Midlands residents go to war with mosquitoes

The annoyance of being bitten by mosquitoes is reason enough for Columbia homeowner and gardener Elsie Owens to have her yard sprayed to kill the pests.

But fighting mosquitoes is a matter of more than personal comfort for her this year, Owens said.

“It’s always been a problem, mosquitoes, from the beginning of time,” she said. Spraying her yard, she said, “was a luxury. But now that Zika is around, I would say that it’s going to be ... a necessity.”

Like Owens, more people in the Columbia area are thinking of mosquito spraying as a necessity rather than a luxury this year, and a combination of factors appears to have them seeking protection.

The lingering effects of last fall’s historic flooding combined with an unseasonably warm and wet winter have created ideal breeding conditions for an unusually large population once the weather warms consistently. On top of that, concerns are increasing about the mosquito-borne Zika virus potentially making its way to the United States.

Owens, who lives near the west side of Lake Katherine, had her yard treated last week by a Mosquito Joe technician, who sprayed a thin mist of mosquito-killing solution on plants around the perimeter of her yard, targeting areas such as the undersides of broad leaves and beneath decks and porch overhangs where mosquitoes are known to perch.

In Mosquito Joe’s second year of business in the Columbia area, more than seven times as many new customers have signed on for mosquito spraying services this year compared with last – up from six new customers last year to 73 new ones by the end of this March, owner George Crouch said.

Other mosquito-spraying businesses say they are seeing an uptick in the number of local residents seeking mosquito killing and prevention services this spring, mainly because of an expected larger population of the insects and, in part, to hovering concerns about Zika becoming locally transmitted.

“Although we don’t want to scare people into buying mosquito services, the Zika virus — and all the national news that it’s getting — is definitely” driving business, said Kenny Kaufman, owner of Mosquito Squad in the Columbia area. “We’ve got tons of customers that just don’t want mosquitoes. ... They understand that they’re nasty little insects, and they don’t want them.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently said the Zika virus, which is known to cause devastating birth defects and has become widely transmitted in areas from South America to Mexico, is “scarier than we initially thought.”

No cases of Zika have been identified in South Carolina, nor has the virus been found in any mosquitoes in the United States. But many experts are concerned that could change.

“It’s only a question of time” as to whether and when local mosquitoes could become infected with Zika, said Dr. Helmut Albrecht, an infectious disease expert and a professor of clinical internal medicine at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine.

Albrecht noted that Zika is just one of many diseases that can be transmitted to humans by mosquitoes.

In 2009, for example, a resident of the Shandon neighborhood in downtown Columbia contracted the most serious, extremely rare form of West Nile virus from a mosquito. It nearly killed him, paralyzed him from the neck down and kept him in a hospital for 17 weeks.

Zika displays only mild, if any, symptoms in most infected people. And compared with other mosquito-borne illnesses such as dengue fever and chikungunya — which are both carried by the same type of mosquitoes that carry Zika — Zika is far less frightening, Albrecht said.

“Overall, I think it’s massively blown out of proportion,” Albrecht said. “It’s an extraordinarily rare event. But ... it has issues that could be severe.”

Widespread transmission of Zika in this area is “certainly possible ... and we have enough mosquitoes here to make that happen” if it were to get a toehold here, Albrecht said.

And that means the size of local mosquito populations must be kept in check, said Tammy Brewer, director of Richland County Vector Control.

Spraying treats adult mosquitoes. But many local governments don’t spray as much as they used to. Larvae are the new targets.

Brewer’s department focuses most of its resources on treating breeding grounds with larvicide. It also conducts surveillance of mosquito populations to identify which breeding habitats to target.

The goal is to cut the mosquito populations off at their source, Brewer said, though, “it’s not possible to eradicate” them.

The locally found mosquitoes capable of transmitting Zika — Aedes aegypti — and those that can potentially carry the virus — Aedes albopictus — breed only in containers, not in wide-open areas of standing water, Brewer said.

That’s why folks are encouraged to police their own properties for potential mosquito breeding grounds.

What should you do? Eliminate water-holding containers and surfaces such as buckets, tarps and bird baths.

But beyond self-policing, more local residents are turning to the experts, hiring private mosquito-spraying companies that treat yards with chemical solutions about once every three or four weeks.

Who’s the typical new customer?

“Basically, any neighborhood that has a lot of young families,” said Daniel Ellzey, an owner of Mosquito Free Yards in the Columbia area.

Ellzey said the number of his new customers has about doubled this year compared with last.

Liz Brown, who is seven months pregnant and lives in Columbia’s Shandon neighborhood with her husband and young daughter, decided last week to enlist the services of Mosquito Joe.

“This summer, we are not taking any chances,” Brown said. “We just want to do everything possible to protect our family from the irritating bites and any other threats the mosquitoes may bring.”

This story was originally published April 16, 2016 at 4:33 PM with the headline "Midlands residents go to war with mosquitoes."