Science
A tour of the sound and heat hellscape that is L.A.
Blanca Lucio likes to spend her mornings tending to her zucchinis, cucumbers, watermelons and traditional Mexican herbs at a small community garden near downtown Los Angeles. With its cool, damp air, the garden brims with what Lucio calls “magic.”
The only sound comes from green June bugs buzzing by her ears and children playing at the community center across the street.
“Outside of here, you’re exposed to a lot of noise and a lot of pollution,” Lucio said while giving a tour of the garden, a short distance from her home in South-Central L.A. “This space renews me and the other gardeners who grow plants here. I feel more content when I’m here.”
Noise pollution and excessive heat can seem inescapable in L.A. What would the city be without random bursts of fireworks and car sound systems thumping loud enough to shake you from your dreams? And the nearly 365-days-a-year sunshine is practically what defines L.A. sunshine, even though it means commuters often must wait under the blazing sun at bus stops that lack cover.
Busy roads and airports are a large contributor of noise pollution in Los Angeles
U.S. Department of Transportation
Sean Greene LOS ANGELES TIMES
But just because we’ve grown used to L.A.’s jarring soundscape, shadeless streets and pockets of intense heat, it doesn’t mean they are harmless.
Noise and heat together can pose a special kind of health threat, one that the city’s most vulnerable people are least able to protect against, said Valerie Tornini, a neurobiologist at UCLA.
With climate change ushering in stronger and longer heat waves, a growing body of evidence suggests that excessive heat has become a public health crisis. An estimated 1,300 people die of extreme heat each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and that number will only grow in coming years.
Both heat and noise can harm the nervous system, interfere with metabolism and disrupt sleep patterns. They can also aggravate conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease, according to a paper published in Environmental Health Perspectives.
Tornini leads a team of brain researchers trying to figure out how the combination of these two environmental dangers affects brain health and behavior among residents of Central and South L.A.
Her team is working with the Boston-based nonprofit Prospera Institute and the South L.A. social justice nonprofit Esperanza Community Housing Corp. to collect stories from local Latino and Black Americans, like Lucio, about how they cope.
The collaboration started in 2024 after Tornini, who had been studying the effect of noise and heat on neural development in zebrafish, reached out to Joanne Suarez, who founded Prospera to promote health equity in Black, Latino and Indigenous communities.
Their partnership sprang from a recognition that brain science has lagged behind other disciplines in recognizing the need for community-centered research that treats study participants as equal partners, Tornini said.
The project revolves around two interwoven prompts, she said: “How can it do good and no harm, and how can it serve the cause of justice?”
Joanne Suarez speaks with South L.A. community members about how they’re affected by excessive heat and noise during a focus group at Esperanza Community Housing.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
“Sometimes [research] is not aligned with what the community wants and needs,” Tornini said. “I want to listen: What are your concerns? What are your lived experiences? People’s stories and oral histories … can influence the kind of questions that we ask in the lab, and then that data goes back to them.”
That shift in thinking was in evidence on a Saturday morning in July at Mercado La Paloma — a South L.A. food hall that houses the Michelin-starred Mexican seafood restaurant Holbox as well as Esperanza Community Housing’s offices.
A dozen women sat in a circle with Suarez and Tornini for an intimate listening session, held in Spanish, about living with noise and heat.
Suarez invited the women to speak in response to a series of questions printed on a handout. For example: “How do environmental factors like noise and heat impact your health and daily life?” and “Have you noticed changes in your ability to focus, think clearly or even remember things when it’s extremely hot or noisy in your community?”
One woman said it’s hard to mitigate one disturbance without exacerbating the other, such as when she opens the window of her bedroom at night to let in fresh air, only to be kept awake by noise from passing planes and sirens. A mother worried about the effect of sun and heat on her kids during gym class and recess at school. One woman told the group that excessive heat worsens her hypertension headaches, while another said that when it’s hot out, she gets more irritated by noises she can’t control.
