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STATEN ISLAND – Army of a notepad, a questionnaire and a mbadive linen canvas, a four-person team from Columbia University goes downstairs. Poillon Avenue in Annadale, surrounded by Blue Heron Park.
Why?
Because they want to get to the bottom of the causes of the sharp increase in Lyme disease and ticks.
After a tick sweep carried out by researchers last summer. Noting that all the borough parks had ticks infected with the Lyme disease bacteria, they helped launch a tick application and decided to come to the borough this summer to perform more of the ticks. field work. in cases of Lyme disease – the sharpest leap in disease from the five boroughs in the past five years, according to Advance data compiled from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
" DRAGING FOR THE TICKS "
G When going door-to-door, the team asked the island's owners about their living conditions and the way they maintain their lawns. . Then they go to their yard and start to "hang out for ticks" – a process where a long cloth is dragged through their yards to pick up the ticks.
Ticks do not jump, they rub against an animal or a host, Linen imitates an animal and after 10 minutes she removes the tissue and examines it carefully to spot ticks.
Since the team began working in the borough in early June, it has identified 111 homes near parks. Most of the ticks they found were blacklegged ticks, or deer ticks, that transmit Lyme disease as well as Lone Star ticks.
They said that most ticks were ticks. "It's very interesting for us as researchers because, again, it's not the typical Lyme area where people think it's a high-risk area, so the Urban areas have always been lagging behind all these highly endemic areas, but the people that we are exposed to ticks, they contract Lyme disease and we have to understand why, "said Maria del Pilar Fernandez, postdoctoral researcher from Columbia University who is part of the tick team
. These cases occur as the borough whitetail population has exploded, which many, including researchers at Columbia University, believe to be one of the largest contributors to the number growing case of Lyme on the island.
Fernandez said that one of the things she and her team heard from island residents with ticks in their yards is that they report seeing deer almost every days.
To counter the growing population of deer on the island, the city has embarked on a controversy. Vasectomy program of $ 3.3 million over the year. The city says that the program has so far been successful, but many say that it is not enough.
"The deer that arrives in the island and that breeds has been a very important element," said Maria Diuk-Wbader. the department of ecology, evolution and environmental biology of the university that directs the team of researchers. "In regions where there is no deer, it is very unlikely that Lyme disease will occur."
She also said mice are common hosts of ticks
Although they have not collected exact numbers, the team says that in most areas of high risk ticks of the island , many people said they were diagnosed with Lyme disease. .
During Advance's visit with the ticks team, a woman said last summer that 40 ticks had been found on her and that she had contracted the disease from Lyme
Since this summer, the woman has begun to spray ticks. When visiting the team last week, they found no ticks in his yard.
"I'm worried about [ticks] but it's something we'll have to learn to live because deer will not go Robert Lawson, an owner on Poillon Ave. , said in advance that the tick team has surveyed his yard.
The team found no ticks in Lawson's yard, but found one of them. On the other side of its fence.
CITY, EFFORTS OF THE STATE
Last summer, the city's health ministry expanded its efforts Tick monitoring of 7 to 21 sites in the city with 11 other sites on Staten Island alone.Before the town, there were only two sites for ticking on Staten Island.
more than tick surveillance, the Department of Health said its efforts to combat the spread of ticks and Lyme disease put signs in the city's parks known to have ticks to tell people how to prevent tick bites.
At the state level, the Department of Environmental Conservation has taken a more direct approach to tick control. increased state-wide efforts to allow communities to operate food stations that apply pesticides to the head and neck of deer
between 1965 and 2000 , 19659002] To date, DEC states that it has not received any applications or licenses from the communities of New York or Staten Island to use these devices.
not be contacted to find out if he plans to bring the resorts to Staten Island.
INTERVENTION
After the team finishes its door-to-door work in August, it plans to develop an investigation. for borough residents, ask them everything they think about Lyme disease, control the deer, the mouse and the type of intervention they deem necessary to control the tick propagation.
Diuk-Wbader said that an intervention on ticks was to be twofold. In the parks, the government has to intervene, but at the neighborhood level, it says that the community can play a role.
"In a park, of course, it has to be the state or the city that runs the park," said Diuk-Wbader. "There are also interventions at the neighborhood level where you can control the deer in a certain neighborhood, so everybody has to meet there. "
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