Eco Hvar

Mosquitoes, holiday planning

Objavljeno u Vaša pisma

A worried parent asks Eco Hvar about mosquitoes on Hvar. Is there cause for concern?

Potential visitor: email 25th August 2017: Hi, I am planning to visit Hvar Island in early September. I have a one year old baby girl and I am concerned regarding mosquitoes. How bad is the infestation this year?

Thank you. 

Eco Hvar: 25th August 2017: Many thanks for your inquiry.

Are you concerned about the possibility of mosquito-borne illnesses? If so, be reassured: I have never known of any in all my years on Hvar. And in Croatia overall there have been extremely few cases, very few in humans, and no fatalities.

You can check all this out on the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, eg for Dengue Fever; and West Nile Fever. (Zika has not happened at all in Croatia.)

There is more reason to be concerned about the insecticides used to 'kill off' mosquitoes than the mosquitoes themselves. Permethrin, for instance, is used in many over-the-counter sprays against flying insects, including mosquitoes. Permethrin is even used as to impregnate materials for clothing to prevent mosquito bites. Yet Permethrin has many ill-effects, from being toxic to cats, to possibly affecting the nervous system adversely during development (ie in babies and small children: eg Shafer, T.J., et al. 2005. "Developmental neurotoxicity of pyrethroid insecticides: critical review and future research needs." Environ Health Perspect. 113(2):123-136.)

Mosquitoes are certainly a nuisance, and their bites can cause irritation. However, in my experience, an adequate Vitamin B intake reduces the effects of their bites dramatically. Citronella candles can help repel mosquitoes in the environment. These measures can certainly work for adults. For a small baby, obviously you should seek advice from a paediatric specialist, preferably one with an interest in holistic medicine.

How bad is the infestation? The answer may sound odd. Friends who live away from the main roads report that there are very few this year. Those of us who live close to the roads which were sprayed with insecticides in the routine 'fogging' are experiencing an influx of mosquitoes, as indeed happens each time.

The truth is that mosquitoes in this area of Dalmatia have not caused any epidemic of dangerous diseases. Mosquitoes are endemic in the Mediterranean, and attempts to eradicate them through poisons only make the situation worse. Mosquitoes are arguably much less dangerous than the poisons used to suppress them.

I hope all this information lessens your concern. September is usually the perfect month for visiting Dalmatia!

Potential visitor, 26th August 2017: 

Thank you for your reply. This was very helpful. We are planning to go ahead with the visit.
xeenaa13(a)gmail.com

Izvor: http://www.biovrt.com/kontakt

Više u ovoj kategoriji: « Mosquitoes and more
na vrh članka
Nalazite se ovdje: Home vaša pisma Mosquitoes, holiday planning

Eco Environment News feeds

  • Europe heatwave live: UK temperatures forecast to reach 38C; French PM to hold crisis meeting after heat deaths

    Temperatures could smash June record in England and Wales set in 1976; red alerts in France after 19 heat deaths

    Here are the UK temperature milestones that could be passed during the current heatwave, according to data published by the UK’s Met Office.

    Continue reading...

  • Remembering summer 1976: how the historic heatwave has become our new normal

    Half a century on, Britain braces for temperatures up to 40C as global heating brings yet more extreme weather

    The summer of 1976 is seared on to national memory as one of record heat. Harvests failed, farmers despaired, Britain imported an extra million tonnes of grain, food prices rose by 12%, taps ran dry, and each day, 250 people died from heat-related deaths.

    The heatwave, which began 50 years ago on Tuesday, brought 15 consecutive days where the peak temperature was above 32C. Half a century later and 32C no longer feels shocking.

    Continue reading...

  • Ed Miliband to say UK must stick to net zero targets to deliver jobs and growth

    Energy secretary expected to argue that UK clean economy is booming as private sector pledges over £100bn of investment

    Ed Miliband is to say that the UK must stick to net zero targets to deliver jobs and growth, as speculation surrounds the energy secretary’s role under a new prime minister.

    He will make the speech as data shows more than £100bn in green investment has been pledged by private sector companies in this parliament.

    Continue reading...

  • A thousand years old and 20 storeys high: tracking down Taiwan’s tallest trees

    The country’s biggest tree – named Heaven Sword of the Da’an River – is a carbon-storing behemoth hosting whole neighbourhoods of wildlife. But this and other giant trees are under threat

    The higher you climb up the gigantic, millennia-old trees of Taiwan’s forests, the more layers of habitat and life emerge. On the forest floor, ferns thrive in the moist shade. Flying squirrels and owls sleep inside the hollow tree trunks. Yellow bell-shaped rhododendron flowers spring from the lower tree canopy. Higher still, dense lichen spread. Up in cloud-drenched branches, a rare, hardy orchid, Bulbophyllum ciliisepalum, can be spotted.

    “In one tree, every species has their preferred location,” says Dr Rebecca Hsu, assistant researcher at the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute. “Every metre the temperature, the wind, the sun, the light is different.”