Another participant said she fears getting caught in the crossfire of warring gangs in her neighborhood and so won’t sit outside to get fresh air, no matter how hot it gets indoors.
The UCLA initiative is as much an experiment in trust-building as data collection, said Monic Uriarte, a public health advocate and community organizer at Esperanza Community Housing who has lived and worked in L.A.’s urban core for three decades.
Wariness of scientists and healthcare professionals — born of a history of one-sided research that never benefited study volunteers or their communities; nonconsensual lab experiments; and racial discrimination among medical practitioners — is commonplace in some communities of color.
“I love higher education, but we are tired of being guinea pigs for different studies,” Uriarte said. “We need this kind of collaboration — a space for our community to share, in our own words, the experience of living in South Los Angeles.”
She’s excited about the prospect of volunteers being able to cite whatever findings result from the research when asking city officials for noise mitigation for their homes, tree plantings or more open spaces.
Living and commuting in L.A. means navigating an environment that can make you want to cover your ears and run for the shadows.
The relentless flow of vehicles and Metro light-rail trains drowned out Blanca Lucio’s voice as she gave a tour of South-Central L.A., walking past auto-body shops and restaurants at the intersection of San Pedro Street and Washington Boulevard.
Not far away in the downtown jewelry district, sidewalk vendors selling wares as varied as avocados, roasted corn, cellphone cases and brass lanterns shielded themselves from the intense midday sun with beach umbrellas, or by clustering in the shadows of high-rises.
During L.A.’s recent heat wave, when temperatures regularly surpassed 90 degrees, a woman selling rose bouquets out of buckets at Pershing Square looked beleaguered while standing in the paltry shade of a tree. A man pushing a cooler full of 50-cent bottled waters wiped sweat from his forehead and tried to cool down with a Spanish fan.
A woman sleeps on a bench in Los Angeles’ Pershing Square in June 2024.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
There was no escape from the onslaught of car horns, rumbling motors and pedestrians blasting music from speakers stuffed in backpacks.
About 10 miles south is the Harbor Freeway transit terminal, an important hub for commuters who need to catch a bus or train in South L.A.
The terminal is located on a raised platform in the middle of a concrete tangle of ramps and the elevated lanes of the 105 Freeway. The commotion and noise are unnerving; cars speed by so close you can feel whooshes as they pass.
But even if you don’t have to wait daily for transport while being inundated with the sounds of a Los Angeles freeway, you may be forced to endure some noise pollution seemingly designed to disturb the peace. On any given evening in the city, drivers and bikers amp up the soundscape by revving their engines while waiting at traffic stops, then slam on the gas when their light turns green, screeching down the street.
Nighttime also brings the piercing sound of street takeovers. Drivers draw crowds of spectators as they perform stunts such as “doughnuts” — spinning their cars in circles until their tires burn rubber marks on the pavement. The phenomenon has become such a problem countywide — with shootings and cars set on fire at some of them — that officials have vowed to crack down on the illegal gatherings.
L.A. is notoriously noisy and hot, but experiences like these are widespread across the U.S.
About 95 million Americans, nearly one-third of the U.S. population, are subjected to transportation-related noise pollution, with Latino, Black and Asian communities disproportionately exposed to it, according to data compiled by researchers at the University of Washington.
Noise is measured in decibels, with a middle range of 50-60 considered a normal level of ambient sound that doesn’t pose a risk to health. Most people experience noise at this level while doing routine things such as working at an office or walking down a street with little to no traffic. Emergency sirens, lawn mowers and music in a nightclub, by contrast, can exceed 90 decibels.
While grating noises and intolerable heat may be experienced in pockets across the city, making it hard to draw direct comparisons, some whole sections of L.A. feel conspicuously beset by these environmental disturbances. Other neighborhoods feel more insulated.
A pedestrian crosses a median as traffic passes along San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
The urban core and South L.A. — where the median household income ranges from $48,000 to $62,000 a year and Latino and Black people make up the majority of the population, according to the U.S. census — is a wall of sound and a bubble of heat. But farther west in predominantly white Brentwood, where the median annual household income is more than $160,000, walls of semi-tropical foliage insulate many private homes from intrusive noises and overhanging trees form of canopies of coolness over gently curving streets.
