JANIE GOULD

When John Beidler of Vero Beach became director of the Indian River Mosquito Control District in 1955, there was no shortage of the noxious little insects. Mosquitoes were often so thick that 30 to 100 of them would land on a person in a minute or less.

“When I first first came, they were using mist blowers or dusting machines,” Beidler said.  “They were quite cumbersome, so we began using what are called thermal fog machines. The insecticide was dissolved in diesel oil and heated up to 1,000 degrees. Then you would spray it into the air as a vapor, which made a huge cloud of fog. If you had the right insecticide, it would kill some mosquitoes and also, unfortunately, attract children.

“There was a period of time of about 20 years – I’d say 1950 to 1970 – when every place in Florida used thermal fog machines and kids ran in and out of it all summer. It didn’t wipe out a generation of kids; that’s for sure!”

Q” “Not yet, anyway!  Did you have any close calls with children?”

A: “Any time we saw a lot of kids running in and out, we made an announcement that if we saw that sort of thing we weren’t going to fog that area because we thought it was dangerous, not because of the DDT or the BHC or whatever it was, but because of traffic.  Cars zipped in and out of that fog and we were just scared to death that some kid was going to get run over.”

Q: “Did anything ever a happen?”

A: ”It never did. Parents could instantly tell if their kid had been doing this. They couldn’t come into the house and say they weren’t in the fog.”

Q: “They smelled like DDT?”

A: “Well, DDT didn’t have any odor. It was diesel fuel that had the odor. We had people who always thought we were going too fast. The fastest we went was 5 miles per hour, which was a big problem because you couldn’t get anywhere. In four hours you’d go 20 miles, and 20 miles of streets is not much.”

Mosquito control workers eventually switched to late-night fogging, when fewer children and cars were on the road. The federal government banned the use of DDT in 1972.

Q: “On balance, are we better off with or without DDT?”

A: “I think we’re much worse off if you’re looking at the world picture. DDT was the ideal material for treating malaria. Practically speaking, most Third World countries are in the Third World because of malaria. Malaria is such a debilitating disease. It kills a million people a year.

“In the developing world, health workers used to control mosquitoes by painting the interior walls of homes with DDT. The mosquito comes in through the open window and bites the person inside. Then, its habit is to go to the walls and rest, where it would get killed. You break the cycle of transmission that way. It doesn’t fly out and bite someone else.

“The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is putting billions of dollars into studies of how to control malaria, and one of the things they’re thinking about is going back to DDT and use it for residuals. In that instance it’s a perfectly safe material to use. DDT is not especially toxic for people. Lord knows, I’ve been soaking wet with it so many times that you wouldn’t believe it! It was a problem with birds and parts of the environment but that was not from medical use at all. That was all for agriculture. For medical use, it’s never been condemned.”

John Beidler, who is retired, participated in the first experiments using DDT on mosquitoes. That was in 1942 in Brevard County.

This interview was first heard on Janie Gould’s Floridays show on WQCS radio/88.9 FM. Gould’s books, “Floridays: Tales From Under the Sun,” Vols. 1 and 2, are available for $35, which includes tax and mailing. To order, go to Janiegould@aol.com.