| Pesticide Spraying for West Nile Virus Control and Emergency Department Asthma Visits in New York City, 2000 Adam M. Karpati,1,2 Mary C. Perrin,3,4 Tom Matte,5 Jessica Leighton,3 Joel Schwartz,6,7 and R. Graham Barr6,8,9 1Division of Disease Control, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, New York, New York, USA; 2Epidemiology Program Office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; 3Division of Environmental Health, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, New York, New York, USA; 4Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA; 5National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; 6Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; 7Division of Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; 8Division of General Medicine, Department of Medicine, College of Physicians and Surgeons, and 9Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA Abstract
Pyrethroid pesticides were applied via ground spraying to residential neighborhoods in New York City during July-September 2000 to control mosquito vectors of West Nile virus (WNV) . Case reports link pyrethroid exposure to asthma exacerbations, but population-level effects on asthma from large-scale mosquito control programs have not been assessed. We conducted this analysis to determine whether widespread urban pyrethroid pesticide use was associated with increased rates of emergency department (ED) visits for asthma. We recorded the dates and locations of pyrethroid spraying during the 2000 WNV season in New York City and tabulated all ED visits for asthma to public hospitals from October 1999 through November 2000 by date and ZIP code of patients' residences. The association between pesticide application and asthma-related emergency visits was evaluated across date and ZIP code, adjusting for season, day of week, and daily temperature, precipitation, particulate, and ozone levels. There were 62,827 ED visits for asthma during the 14-month study period, across 162 ZIP codes. The number of asthma visits was similar in the 3-day periods before and after spraying (510 vs. 501, p = 0.78) . In multivariate analyses, daily rates of asthma visits were not associated with pesticide spraying (rate ratio = 0.92 ; 95% confidence interval, 0.80-1.07) . Secondary analyses among children and for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease yielded similar null results. This analysis shows that spraying pyrethroids for WNV control in New York City was not followed by population-level increases in public hospital ED visit rates for asthma. Key words: asthma, obstructive airway disease, ozone, particulates, pesticides, pollutants, pyrethroids, West Nile virus. Environ Health Perspect 112:1183-1187 (2004) . doi:10.1289/ehp.6946 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 8 July 2004]
Address correspondence to A.M. Karpati, Division of Epidemiology, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, 125 Worth St., Room 315, CN-06, New York, NY 10013 USA. Telephone: (646) 253-5700. Fax: (212) 788-4473. E-mail: akarpati@health.nyc.gov The authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 26 December 2003 ; accepted 6 July 2004.
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