Accumulating effects
I started looking back and taking an inventory of all the flights I could have been exposed to over the years. Quite a few. (See list of countries that require spraying below.)
Until the late 1970s, airlines sprayed DDT on planes!!! According to a blog I found from a fellow activist, Northwest Airlines used Bolt, a pesticide that contains chlorpyrifos, a potential nervous system poison from 1986 to 1996.
Many countries require disinsection of aircrafts from countries with insects that spread disease, such as malaria and yellow fever. These spraying methods can control malarial mosquitoes and bugs that cause Chagas for instance; the poisons also effect cockroaches, fleas, ticks, biting mites and even rodents.
Some countries, e.g. Australia and New Zealand, routinely carry out disinsection to prevent the inadvertent introduction of species that may harm their agriculture.
Countries requiring the disinsection of all in-bound flights with an aerosolized spray while passengers are on board include:
- Cuba
- Ecuador (only Galapagos and Interislands)
- Grenada
- India
- Kiribati
- Madagascar
- Seychelles
- Trinidad and Tobago
- Uruguay
Each airline has it’s own practices and has to abide by country mandates. Delta for instance, claims it doesn’t spray while passengers are on board, treating with residual applicants or spraying before passengers board instead. And then one in every eight weeks the entire plane is immersed in a “cloud of stuff” for extra precaution measures. Incidentally, the wait time before humans board is only 45 minutes following an application.
When I asked one airline about the dangers posed on employees, he assured me that stewardesses walk the corridors of the plane while spraying behind them. Really? A sweet but naive comment for someone in charge of overseeing environmental conditions.
More research has to go into identifying and recommend implementation of sustainable, nontoxic alternative methods of minimizing the importation of disease vectors in aircraft cabins.
One alternative method so far is the use of an “air curtain,” where curtains direct air currents at doorways to exclude pests. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has affirmed that this is an effective method at preventing pests from entering an aircraft.
The reality is that more sustainable measures require more time (who has that?) and money. “It’s expensive and difficult to implement,” the airline employee said.
Here’s footage of a stewardess casually spraying poisons in a plane. How many just assume they’re spraying air freshener?
I want to create a petition on Care2 and stop this nonsense. Please leave comments and share your stories so I can include them in my findings. Maybe we can even start a class action loss suit. Email me at maryam [at] honeycolony [dot] com.
Bonus:
Listen to this Travelin’ Green Divas podcast segment about ways to keep healthy and green when you travel.
Tune in to The Green Divas Radio Show—and other green and healthy living podcasts—daily on GDGDRadio.com (or get the GDGD Radio app)! Free green radio!
images via shutterstock.com
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