A treeless city
U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Census Bureau
Sean Greene LOS ANGELES TIMES
Take a sunset walk along the gently sloped, flower-scented streets above busy Sunset Boulevard in Brentwood — you will be immersed in a stillness broken only by birds chirping in the treetops. To the south, along the historic canals of Venice, ocean breezes cool the air and the prevailing sound is of fountains trickling in homeowners’ yards.
By contrast, noises associated with law enforcement are such familiar nuisances on the relatively bare streets of South L.A. that they are treated as if they are part of the natural environment. The late artist 2Pac rapped about the menacing presence of “ghetto bird” police helicopters in 1996‘s “To Live and Die in L.A.,” and Compton-born rapper Kendrick Lamar referenced ghetto birds and samples the piercing wail of police sirens on “XXX,” released in 2017.
“Basically, the Blacker the neighborhood, the more flight hours; the more Latinx the neighborhood, the more flight hours … and the Blacker the neighborhood, the lower the helicopters are flying,” said Nick Shapiro, a multidisciplinary environmental researcher at UCLA.
Shapiro has spent years using L.A. Police Department flight data to map helicopter trajectories across the city in studies of “sonic inequality” that his team conducted jointly with residents of South L.A.
Helicopter noise is an issue citywide — even in typically serene, higher-income neighborhoods. The noise is a problem for outdoor TV and film productions too, Shapiro said.
Still, Shapiro said, “there’s pretty extreme inequality between Malibu and Watts.”
Meanwhile, it’s even worse for those in South L.A. who live in the L.A. International Airport flight path and have to contend with both helicopters and the earsplitting sonic reality of jets landing and taking off.
West Century Boulevard runs along the airport’s flight path, meaning that every couple of minutes, a low-flying jet cuts a trail of the high-frequency whines and low-frequency roars on its approach to the airport, sending decibel levels into the 90s. Because of all the broad, shadeless streets that define many of South L.A.’s neighborhoods, the hot summer sun seems to bear down more intensely on these communities of color too.
Plane spotters get a close-up view of planes on their final approach to Los Angeles International Airport.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
One sunny afternoon in August, Charles Lewis, a retired store clerk, sat in a folding chair under a solitary shade tree and watched a steady stream of cars and trucks rush past him on Century. As one plane after another shrieked across the cloudless sky, jet-shaped shadows raced across the pavement, alongside cars.
Lewis lives close by but lamented that sidewalks along residential streets closer to his home are too exposed to the sun. He’s witnessed shade gradually disappear in the 40 years he has lived in the neighborhood and believes law enforcement agencies are partly to blame.
Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Donald Graham acknowledged that his agency has asked city crews to trim publicly maintained trees to improve street lighting and deter illegal activity in specific trouble spots.
“We’re always trying to balance the beautification of the city and the need to have a tree canopy with public safety,” he said.
The cacophony of the boulevard offers little in the way of tranquility, but Lewis said the noise from jets is so bad at home that he has to turn up the volume on his TV and wait for aircraft to pass to have a conversation without yelling.
At least his perch on Century provides a refuge from the excessive heat.
“This is the only shade I have,” Lewis said.
Nearby, the late-day sun felt oppressive along a busy, tree-less stretch of Slauson Avenue near the 110 Freeway. Two women at a food stand squinted in the sunlight as they cooked whole chickens on a hot grill to serve with freshly made tortillas and beans and rice.
A metro train traveling on the K Line passes a mural of the late rapper Nipsey Hussle that is located on Crenshaw Boulevard at Slauson Avenue in Los Angeles.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Too busy filling orders to talk, the women laughed and said they’ve given up trying to stay cool while working on days like this.
Meanwhile, six miles north, things weren’t much better. At the junction of Olympic Boulevard and Western Avenue in Koreatown, a search for both shade and quiet was an exercise in futility. The sparse landscaping on the thoroughfares left sidewalks exposed to the bright sun, and the constant rumble of trucks and buses assaulted the eardrums.
