For most road-trippers, camping next to a swamp can be hell.
Swarms of mosquitoes buzz in a shadowy path around your head. They alight on your ears, neck and back. And in the space of a few seconds, their serrated mandibles tear into your skin, opening a path for six-needled mouths to plunge toward their goal — your blood. Then comes the itching.
But when dusk comes for Dan Peach, he’s the first to offer himself up as bait.
Last summer, the mosquito researcher spent months hunting for the notorious insect near the province’s bogs, lakes and rivers. On mountain tops, he caught furry mosquitoes; in coastal estuaries, he stalked tide pool dwellers, which can survive and reproduce in water triple the salt content of the ocean.
In one recent trip to Whistler, Peach said he ducked under bridges “like a troll” looking for hiding mosquitoes.
It’s all part of an ambitious mapping project that aims to uncover the range of the 51 mosquito species already known to exist B.C.
From there, Peach will use the maps, combined with projected shifts in temperature and rainfall, to model how mosquitoes and the diseases they carry could spread on the back of a changing climate.
“We think these things have already been heading further north,” said Peach. “As climate changes and some of these conditions shift, where will they be in the future?”
But first, you need to catch them.
In his lab, Dan Peach shows part of his mosquito collection gathered across British Columbia. STEFAN LABBÉ/GLACIER MEDIA
In his lab at the University of British Columbia, Peach pulls out an aspirator, what looks like an oversized turkey baster — only, instead of a bulb to suck in gravy drippings, he places the device to his lips and with a sharp inhalation, vacuums a mosquito into a filter inside.
Other mosquito-hunting devices are even less high-tech. To catch mosquito larvae he uses “a cup on a stick.”
“If they’re floating in the water swimming around and they see a shadow or something, they’ll dive down and hide,” he said. “So you get this cup on a stick and kind of lean in, like sneak up on them.”
At other times, the researcher will deploy a trap that looks like a foldable laundry basket with a lid and opening at the top. Black and white colouring attracts the insects, but so too does German-made synthetic sweat.
Peach opens a cooler door to pull out a half-opened package filled with a handful of chemicals, each a key ingredient in reproducing “stinky person smell.”
“It just kind of smells like gym socks,” he says holding it up to this reporter’s nose.
In the field, German artificial sweat gets dropped in the trap with carbon dioxide, an irresistible mix as artificially human as Peach can achieve.
But there are limits to what a single scientist — no matter how motivated — can do. In many small B.C. towns, you can’t find carbon dioxide. And no matter how much Peach travels across the region, he can’t be everywhere at once.
Instead, Peach is hoping an army of citizen scientists will take up open palms to help him gauge the province’s ever-shifting mosquito population — one slap at a time.
“We’re calling it the ‘Ow! What just bit me?’ project,” said Peach, adding he also welcomes samples from Yukon. “Basically this summer, if you smack the mosquito, put it in an envelope and mail it to us.”
Add the date as well, plus the latitude and longitude of where it was killed (you can look that up on an application like Google Maps), he says. Once the lab receives the sample, they will grind it up and genetically sequence the remains to confirm the species. In return, Peach said he’ll email back information about what species of mosquito was slapped.
More than a window into what bit you, a slap and a trip to the post office offer residents of B.C. and Yukon a hand in heading off future crises.
An unfathomable trail of bodies
It’s hard to understate the risk mosquitoes pose to human health. By acting as a vector for everything from yellow and dengue fevers to malaria and Japanese encephalitis, the mosquito has killed humans at an almost unfathomable scale.
Several researchers, including Peach, suspect malaria alone has killed half the people that have ever existed. Or as Bill Gates put it in 2014, mosquitoes kill more people than people.
(At the time, mosquito-borne illnesses killed an estimated 725,000 people per year compared to 425,000 people who died at the hands of other humans.)
Since then, Gates and others have poured vast sums of money into malaria control programs, reducing mortality from the virus by 36 per cent between 2010 and 2020. But by the end of the decade, an estimated 627,000 died still died from the disease. And at least 240 million more people are known to have suffered from the disease that year.
