying from people who wanted to report illnesses or seek information, said county epidemiologist Dr. Tom Pendergrast.

In Los Angeles County, workers have logged more than 1,500 reports of illnesses, including headaches, sore throats, stomachaches, skin rashes, chest tightness and asthmatic attacks, said Dr. Paul J. Papanek, chief of the county Health Department’s toxics epidemiology program.

Said Kim Koons, who last week assumed a newly created post with the Los Angeles County Health Department to coordinate the testing and referral program around Southern California: “When we started seeing all of these reports, it was decided that we needed to do some investigation to see if this (malathion) really was as safe as everyone was saying.”

In Glendale, administrators at the Gentle Birth Center noticed a drastically higher incidence of miscarriages and birthing complications than in the last year, a problem that some suspected was linked to the center’s location in a spray zone.

“It’s just very suspicious in the timing,” said Denise Gerogius, an administrator at the center. “There’s nothing we can prove, but we have had a lot more problems in the past nine months.”