Three blame pesticide for illness

LoRie McCollum and Bryan Barrow say they suffered from health effects after the car they were in was doused by a fog of pesticide from a truck from the local agency responsible for killing mosquitoes. McCollum picked up the results of her medical exams Tuesday. McCollum’s son, LeRoy, also was exposed to the fog.

By CHRIS COLLINS
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LoRie McCollum says she and her son and a neighbor were heading home from the Baker City bowling alley the night of Aug. 17 when her car was unexpectedly enveloped in a cloud of pesticide, triggering a series of health problems that continued this week.

The incident also has triggered an investigation of the Baker Valley Vector Control District’s pesticide application practices by the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

Doni Clair, a pesticide investigator for the division, said this is the 28th complaint she has received in the past two months, but the first involving the Vector Control District.

“We’re being slammed this year,” said Clair, who works out of an office at 3000 Broadway St. that serves six Eastern Oregon counties.

The complaints include “everything that has to do with pesticide — across the board,” she said, such as what’s available on the store shelves, who’s applying it and how it’s being applied.

Jim Lunders, the Vector Control District’s manager and biologist, says McCollum’s complaint is the first that has resulted in an official investigation during his 11-season tenure here.

“We’ve had people call and say ‘you made me sick last night,’ but when we asked for information, they didn’t have it,” Lunders said. “We’ve never had anything conclusive that a person was exposed to pesticide and the pesticide made them sick. ”

Lunders, 35, is responsible for controlling mosquitoes in a 200,000-acre, property tax-funded district that includes Baker City and much of Bowen, Baker and Keating valleys.

McCollum, 42, says the Aug. 17 incident, which began about 9 o’clock, sent her to the St. Alphonsus Medical Center-Baker City emergency room that night, where she was treated until midnight for symptoms of chemical poisoning. The hospital staff flushed her eyes, gave her plenty of water to drink and monitored her breathing, she said.

Her 19-year-old son, LeRoy McCollum, and their neighbor and friend, Bryan Barrow, 48, also were riding in her Chevrolet Cobalt sedan, and both have continued to suffer health problems as well, she said.

LoRie McCollum and Barrow both returned to the hospital Sunday. McCollum, who has multiple sclerosis, also had two seizures — one on Saturday and another on Sunday morning. Although she has had seizures in the past, her most recent one before the pesticide incident was about a year and a half ago, she said.

She traveled to La Grande to see her neurologist Tuesday and was given anti-seizure medication, which she had been functioning without, and other prescriptions intended to remove toxins from her body. She and her son and Barrow were scheduled to return to the Baker Clinic for more follow-up exams today.

McCollum said the three were driving north on Campbell Street and were stopped at the traffic light at Main and Campbell, directly behind a pickup truck that was topped by a flashing amber light. She said they could see no markings on the pickup truck, (Vector Control vehicles are marked by signs on each door). The three believed the vehicle was either involved in road construction or spraying for mosquitoes.

“Pretty soon we see a big plume of stuff that comes out all over the car,” McCollum said. Her driver’s side window was down and the car’s vents were open.

McCollum said she was “severely affected” by the spray.

“My tongue was swelling, my lips were numb, I had trouble breathing, I was dizzy and had a headache,” she said.

Her son and Barrow suffered milder respiratory problems, tiredness, headaches and nausea.

Studies have linked each of those symptoms to exposure to permethrin and piperonyl butoxide, the active ingredients in Biomist, the pesticide the Vector Control District uses in its fogger truck, Barrow and McCollum said.

They researched those two substances in the Journal of Pesticide Reform. (More information is available on the website: www.pesticide.org).

Barrow has expressed concern about mosquito control practices before. His property in the 1600 block of Washington Avenue is on the Vector Control District’s “no-spray list.” Barrow encourages others who have concerns about spraying to call Lunders (541-523-1151) to add their names to the list.

Barrow said he would like to see the Vector Control District adopt a system he says has been used in Boise, which focuses more on education and prevention — such as eliminating standing water where mosquitoes lay their eggs — rather than relying on pesticide spraying.

“If a problem continues they could spot spray that property and that property only,” Barrow said.

In newspaper interviews in the past Lunders has encouraged residents to get rid of sources of standing water on their properties.

He acknowledges that “a minuscule portion of the population” is sensitive to chemicals, including the ingredients in Biomist.

But Lunders said he’s frustrated by his lack of information about the McCollum/Barrow case.

He said that although Barrow telephoned him, they talked only about the chemicals used by the Vector Control District. Barrow mentioned nothing about anyone being taken to the hospital after being exposed to Biomist, Lunders said.

Had that happened, Lunders said he would have referred Barrow to the pesticide investigator and to the district’s insurance company.

“We could have looked at the situation and looked at the cause, if there is one,” he said.

Lunders said his concerns are twofold:

“No. 1, making sure everybody’s OK,” he said. “And, I don’t want the next time I have to go fog somewhere — if something in our procedures need to change — I don’t want anyone else to have a problem.”

Lunders said he can’t believe his employee who was driving the truck the night of Aug. 17 would have turned the fogger on if he’d known there was a vehicle behind him. The standard procedure is for the truck to pull over and let traffic pass before activating the fogger, he said.

Two of his workers fogged the area from the freeway to 10th Street north of Campbell Street for adult mosquitoes on Aug. 17. They worked until about 11:30 that night, he said.

“I’m getting all this information third-hand, so I don’t know exactly what happened,” Lunders said. “It was a normal, unremarkable what-we-do evening.”

Lunders said he plans to talk to his three-person crew and remind them of proper procedures and how to respond to vehicles following them or coming toward them while they are spraying.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “If they heard the fogger running and thought they got sprayed or did get sprayed, I hope the pesticide investigator flushes it all out.”