As one influential book on the deadly trail left by the insects put it, “The mosquito remains the destroyer of worlds and the preeminent and globally distinguished killer of humankind.”
“Mosquitoes had this very profound influence on humans,” said Peach. “And since humanity has been a thing, basically, and they continue to do so today.”
“So there’s a very real risk here. And sort of because of that, we focus on that area, and we don’t really pay as much attention to the other things that mosquitoes do in an ecosystem.”
A dangerous vector heads north
Today, someone from Eastern Canada could be forgiven for thinking B.C.’s Lower Mainland has always been a mosquito-free haven.
“Sixty years ago, before they diked along the Fraser [River] and drained Sumas Lake, the Lower Mainland was considered worse than the Prairies by settlers who had come through,” said Peach.
As recently as the 1960s, the province suffered under outbreaks of mosquito-borne Western Equine encephalitis, and a century ago, the Interior had instances of malaria.
“What’s here now hasn’t always been the case, and may not always be the case in the future. We need to kind of keep an eye on it,” said Peach.
One recent study, for example, found the Aedes aegypti mosquito could spread into some parts of British Columbia under several global warming emissions scenarios. The mosquito species is vector for a number of pathogens dangerous to humans, including chikungunya, dengue, Japanese encephalitis, zika, West Nile and yellow fever viruses.
Aedes aegypti, a species known to spread a number of diseases dangerous to humans, is expected to expand its range into some parts of British Columbia due to climate change. – Dan Peach
Across the planet, there are more than 3,500 mosquito species. About 80 of those are found in Canada. But it’s not clear how the tiny creatures are moving.
Of the more than 50 mosquito species in B.C., a handful are known to be invasive — including the Northern House Mosquito (Culex pipiens), which carries the West Nile virus, and the Japanese rock pool mosquito (Aedes japonicus), a species which has been in the province for about a decade.
Often a forest-dwelling day-biter, the rock pool mosquito is known to carry a number of diseases, including the West Nile virus and two forms of encephalitis — infections of the brain that starts with swelling and headaches and can lead to vomiting, seizures, and in some cases, death.
But while B.C. is home to a number of mosquitoes known to spread disease, its climate is not yet ideal to allow some of the mosquito-borne vectors to follow.
That could change in the coming years, as warmer summers and wetter winters expand the range of many species northward, even across oceans.
“In the last a few years, we’ve been seeing some of the West Nile vectors in places farther north than they were before,” Peach said.
He points to Culex pipiens, which lately has turned up in Prince George.
“It was never thought to go that far north,” he said, noting the odd case in the southern Interior or Lower Mainland.
And while it’s likely too cold up there for West Nile to spread in the wild, there’s a risk an infected person could bring the virus with them in a bird-human-bird spreading event transmitted through the bites of the invasive Culex pipiens.
Mosquitoes are only one-half of the picture.
“Climate is definitely limiting the spread of these pathogens,” said Peach. “You need it to be warm enough for long enough for them to spread.”
“There might be areas when there’s nothing to worry about now, but perhaps, you know, 40 to 50 years in the future, we need to be concerned about pathogens like West Nile.”
A killer’s unsung role in sustaining life
Not all mosquitoes are pathogen-laden killing machines.
In fact, only female mosquito species take blood, and then only to develop their eggs. Many species don’t even target humans and only some carry pathogens that are dangerous to our health.
Mosquitoes are drawn to flowers as much as people. Adult mosquitoes feed on plant sugar, bouncing from flower to flower like a bee, in a process that appears to have been playing out since at least the mid-Cretaceous period, over 100 million years ago.
In an odd adaptation, mosquitoes take advantage of ants and their habit of farming aphids to collect honeydew.
As Peach put it in a recent article: “When a mosquito inserts its mouthparts into an ant’s mouth and strokes the ant’s head with its antennae, it tricks the ant into regurgitating and sharing its honeydew.”