A mile away, in the flats of Hollywood near Paramount Studios, the block letters of the district’s famous hilltop sign appeared like a vision through the smoggy air above a bustling intersection at Melrose Avenue and Vine Street — though on a recent August day, the 85-degree temperatures, blazing sunlight and din of speeding vehicles made it that much more difficult to savor the view.
Traditional lab-based brain research has too often discounted the health challenges that come with navigating an ecosystem as complex and inequitable as L.A.’s, said Helena Hansen, professor and interim chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine.
The noise and heat study, along with the analysis of helicopter noise, are part of a broader effort to incorporate information about social and physical conditions into research design, she said.
“We’re really trying to rethink the way science is done,” she said.
At the listening session in July, the idea of breaking down the barrier between laboratory science and real life was on full display. Nearly all the women nodded in agreement when one brought up her struggle to focus on tasks or relax because of heat and noise. It was clear that for these Angelenos, stress is the norm — peace the exception.
Lucio was among those who attended. She is participating in the UCLA study not just to help the researchers, she said, but also to make living in L.A. more comfortable and healthier for herself and her neighbors.
The surrounding neighborhood, just across a busy freeway from the University of Southern California’s campus, is one of several in Central L.A. that the budding citizen scientist has surveyed as part of her own study of the area’s spotty tree canopy.
“We need more trees,” Lucio said. “I’ve noticed people walking around searching for shade and clustering in the few spots where they can find it…. I’ve even seen dogs searching for shade in this neighborhood.”
Trees provide a canopy for travelers along Grayburn Avenue in Los Angeles’ Leimert Park neighborhood.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
It’s little slices of life and firsthand observations such as these that the UCLA scientists and Prospera facilitator want to heed as they pursue their research. The group just secured additional funding for further study and possibly to record accounts of lived experiences on video, Suarez said. For now, Tornini, the brain scientist, just wants to keep the line of communication open with participants.
“The goal is for this to be a living relationship that is shaped mutually,” Tornini said. “What the community does with this information is within their own power. And if they ask — how can we help?”
Earlier this year, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged that the search for autism’s cause — a question that has kept researchers busy for the better part of six decades — would be over in just five months.
“By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic, and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures,” Kennedy told President Trump during a Cabinet meeting in April.
That ambitious deadline has come and gone. But researchers and advocates say that Kennedy’s continued fixation on autism’s origins — and his frequent, inaccurate claims that childhood vaccines are somehow involved — is built on fundamental misunderstandings of the complex neurodevelopmental condition.
Even after more than half a century of research, no one yet knows exactly why some people have autistic traits and others do not, or why autism spectrum disorder looks so different across the people who have it. But a few key themes have emerged.
Researchers believe that autism is most likely the result of a complex set of interactions between genes and the environment that unfold while a child is in the womb. It can be passed down through families, or originate with a spontaneous gene mutation.
Environmental influences may indeed play a role in some autism cases, but their effect is heavily influenced by a person’s genes. There is no evidence for a single trigger that causes autism, and certainly not one a child encounters after birth: not a vaccine, a parenting style or a post-circumcision Tylenol.
“The real reason why it’s complicated, the more fundamental one, is that there’s not a single cause,” said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a professor of public health science and director of the Environmental Health Sciences Center at UC Davis. “It’s not a single cause from one person to the next, and not a single cause within any one person.”
Kennedy, an attorney who has no medical or scientific training, has called research into autism’s genetics a “dead end.” Autism researchers counter that it’s the only logical place to start.
“If we know nothing else, we know that autism is primarily genetic,” said Joe Buxbaum, a molecular neuroscientist who directs the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “And you don’t have to actually have the exact genes [identified] to know that something is genetic.”
Some neurodevelopment disorders arise from a difference in a single gene or chromosome. People with Down syndrome have an extra copy of chromosome 21, for example, and Fragile X syndrome results when the FMR1 gene isn’t expressed.