    Continue reading...

  • Country diary: Birds of a feather in a noisy argument | Mary Montague

    Queen’s University, Belfast:The corvids in the branches above me spring a surprise – there’s a black crow among them

    The rain hurries me to shelter at the woods’ edge, but I’m scarcely under the branches of a mature sycamore when the canopy starts to thrash. Abrasive voices erupt from the foliage as a rabble of crows dispute. One leaps into a gap between the leaves, crouching, its ash-grey body low over a branch and fanning its black tail. The throat inflates to bray the bird’s anger. In response, the object of its fury hops on to the branch above it, all the while giving as good as it gets. Something niggles me about that one – I squint, then blink in surprise. It’s a black crow.

    As a bookish youngster growing up in rural County Fermanagh, it took a while for me to grasp that the crows I encountered in real life were not, in fact, black. The hooded or grey crow is the common crow across all of Ireland. With its two-tone livery of grey torso and black extremities, it’s a handsome bird. The “hoodie” is also found in the north of Scotland. The closely related all-black carrion crow is a far more familiar sight throughout the rest of Britain, with sparse numbers along the east coast of Northern Ireland.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘Emotional and horrific’: volunteers ‘live’ as Somerset animals to study wildlife risks

    People trained to experience world as otters, salmon and other River Tone creatures for pioneering research

    What does a kestrel make of the dog sniffing in the long grass below? Why does an exhausted salmon pause before a weir? How will an otter experience the rumble of a passing train?

    Eighteen people have spent six weeks swimming, slithering and soaring as otters, salmon, earthworms, red deer and kestrels in an attempt to better document the risks for wild animals in our human-dominated landscape.

    Continue reading...

  • Starmer has a strong green record – but a rightwing backlash weakened his plans

    Prime minister was forced to row back on some policies despite strong support among voters for climate action

    Keir Starmer has faced a problem no Labour government has needed to deal with before. His energy and climate policies – core to solving the cost of living crisis – have come under attack from opposition parties, which have made dismantling the agenda one of their top priorities, second only to immigration, in their pitch to voters.

    This is new in British politics, where a cross-party consensus on the climate and environment has held at least since the days of Margaret Thatcher. She warned the UN of the climate crisis in 1988; David Cameron in 2006 urged voters to “vote blue, go green”; Theresa May enshrined in law the requirement to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; Boris Johnson championed the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in 2021; even Rishi Sunak only tried a partial rollback of green policies as a last desperate throw before calling an election.

    Continue reading...

  • Piglet, it’s a purple, psychedelic shapeshifter! The wild new creature prowling Winnie-the-Pooh’s wood

    Is it an alien? A dinosaur? Is it going to kill us all? Our writer hits Ashdown Forest for the Big One Hundred celebrations – and finds its magic enchanting new generations

    The rolling idyll of heath and forest, spinney and stream that gave us the Heffalump, the Woozle and, most famously of all, Winnie-the-Pooh, has a new fantastical resident. Creeping through the bracken, making strange cooing and purring noises, is a shapeshifting creature with a huge tubular nose and eyes inspired by adders. It shimmies with iridescent patches and the psychedelic purple of flowering heather in high summer.

    Poppet, a puppet made by costume designer Jack Irving and brought to life by a team of 10 award-winning puppeteers, is performing for schoolchildren in Ashdown Forest, East Sussex. The primary school class squeal with delighted fear as the purple apparition transforms itself from caterpillar to bird to munching monster in sinuous moves.

    Continue reading...

  • Trapped by floods and fearing death in the heat: the Australians taking legal action over the climate crisis

    Ten people affected in different ways by extreme weather are taking a case against the federal government to the UN

    As flood waters rose in Brisbane’s West End in February 2022, Brendon Donohue was trapped alone in his second-storey apartment for 10 days. The 33-year-old is legally blind and his movement is limited by Peters plus syndrome. He received evacuation alerts on his phone in the middle of the night. But with the lift, intercom and front entrance shut down he had no safe way out of the building.

    “It was terrifying,” he says. “The whole street was badly impacted with water. The power went out, which made me not able to contact anyone. I ran out of food but couldn’t get any into the building.”

    Continue reading...

  • From mobile jungles to shadow art: how Dutch people try to beat the heat

    A national heatwave plan has been activated to help people stay cool during the Netherlands’ increasingly hot summers

    Households in Amsterdam are being urged to hang their curtains outside their windows as health experts recommend simple hacks to moderate the heatwave rolling across the Netherlands, where homes were built for old-fashioned damp and coldish northern European weather.

    In a viral social media post last week, Eline Coolen, the heat coordinator at the city’s public health institute, urged sweaty city-dwellers to rig up temporary curtain rails or drape curtains or sheets outside to stop the sun’s rays reaching their large windows.

    Continue reading...

Novosti: Cybermed.hr

Novosti: Biologija.com

Izvor nije pronađen
Copyright © 2026 Eco Hvar. Sva prava zadržana. Developed by Orion Informatika.