Why does ND find it so necessary to spray for mosquitoes? Are they really that bad that you are willing to risk your water and environment to get rid of them? I personally think we would be fine without the spraying... I lived in many areas that did not spray and it was not so bad. The spraying in general needs to stop.
Good question. I think one of the reasons they spray for mosquitoes is there is so much extra water around here and the temperatures are usually perfect for breeding, so they try to keep the count down to a minimum. Also, with the risk of West Nile and other mosquito-borne diseases, there is a safety risk also. However, in the past, when the norm was to use DDT as a pesticide in the past, you would think that society would have learned to study the long-term effects of chemicals before using it over such a wide area. Maybe the chemicals effects need to be further studied?
When reading the article, I saw that the author was saying the rates of cancer are fairly high for North Dakota. However, maybe here statistics are a bit skewed? If you think about it, Grand Forks and Fargo are two of the largest towns and have larger hospitals that would be able to treat children with cancer. Maybe the people that she's met that have had or have cancer were not originally from the area, but moved to be closer to treatment, resources, and the hospital? Overall, the state of ND doesn't have as high of a cancer rate as other states, as you can see in the image below.
Another thing that seems to be happening is that with technology, health care providers are able to identify cancer at earlier and earlier stages. During past times, even 50 years ago, the coronor may have said that someone died of "natural causes" or they had some sickness, but didn't know what it was, so how do we know that statistics aren't skewed from technology also?