Autism in most cases is polygenetic, which means that multiple genes are involved, with each contributing a little bit to the overall picture.
Researchers have found hundreds of genes that could be associated with autism; there may be many more among the roughly 20,000 in the human genome.
In the meantime, the strongest evidence that autism is genetic comes from studies of twins and other sibling groups, Buxbaum and other researchers said.
The rate of autism in the U.S. general population is about 2.8%, according to a study published last year in the journal Pediatrics. Among children with at least one autistic sibling, it’s 20.2% — about seven times higher than the general population, the study found.
Twin studies reinforce the point. Both identical and fraternal twins develop in the same womb and are usually raised in similar circumstances in the same household. The difference is genetic: identical twins share 100% of their genetic information, while fraternal twins share about 50% (the same as nontwin siblings).
If one fraternal twin is autistic, the chance that the other twin is also autistic is about 20%, or about the same as it would be for a nontwin sibling.
But if one in a pair of identical twins is autistic, the chance that the other twin is also autistic is significantly higher. Studies have pegged the identical twin concurrence rate anywhere from 60% to 90%, though the intensity of the twins’ autistic traits may differ significantly.
Molecular genetic studies, which look at the genetic information shared between siblings and other blood relatives, have found similar rates of genetic influence on autism, said Dr. John Constantino, a professor of pediatrics, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Emory University School of Medicine and chief of behavioral and mental health at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
Together, he said, “those studies have indicated that a vast share of the causation of autism can be traced to the effects of genetic influences. That is a fact.”
Buxbaum compares the heritability of autism to the heritability of height, another polygenic trait.
“There’s not one gene that’s making you taller or shorter,” Buxbaum said. Hundreds of genes play a role in where you land on the height distribution curve. A lot of those genes run in families — it’s not unusual for very tall people, for example, to have very tall relatives.
But parents pass on a random mix of their genes to their children, and height distribution across a group of same-sex siblings can vary widely. Genetic mutations can change the picture. Marfan syndrome, a condition caused by mutations in the FBN1 gene, typically makes people grow taller than average. Hundreds of genetic mutations are associated with dwarfism, which causes shorter stature.
Then once a child is born, external factors such as malnutrition or disease can affect the likelihood that they reach their full height potential.
So genes are important. But the environment — which in developmental science means pretty much anything that isn’t genetics, including parental age, nutrition, air pollution and viruses — can play a major role in how those genes are expressed.
“Genetics does not operate in a vacuum, and at the same time, the impact of the environment on people is going to depend on a person’s individual genetics,” said Brian K. Lee, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Drexel University who studies the genetics of developmental disorders.
Unlike the childhood circumstances that can affect height, the environmental exposures associated with autism for the most part take place in utero.
Researchers have identified multiple factors linked to increased risks of the disorder, including older parental age, infant prematurity and parental exposure to air pollution and industrial solvents.
Investigations into some of these linkages were among the more than 50 autism-related studies whose funding Kennedy has cut since taking office, a ProPublica investigation found. In contrast, no credible study has found links between vaccines and autism — and there have been many.
One move from the Department of Health and Human Services has been met with cautious optimism: even as Kennedy slashed funding to other research projects, the department in September announced a $50-million initiative to explore the interactions of genes and environmental factors in autism, which has been divided among 13 different research groups at U.S. universities, including UCLA and UC San Diego.
The department’s selection of well-established, legitimate research teams was met with relief by many autism scientists.
But many say they fear that such decisions will be an anomaly under Kennedy, who has repeatedly rejected facts that don’t conform to his preferred hypotheses, elevated shoddy science and muddied public health messaging on autism with inaccurate information.
Disagreements are an essential part of scientific inquiry. But the productive ones take place in a universe of shared facts and build on established evidence.
And when determining how to spend limited resources, researchers say, making evidence-based decisions is vital.
“There are two aspects of these decisions: Is it a reasonable expenditure based on what we already know? And if you spend money here, will you be taking money away from HHS that people are in desperate need of?” Constantino said. “If you’re going to be spending money, you want to do that in a way that is not discarding what we already know.”
