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8.30.2000 08:14
Spraying for virus draws complaints
 Residents say they weren't notified that their neighborhoods were to be sprayed.
By DOUG ALLAN and MEREDITH GOLDSTEIN
Journal Staff Writers
SEEKONK - Mosquito spraying resumed yesterday morning in a continuing effort to thwart the West Nile virus, prompting a number of residents to call the town's health office with concerns about the pesticides.
Seekonk Health Agent Harold Chenevert said a wide area around the Martin School including County, Anthony and Miller Streets as far as Route 6, was sprayed yesterday between 4 and 8 a.m. by Bristol County Mosquito Control workers.
Spraying operations will resume during the same hours on Friday but will be expanded to include school athletic fields throughout the community, he said.
County agents were also scheduled to conduct mosquito-trapping operations last night in the Fieldwood Avenue area where a dead crow found last Thursday by a resident tested positive for the West Nile virus.
More than 1,000 birds have been examined at the state Department of Health laboratory in Jamaica Plain this season, and 54 of them have turned out to be contaminated, Chenevert said.
The town's health office was bombarded with phone calls yesterday from residents complaining they had not been notified that their neighborhoods were to be sprayed, the agent said. The Bristol County Mosquito Control office in Taunton has also been bombarded by callers, some of whom fear the spray and others who pleaded for workers to spray near their homes.
Seekonk was alerted to the presence of the virus by the state about 2 p.m. Monday, and when a call was made to mosquito control in Taunton, Chenevert learned that a spray order had already been issued.
Roseanne Pawelec, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said that the state doesn't always recommend that communities such as Seekonk spray heavily just because they found one dead bird with the virus.
"It's too late in the season to worry that much about communities recently added to the list," she said. "We don't see it as being really significant."
Pawelec said mosquitoes will begin to disappear on their own as September begins.
"The mosquitoes that are out there are not as active," she said. "They're not as bloodthirsty because they're not laying eggs."
Pawelec said that those who live in communities that have been actively spraying, shouldn't worry too much about the effects of the insecticide, which she said, "dissipates quickly."
Chenevert, attempting to calm those with concerns, reminded the public that the spray is being applied at the rate of 1/2 ounce per acre.
"Residents can leave their houses within 10 to 20 minutes after the spraying," he said.
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