An Atomic Approach To Mosquito Control

The potentialities of atomic energy as a killer of men are constantly stressed by the daily Press, but a good deal less interest is taken in it as an aid to mankind.

Irradiation of wheat and rice, for example, has produced new varieties which are enormously more pro ductive than pre-atom-b om b varieties, or which have character istics which permit them to be grown on land quite unsuited to those former varieties.

Now experiments in pest control with the aid of atomic energy give promise of a completely new approach to the problem. Where a few years ago it cost a king’s ransom to temporarily reduce the

mosquito population of a small Pacific island, recent experiments by the US Department of Agri culture give promise that in future it might cost next to nothing.

Instead of using insecticides, the American scientists have found that by irradiating male mosquitoes with a cobalt-60 “bomb” and thereby rendering them sterile, then releas ing them to breed, the offspring re sulting will all be sterile, too. Later this year they plan to release a swarm of sterile male mosquitoes on a small island in the US Trust Territory, just north of Guam, which is plagued with mosquitoes, then to stand by and watch results.