Skeeters now hatching: city

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This article was published 18/04/2015 (3830 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeggers hoping for mosquito relief this summer might be in luck, but it’s too soon to say for sure.

On Friday, Winnipeg’s superintendent of pest control, Ken Nawolsky, said the season began early compared with last year, but that’s not an indication of the summer.

“The past weekend, when we had that burst of hot weather, that was enough to trigger (mosquitoes) to start hatching. We could have an emergence by late April,” Nawolsky said.

In the event of a buggy summer, questions were raised about the use of malathion, an insecticide used to fog adult mosquitoes.

A subsidiary of the World Health Organization recently declared malathion a likely carcinogen. However, Winnipeg will continue to use it in accordance with guidelines from a Health Canada agency.

“(The Pest Management Regulatory Agency) reaffirmed its continued use under label direction for adult mosquito control, then the province of Manitoba issued our permit, and it says that malathion can be used under the conditions in which we have used it in the past,” Nawolsky said.

However, malathion’s days in Winnipeg are numbered. No longer manufactured, the City of Winnipeg has enough for one summer’s worth of mosquito fogging, said Nawolsky.

“We currently have about 4,800 litres, which would be enough to do about one season of adult mosquito control,” he said.

In the event malathion is used this summer, officials will have to work fast to bring an alternative product to Canada for next summer, Nawolsky said.