> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rebarchak, Lynda
> Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 9:37 AM
> To: Centofanti, Gerard; Johnson, Mark; Filip, Edward; Russell, Benjamin;
Feola, Joseph; Fries, Deborah; Gallagher, Kevin; Kennedy, John; Drake, Ronald;
Miller, Rex; Newmyer, Thomas
> Subject: Taking Aim at Deer Ticks article
>
> Aug. 8 - Phila. Inquirer
> Killing zones take aim at deer ticks
> A Chesco resident is leading an effort to reduce the parasites, which spread
Lyme disease. Two new devices aid in the fight.
> By Virginia A. Smith
> Thick trees and wide bushes droop heavily in the summer heat, enveloping Janie
Schnelle's neighborhood in shade and privacy.
> Unfortunately, the dense greenery that makes this southeasternmost corner of
Chester County so inviting to almost 2,800 humans is also irresistible to deer
ticks, which have given every member of the Schnelle family - Janie, husband
Dave, children Beth, Brandy and Derrick - a nasty run of Lyme disease, whose
symptoms include rashes, memory loss, depression and joint pain.
> Now, in the midst of prime Lyme season, Schnelle is spearheading a drive to
kill the disease-carrying ticks in her London Britain township. With $20,000
from the municipality, she has enlisted friends and neighbors to create a
killing zone for ticks that soon could be replicated in backyards and
neighborhoods throughout the nation's Lyme-rich Northeast corridor.
> Pennsylvania and New Jersey, with about 7,000 cases last year, are among a
dozen states that account for 95 percent of the Lyme cases reported to the
federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Chester County, where
development increasingly encroaches on wildlife habitat, is the hot spot for the
disease in Pennsylvania, reporting 906 cases last year.
> Since May, at Schnelle's urging, backyards all over her 9.9-square-mile
township have been equipped with 32 feeding stations for white-tailed deer that
are rigged to brush the animals' heads with permethrin, a tick-killing chemical,
when they go for the corn inside.
> Known as "four-posters" because they have two pesticide-covered rollers on
either side of the corn troughs, the deer-treatment bait stations are one of two
new low-tech products developed by the federal government and private industry
to attack Lyme disease by killing the ticks that spread it.
> The cost can run up to $1,000 for a half-acre lot per season, but researchers
say that, over time, the new treatments could make dramatic inroads in the
incidence of Lyme disease, the most widely reported tick-borne illness in the
country.
> "The potential is tremendous," said Gary Maupin, a retired CDC Lyme disease
researcher.
> The devices apply low doses of chemicals commonly used for head lice in humans
or fleas and ticks on cats and dogs. Used separately, they target host animals
and different phases of the ticks' life cycle.
> Used together, the two systems pack a punch: They cover both the deer tick's
preferred hosts and its entire life cycle.
> Depending on the number used and the homeowner's commitment to keep up the
treatment, researchers say, the new feeding stations are capable of wiping out
most ticks in a wooded backyard or larger area within two or three years.
(Without continued treatment, the ticks return.)
> "They can reduce the tick population to where Lyme disease is still something
to look out for, but the prevalence of it is considerably less," said J. Mathews
Pound, a research entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's
Agricultural Research Service in Texas.
> Reports of Lyme disease far outpace Rocky Mountain spotted fever and about 10
other tick-borne illnesses, so finding a way to significantly fight the spread
of Lyme "would be a true service to the people," said Pound, co-creator of the
four-poster.
> In 2002, the CDC reported about 23,000 cases of Lyme, a bacterial infection.
The ticks that spread it become infected by feeding on mice and other small
rodents and transmit the bacteria to the humans and animals they bite. Deer do
not transmit the disease to ticks but are a breeding ground for them.>
> Untreated, the bacteria travel through the bloodstream and settle in body
tissue. Early symptoms of the disease can be mild and easily overlooked,
mimicking other illnesses such as flu or multiple sclerosis and prompting Lyme's
reputation as "the great imitator."
> Later symptoms can be serious and chronic - arthritis, palsy, heart arrhythmia
and neurological complications.
> Schnelle, now 51, had a stiff neck for a year before she finally went to a
doctor in 1991. "I thought I was sleeping wrong," she said.
> She also developed a rash on her face, stomach problems, chronic fatigue,
insomnia, depression, joint pain, a sore jaw and, scariest of all, memory loss.
"I could not do my housework. I could barely get to the grocery store," she
recalled.
> Doctors gave her sleeping pills and muscle relaxers, which treated the
symptoms, not the cause, of her mysterious problem.
> Soon, friends and family grew weary of the daily bulletin of aches and pains.
So did she. "I knew this wasn't me. I had been healthy my whole life," she said.
> Finally, Schnelle was diagnosed with Lyme disease, and after seven months on
antibiotics, she felt great. She has had painful recurrences since then.
> One by one, her family took the antibody and DNA tests that can detect the
presence of Lyme disease. All were diagnosed with the illness.
> After all that, Schnelle, a township supervisor, decided she had to do
something for her family and neighbors. Her husband found the four-poster design
online, her father-in-law made a crude version with plywood, and she made her
pitch to fellow supervisors for a township-wide, tick-management program.
> They committed $20,000 to start the effort, which includes the 32 commercially
made four-posters, the permethrin and corn, which costs $140 a ton and is stored
in a $1,200 silo. She enlisted 65 volunteers to maintain the feeders and
organized pesticide training sessions.
> Following Schnelle's lead, the Brandywine Conservancy will use a $20,000 grant
next spring to promote four-posters with landowners over 3,000 acres elsewhere
in southeastern Chester County.
> Lesley Trevor and 179 neighbors on wooded Mason's Island, Conn., have been
testing the bait boxes with the CDC for more than five years. "It's amazing...
Most of the ticks are gone," said Trevor, who was the first of several family
members to get Lyme disease shortly after moving there in 1991.
> Now, Trevor wants to organize a program like Schnelle's. "It's expensive," she
said, "but when you consider that most Lyme disease cases come from your
backyard, the costs are way too high not to treat your property."
> CDC epidemiologist Erin Staples urges prevention methods, too: checking daily
for ticks in the shower or bath, using the insect repellent DEET, and removing
leaf debris or placing a wood-chip barrier around the property edge.
> "Most people think all these things are a good idea. Practicing it is another
thing," she said.
> Researchers continue to work on natural tick controls and on a Lyme vaccine to
replace the one that SmithKline Beecham Corp., now GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C., took
off the market in 2002 amid disappointing sales and complaints about its
effectiveness. Meanwhile, the USDA's Pound, who has studied ticks for 30 years,
is noodling around with a four-poster that automatically snaps an
insecticide-filled collar on a deer when it comes to eat.
> It's modeled after a dog collar.
> "Fun stuff," he said.
>
>
> Lynda Rebarchak
> Community Relations Coordinator
> DEP Southeast Regional Office
> (484) 250-5820
>