They also act as a massive food source, a link driving the transfer of energy from aquatic environments — where their larva filter microbes, alga and dead leaves out of the water — to insect tissue, a key food source for fish, bats, birds, frogs, spiders, and predatory insects like dragonflies and beetles.
Those mosquitoes that don’t get eaten, often fall to the ground, where their biomass enriches the soil. An individual mosquito won’t add much, but in Canada and Russia’s north, huge swarms have led some researchers to estimate half of all migratory birds would stop nesting if mosquitoes disappeared.
In Alaska alone, the biomass of mosquitoes has been calculated at over 43,500 tonnes — equivalent to 17 trillion mosquitoes.
In the Canadian Arctic, Peach says one researcher estimated how many bites he got on his arm in 10 minutes. Extrapolating out, he estimated standing naked among the Arctic mosquito swarm could leave a human dead from blood loss within two hours.
Closer to home, Peach says you’ll find huge swarms on British Columbia’s mountain slopes after a snow melt, or in valley bottoms after a flood.
“Nobody can agree on [the numbers],” said Peach. “But it’s thought there are definitely more mosquitoes than there are stars in the sky.”
However much you hate mosquitoes, the science is clear, says Peach. Humanity must find a way to strike a balance — target and control those that spread disease, but don’t kill what for many of the world’s animal and plant species forms a foundation for life.
Anyone in British Columbia or Yukon interested in taking part in the citizen science ‘Ow! What just bit me?’ project is asked to:
Record the date you squished the mosquito;
Record the location using longitude and latitude (you can find this on apps like Google Maps on your phone or computer);
Include an email address if they want a response about what species they found;
Mail the information and mosquito to Dr. Dan Peach at:
Ben Matthews Lab UBC Department of Zoology 4200-6270 University Blvd. Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z4
Stefan Labbé is a solutions journalist covering how people are responding to problems linked to climate change. Have a story idea? Get in touch. Email slabbe@glaciermedia.ca.
TORONTO – Health Canada has authorized Moderna’s updated COVID-19 vaccine that protects against currently circulating variants of the virus.
The mRNA vaccine, called Spikevax, has been reformulated to target the KP.2 subvariant of Omicron.
It will replace the previous version of the vaccine that was released a year ago, which targeted the XBB.1.5 subvariant of Omicron.
Health Canada recently asked provinces and territories to get rid of their older COVID-19 vaccines to ensure the most current vaccine will be used during this fall’s respiratory virus season.
Health Canada is also reviewing two other updated COVID-19 vaccines but has not yet authorized them.
They are Pfizer’s Comirnaty, which is also an mRNA vaccine, as well as Novavax’s protein-based vaccine.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
TORONTO – Sanniah Jabeen holds a sonogram of the unborn baby she lost after contracting listeria last December. Beneath, it says “love at first sight.”
Jabeen says she believes she and her baby were poisoned by a listeria outbreak linked to some plant-based milks and wants answers. An investigation continues into the recall declared July 8 of several Silk and Great Value plant-based beverages.
“I don’t even have the words. I’m still processing that,” Jabeen says of her loss. She was 18 weeks pregnant when she went into preterm labour.
The first infection linked to the recall was traced back to August 2023. One year later on Aug. 12, 2024, the Public Health Agency of Canada said three people had died and 20 were infected.
The number of cases is likely much higher, says Lawrence Goodridge, Canada Research Chair in foodborne pathogen dynamics at the University of Guelph: “For every person known, generally speaking, there’s typically 20 to 25 or maybe 30 people that are unknown.”
The case count has remained unchanged over the last month, but the Public Health Agency of Canada says it won’t declare the outbreak over until early October because of listeria’s 70-day incubation period and the reporting delays that accompany it.
Danone Canada’s head of communications said in an email Wednesday that the company is still investigating the “root cause” of the outbreak, which has been linked to a production line at a Pickering, Ont., packaging facility.
