Top 10 mosquito cities
The top 10 mosquito cities tend to be in the South, with Atlanta the perennial number one and various Texas cities not far behind. But I figured that New York City had to be among them, from the evidence of my youth. When I was a little kid, every summer I was just covered with bites.
And yep, New York is on the list, just as I thought. Number three!
When I was a slightly-older child at summer camp in the Berkshires, the DDT trucks used to come and spray the whole place. No more (see also this).
If malaria ever becomes a real threat to Europe or the US, I’ll wager serious efforts will be made to use DDT.
I live near Atlanta and hardly ever get bitten. I used to live near New York and get bitten all the time.
Neo, thank you for your articles on this, and especially for the links you give — with the follow-on links from the linked articles.
I wish it were possible to bash sense into the heads of some people (especially certain relatives).
Anyway, it’s good to have sources to examine, and to cite with some degree of confidence.
The DTN article on DDT to which you linked is particularly excellent in that regard. Unfortunately, the people who most need to read it are the very ones who’ll write it off as rightwingnutDavidHorowitzextremistlies, lacking all credibiity.
I recall that when I was a little kid in eastern MA (1960’s) the trucks used to come through at night and spray for mosquitoes. I still recognize the smell.
My former next door neighbor here in TX was from Monterrey (city of tightwads/muy codo 🙂 ) Mexico, which is in a semi-arid region. She was continually complaining about the mosquitos here. There were probably more mosquitos here than Monterrey, I would grant you. I hardly noticed the mosquitos here, which were a lot less common than they were in my rural New England hometown.
I claimed that my eating garlic helped ward off the mosquitos, but that is apparently an old wives’ tale.
I never remember getting bitten at Wah-Nee from ’47-’57.
Oxitec (a sub of XON) has genetically modified skeeters but no one will pay for it.
We had the fog-spewing trucks in my Texas Panhandle hometown, but the really serious mosquito killing was handled by the crop dusters.
One of them came by overhead just when a cousin of mine had climbed up to the top of his tree, just to show off.
He came down again mighty quick.
We used to ride our bikes about half-a-block behind the spraying trucks…until our parents found out…they made us come in until you couldn’t see the fog any more…bah.
Closer than that distance & you’d be gagging over your handlebars…good times! 😉
If a city has a worse mosquito problem than Houston, they have a mosquito problem. And both Chicago and NYC have Houston beat by a country mile.
How about the camphor sticks? Came in aluminum tubes like cigars, you’d rub the skeeter bites with the camphor to make it stop itching. Or that was the theory.
Ah, the DDT truck. How about the camphor sticks? Came in aluminum tubes like cigars, you’d rub the skeeter bites with the camphor to make it stop itching. Or that was the theory.