Plane, originally uploaded by bill kralovec.
Earlier this week I snapped this photo from my balcony in Dedinje. Two planes were flying over the suburb spraying chemicals against mosquitoes. I’ve seen them do this in previous years over the Sava River and Ada Ciganlija, but never over my neighborhood. As you can see, they were quite close to the ground and were covering the area in a grid pattern.
I am wondering what chemicals are being sprayed and are there harmful side effects? There was an short news item in the Belgrade Insight this week stating that a full analysis of the spray will be done in 2013. Why so long?
In my research on line, I see that the Swedish Chemical Agency is working with the Serbian government on this to have Serbia comply with EU standards on mosquito control. Here is a powerpoint presentation done by Lilian Tornqvist regarding the Belgrade spraying. She points out that one of the chemicals, Lambda cyhalothrin, is a carcinogen. If any of my readers have more information, I would be interested. I’ll be following this story.
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