Pregnant people, adults over 60, and those with weakened immune systems are most at risk of becoming sick with severe listeriosis. If the infection spreads to an unborn baby, Health Canada says it can cause miscarriage, stillbirth, premature birth or life-threatening illness in a newborn.
The Canadian Press spoke to 10 people, from the parents of a toddler to an 89-year-old senior, who say they became sick with listeria after drinking from cartons of plant-based milk stamped with the recalled product code. Here’s a look at some of their experiences.
Sanniah Jabeen, 32, Toronto
Jabeen says she regularly drank Silk oat and almond milk in smoothies while pregnant, and began vomiting seven times a day and shivering at night in December 2023. She had “the worst headache of (her) life” when she went to the emergency room on Dec. 15.
“I just wasn’t functioning like a normal human being,” Jabeen says.
Told she was dehydrated, Jabeen was given fluids and a blood test and sent home. Four days later, she returned to hospital.
“They told me that since you’re 18 weeks, there’s nothing you can do to save your baby,” says Jabeen, who moved to Toronto from Pakistan five years ago.
Jabeen later learned she had listeriosis and an autopsy revealed her baby was infected, too.
“It broke my heart to read that report because I was just imagining my baby drinking poisoned amniotic fluid inside of me. The womb is a place where your baby is supposed to be the safest,” Jabeen said.
Jabeen’s case is likely not included in PHAC’s count. Jabeen says she was called by Health Canada and asked what dairy and fresh produce she ate – foods more commonly associated with listeria – but not asked about plant-based beverages.
She’s pregnant again, and is due in several months. At first, she was scared to eat, not knowing what caused the infection during her last pregnancy.
“Ever since I learned about the almond, oat milk situation, I’ve been feeling a bit better knowing that it wasn’t something that I did. It was something else that caused it. It wasn’t my fault,” Jabeen said.
She’s since joined a proposed class action lawsuit launched by LPC Avocates against the manufacturers and sellers of Silk and Great Value plant-based beverages. The lawsuit has not yet been certified by a judge.
Natalie Grant and her seven year-old daughter, Bowmanville, Ont.
Natalie Grant says she was in a hospital waiting room when she saw a television news report about the recall. She wondered if the dark chocolate almond milk her daughter drank daily was contaminated.
She had brought the girl to hospital because she was vomiting every half hour, constantly on the toilet with diarrhea, and had severe pain in her abdomen.
“I’m definitely thinking that this is a pretty solid chance that she’s got listeria at this point because I knew she had all the symptoms,” Grant says of seeing the news report.
Once her daughter could hold fluids, they went home and Grant cross-checked the recalled product code – 7825 – with the one on her carton. They matched.
“I called the emerg and I said I’m pretty confident she’s been exposed,” Grant said. She was told to return to the hospital if her daughter’s symptoms worsened. An hour and a half later, her fever spiked, the vomiting returned, her face flushed and her energy plummeted.
Grant says they were sent to a hospital in Ajax, Ont. and stayed two weeks while her daughter received antibiotics four times a day until she was discharged July 23.
“Knowing that my little one was just so affected and how it affected us as a family alone, there’s a bitterness left behind,” Grant said. She’s also joined the proposed class action.
Thelma Feldman, 89, Toronto
Thelma Feldman says she regularly taught yoga to friends in her condo building before getting sickened by listeria on July 2. Now, she has a walker and her body aches. She has headaches and digestive problems.
“I’m kind of depressed,” she says.
“It’s caused me a lot of physical and emotional pain.”
Much of the early days of her illness are a blur. She knows she boarded an ambulance with profuse diarrhea on July 2 and spent five days at North York General Hospital. Afterwards, she remembers Health Canada officials entering her apartment and removing Silk almond milk from her fridge, and volunteers from a community organization giving her sponge baths.
“At my age, 89, I’m not a kid anymore and healing takes longer,” Feldman says.
“I don’t even feel like being with people. I just sit at home.”
Jasmine Jiles and three-year-old Max, Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, Que.
Jasmine Jiles says her three-year-old son Max came down with flu-like symptoms and cradled his ears in what she interpreted as a sign of pain, like the one pounding in her own head, around early July.
