State to Cut Quarantine Zone in War on Medfly

Agricultural authorities announced plans Monday to scale back the Mediterranean fruit fly quarantine zone in parts of four Southern California counties, while a panel of medical experts and residents in Los Angeles complained about the effects of the state’s recent aerial spraying of malathion, insisting that officials ignored the pesticide’s potential dangers.

Federal agriculture officials announced Monday that they would lift the quarantine on nearly 20% of the 1,313 square miles in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties that had been declared off limits for the sale and shipment of agricultural products.

That decision was tempered by the discovery of a fertile male fly in a peach tree in the Orange County community of Brea. Although the area will remain under the quarantine as a result of the discovery, state agriculture officials said they had no plans to renew the spraying there.

Malathion spraying recently was suspended in the four affected counties. One of the world’s most destructive agricultural pests, the Medfly attacks 260 varieties of fruits, vegetables and nuts.

Meanwhile, during a special Los Angeles City Council committee hearing called by Councilman Joel Wachs, a group of medical experts worried aloud about the effects of malathion spraying. The experts, among whom were professors from UCLA and USC, suggested that the state may have severely underestimated the health effects of the spraying campaign.

“The only responsible course of action is to halt the spraying until we have reassurances that it is not a health hazard,” said Jorge Mancillas, an assistant professor at UCLA Medical School.

There was also testimony from Los Angeles spray zone residents whose complaints ranged from having flu-like symptoms to one man’s insistence that exposure to Malathion caused him to suffer temporary blindness.

Offering everything from photographs to neighborhood opinion surveys as proof, residents said they have suffered ill health that they directly attribute to the malathion spraying.

“They claim we’re hysterically reacting, but my reaction is we’re hysterically being sprayed,” said Jean Hinsley Norcott, a resident of an area affected by the spraying.

Lorenzo Ulloa, manager of an Alhambra apartment complex, said he has been exposed to the spraying three times, getting a dose while cleaning up after the nighttime assaults against the Medfly. Since then, Ulloa said, he has suffered periods of blindness, dizziness, lack of concentration and other neurological symptoms.

But state and county health officials, who did not attend the hearing, reiterated assurances that the spraying does not pose a danger because the dose of malathion is extremely small.

“I think we’ve gone the extra mile to study this issue,” said James Stratton, the state Health Services Department’s medical epidemiologist. “There’s no question that in sufficiently high doses, malathion can be significantly toxic. But our position is that the small doses in an aerial program do not pose a significant health risk to the public.”

Wachs and others at the daylong hearing painted a far bleaker portrait.

“I’ve gotten hundreds and hundreds of calls and letters from people suffering medical problems after malathion spraying,” Wachs said before the hearing, held by the council’s Arts, Health and Humanities Committee. “The malathion health problem is clearly greater than the state or county officials either know or are willing to admit.”

Alfredo Sadun, an ophthalmology professor at the USC School of Medicine, said a small percentage of people can suffer damage to the nerves of their eyes from exposure to malathion. More intensive examinations of people who suffer such symptoms are needed, he said, to determine any connection.

“The absence of proof in this instance is used as proof that there are no problems” from the spraying, Sadun said. “Even if the odds are one in 100,000 that something will occur, if we spray 1 million people that could mean 10 people might be blind.”