Toledo's war against the mosquito isn't recorded in the annals of great conflicts.
But it is preserved in yellowing copies of The Blade, including this cheeky headline from the summer of 1938: "War Declared on Mosquitos."
Only a year before the booming announcement that the city was now at war with the insect, Toledo created an anti-mosquito committee, led by county sanitary engineer Louis Lewandowski, whom The Blade referred to as a "general" presiding over a group of "war counselors." The committee’s war plans began with early strikes that winter to eliminate "mosquito-breeding places through the improvement of drainage and sewage disposal."
But the tiny enemy proved resilient to the initial attack, and by the summer of 1938 the committee drew up plans for a major second phase in the conflict, one that required a "$500,000 WPA war chest" and the "enlistment of hundreds of men to battle the pests on a 50-mile front."
Through the city's new offensive, mosquitos suffered million-plus casualties, according to estimates at the time. But the city's victory parade would have to wait; the great mosquito war was just beginning.
In fact, the two sides engaged each other annually with the results always the same — stalemate — as the hard-fought victories by the citizenry were negated the following summer by a new swarm of the blood-sucking and disease-spreading pests.
Clearly, new strategies and new weapons were needed if Toledo were to achieve victory.
And so, in 1947, nearly a decade into the war, Toledo took the battle to the land, sea, and air
For the ground attack, the city would blast marshes, a favorite breeding ground for mosquitoes, with dynamite to create ditches, and thus drain water "from the large shallow areas into deep pools where the insects may be controlled more easily."
For the sea assault, mosquito-eating minnows, Gambusia, were imported from Florida and freely provided to residents to release into ponds and pools.
And for the air, men and machines let loose mist and fog across large swaths of woodland and brushland, marshes, and just about anywhere mosquitoes were known to breed and bite. A particularly formidable weapon was what The Blade referred to as the "Death-Dealing" helicopter which "Douse[d] DDT on Skeeters" in a 21-acre patch of woods at Talmadge Road and Sylvania Avenue. As an experiment in the use of helicopters as dusters, a Bell Aircraft Corp. helicopter was equipped with dusting hoppers and carried "as ammunition 200 pounds of 1 percent DDT." The entire mission was conducted in only 15 minutes, The Blade noted, and "was a sight any mosquito-bitten person would enjoy."
DDT was the new ultimate weapon, and when used in tiny doses in sprays, fogs, and dust it effectively reduced the area's "skeeter population" by 800 percent, said Dr. Herbert A. Crandell, who was conducting the campaign for the Toledo Area Sanitary District office. And as an aside in the Blade’s story, Mr. Crandell added that the DDT smoke "is harmless to all materials and life except the mosquito."
Decades later, the EPA would disagree with that statement and stopped the use of DDT in insecticides based on “its adverse environmental effects, such as those to wildlife, as well as its potential human health risks.” DDT has since been classified as a “probable human carcinogen.”
First Published July 20, 2020, 10:00 a.m.