When Jiles heard about the recall soon after, she called Danone Canada, the plant-based milk manufacturer, to find out if their Silk coconut milk was in the contaminated batch. It was, she says.
“My son is very small, he’s very young, so I asked what we do in terms of overall monitoring and she said someone from the company would get in touch within 24 to 48 hours,” Jiles says from a First Nations reserve near Montreal.
“I never got a call back. I never got an email”
At home, her son’s fever broke after three days, but gas pains stuck with him, she says. It took a couple weeks for him to get back to normal.
“In hindsight, I should have taken him (to the hospital) but we just tried to see if we could nurse him at home because wait times are pretty extreme,” Jiles says, “and I don’t have child care at the moment.”
Joseph Desmond, 50, Sydney, N.S.
Joseph Desmond says he suffered a seizure and fell off his sofa on July 9. He went to the emergency room, where they ran an electroencephalogram (EEG) test, and then returned home. Within hours, he had a second seizure and went back to hospital.
His third seizure happened the next morning while walking to the nurse’s station.
In severe cases of listeriosis, bacteria can spread to the central nervous system and cause seizures, according to Health Canada.
“The last two months have really been a nightmare,” says Desmond, who has joined the proposed lawsuit.
When he returned home from the hospital, his daughter took a carton of Silk dark chocolate almond milk out of the fridge and asked if he had heard about the recall. By that point, Desmond says he was on his second two-litre carton after finishing the first in June.
“It was pretty scary. Terrifying. I honestly thought I was going to die.”
Cheryl McCombe, 63, Haliburton, Ont.
The morning after suffering a second episode of vomiting, feverish sweats and diarrhea in the middle of the night in early July, Cheryl McCombe scrolled through the news on her phone and came across the recall.
A few years earlier, McCombe says she started drinking plant-based milks because it seemed like a healthier choice to splash in her morning coffee. On June 30, she bought two cartons of Silk cashew almond milk.
“It was on the (recall) list. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I got listeria,’” McCombe says. She called her doctor’s office and visited an urgent care clinic hoping to get tested and confirm her suspicion, but she says, “I was basically shut down at the door.”
Public Health Ontario does not recommend listeria testing for infected individuals with mild symptoms unless they are at risk of developing severe illness, such as people who are immunocompromised, elderly, pregnant or newborn.
“No wonder they couldn’t connect the dots,” she adds, referencing that it took close to a year for public health officials to find the source of the outbreak.
“I am a woman in my 60s and sometimes these signs are of, you know, when you’re vomiting and things like that, it can be a sign in women of a bigger issue,” McCombe says. She was seeking confirmation that wasn’t the case.
Disappointed, with her stomach still feeling off, she says she decided to boost her gut health with probiotics. After a couple weeks she started to feel like herself.
But since then, McCombe says, “I’m back on Kawartha Dairy cream in my coffee.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
VANCOUVER – Mayors and other leaders from several British Columbia communities say the provincial and federal governments need to take “immediate action” to tackle mental health and public safety issues that have reached crisis levels.
Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim says it’s become “abundantly clear” that mental health and addiction issues and public safety have caused crises that are “gripping” Vancouver, and he and other politicians, First Nations leaders and law enforcement officials are pleading for federal and provincial help.
In a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier David Eby, mayors say there are “three critical fronts” that require action including “mandatory care” for people with severe mental health and addiction issues.
The letter says senior governments also need to bring in “meaningful bail reform” for repeat offenders, and the federal government must improve policing at Metro Vancouver ports to stop illicit drugs from coming in and stolen vehicles from being exported.
Sim says the “current system” has failed British Columbians, and the number of people dealing with severe mental health and addiction issues due to lack of proper care has “reached a critical point.”
Vancouver Police Chief Adam Palmer says repeat violent offenders are too often released on bail due to a “revolving door of justice,” and a new approach is needed to deal with mentally ill people who “pose a serious and immediate danger to themselves and others.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024