My friend Sara, eight weeks after giving birth, left me a tearful voicemail. I’m a clinical psychologist specializing in postpartum depression and psychosis, but mental health wasn’t Sara’s issue. Postpartum weight gain was.
Sara told me she needed help. She’d gained 40 pounds during her pregnancy, and she was still 25 pounds overweight. “I’m going back to work and I can’t look like this,” she said. “I need to take Ozempic or something. But do you know if it’s safe?”
Great question. Unfortunately researchers don’t yet have an answer. On Dec. 1, the World Health Organization released its first guidelines on the use of GLP-1 receptor agonists such as Ozempic, generically known as semaglutide. One of the notable policy suggestions in that report is to not prescribe GLP-1s to pregnant women. Disappointingly, the report says nothing about the use of the drug by postpartum women, including those who are breastfeeding.
There was a recent Danish study that led to medical guidelines against prescribing to patients who are pregnant or breastfeeding.
None of that is what my friend wanted to hear. I could only encourage her to speak to her own medical doctor.
Sara’s not alone. I’ve seen a trend emerging in my practice in which women use GLP-1s to shed postpartum weight. The warp speed “bounce-back” ideal of body shapes for new mothers has reemerged, despite the mental health field’s advocacy to abolish the archaic pressure of martyrdom in motherhood. GLP-1s are being sold and distributed by compound pharmacies like candy. And judging by their popularity, nothing tastes sweeter than skinny feels.
New motherhood can be a stressful time for bodies and minds, but nature has also set us up for incredible growth at that moment. Contrary to the myth of spaced-out “mommy brains,” new neuroplasticity research shows that maternal brains are rewired for immense creativity and problem solving.
How could GLP-1s affect that dynamic? We just don’t know. We do know that these drugs are associated with changes far beyond weight loss, potentially including psychiatric effects such as combating addiction.
Aside from physical effects, this points to an important unanswered research question: What effects, if any, do GLP-1s have on a woman’s brain as it is rewiring to attune to and take care of a newborn? And on a breastfeeding infant? If GLP-1s work on the pleasure center of the brain and your brain is rewiring to feel immense pleasure from a baby coo, I can’t help but wonder if that will be dampened. When a new mom wants a prescription for a GLP-1 to help shed baby weight, her medical provider should emphasize those unknowns.
These drugs may someday be a useful tool for new mothers. GLP-1s are helping many people with conditions other than obesity. A colleague of mine was born with high blood pressure and cholesterol. She exercised every day and adopted a pescatarian diet. Nothing budged until she added a GLP-1 to her regimen, bringing her blood pressure to a healthy 120/80 and getting cholesterol under control. My brother, an otherwise healthy young man recently diagnosed with a rare idiopathic lymphedema of his left leg, is considering GLP-1s to address inflammation and could be given another chance at improving his quality of life.
I hope that GLP-1s will continue to help those who need it. And I urge everyone — especially new moms — to proceed with caution. A healthy appetite for nutritious food is natural. That food fuels us for walks with our dogs, swims along a coastline, climbs through leafy woods. It models health and balance for the young ones who are watching us for clues about how to live a healthy life.
Nicole Amoyal Pensak, a clinical psychologist and researcher, is the author of “Rattled: How to Calm New Mom Anxiety With the Power of the Postpartum Brain.”
A parasitic fly whose maggots can infest living livestock, birds, pets and humans could threaten California soon.
The New World Screwworm has rapidly spread northward from Panama since 2023 and farther into Central America. As of early September, the parasitic fly was present in seven states in southern Mexico, where 720 humans have been infested and six of them have died. More than 111,000 animals also have been infested, health officials said.
In early August, a person traveling from El Salvador to Maryland was discovered to have been infested, federal officials said. But the parasitic fly has not been found in the wild within a 20-mile radius of the infested person, which includes Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
After the Maryland incident, the California Department of Public Health decided to issue a health advisory this month warning that the New World Screwworm could arrive in California from an infested traveler or animal, or from the natural travel of the flies.
Graphic images of New World Screwworm infestations show open wounds in cows, deer, pigs, chickens, horses and goats, infesting a wide swath of the body from the neck, head and mouth to the belly and legs.
The Latin species name of the fly — hominivorax — loosely translates to “maneater.”
“People have to be aware of it,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases specialist. “As the New World Screwworm flies northward, they may start to see people at the borders — through the cattle industry — get them, too.”
Other people at higher risk include those living in rural areas where there’s an outbreak, anyone with open sores or wounds, those who are immunocompromised, the very young and very old, and people who are malnourished, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
There could be grave economic consequences should the New World Screwworm get out of hand among U.S. livestock, leading to animal deaths, decreased livestock production, and decreased availability of manure and draught animals, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“It is not only a threat to our ranching community — but it is a threat to our food supply and our national security,” the USDA said.
Already, in May, the USDA suspended imports of live cattle, horse and bison from the Mexican border because of the parasitic fly’s spread through southern Mexico.
The New World Screwworm isn’t new to the U.S.
But it was considered eradicated in the United States in 1966, and by 1996, the economic benefit of that eradication was estimated at nearly $800 million, “with an estimated $2.8 billion benefit to the wider economy,” the USDA said.
Texas suffered an outbreak in 1976. A repeat could cost the state’s livestock producers $732 million a year and the state economy $1.8 billion, the USDA said.
Historically, the New World Screwworm was a problem in the U.S. Southwest and expanded to the Southeast in the 1930s after a shipment of infested animals, the USDA said. Scientists in the 1950s discovered a technique that uses radiation to sterilize male parasitic flies.
Female flies that mate with the sterile male flies produce sterile eggs, “so they can’t propagate anymore,” Chin-Hong said. It was this technique that allowed the U.S., Mexico and Central America to eradicate the New World Screwworm by the 1960s.
But the parasitic fly has remained endemic in South America, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
In late August, the USDA said it would invest in new technology to try to accelerate the pace of sterile fly production. The agency also said it would build a sterile-fly production facility at Edinburg, Texas, which is close to the Mexico border, and would be able to produce up to 300 million sterile flies per week.
“This will be the only United States-based sterile fly facility and will work in tandem with facilities in Panama and Mexico to help eradicate the pest and protect American agriculture,” the USDA said.
The USDA is already releasing sterile flies in southern Mexico and Central America.
The risk to humans from the fly, particularly in the U.S., is relatively low. “We have decent nutrition; people have access to medical care,” Chin-Hong said.
But infestations can happen. Open wounds are a danger, and mucus membranes can also be infested, such as inside the nose, according to the CDC.
An infestation occurs when fly maggots infest the living flesh of warm-blooded animals, the CDC says. The flies “land on the eyes or the nose or the mouth,” Chin-Hong said, or, according to the CDC, in an opening such as the genitals or a wound as small as an insect bite. A single female fly can lay 200 to 300 eggs at a time.
When they hatch, the maggots — which are called screwworms — “have these little sharp teeth or hooks in their mouths, and they chomp away at the flesh and burrow,” Chin-Hong said. After feeding for about seven days, a maggot will fall to the ground, dig into the soil and then awaken as an adult fly.
Deaths among humans are uncommon but can happen, Chin-Hong said. Infestation should be treated as soon as possible. Symptoms can include painful skin sores or wounds that may not heal, the feeling of the larvae moving, or a foul-smelling odor, the CDC says.
Patients are treated by removal of the maggots, which need to be killed by putting them into a sealed container of concentrated ethyl or isopropyl alcohol then disposed of as biohazardous waste.
The parasitic fly has been found recently in seven Mexican states: Campeche, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Veracruz, and Yucatán. Officials urge travelers to keep open wounds clean and covered, avoid insect bites, and wear hats, loose-fitting long-sleeved shirts and pants, socks, and insect repellents registered by the Environmental Protection Agency as effective.
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