Mosquito Threats You Didn't Know About | Dan Markowski NEHA 2026

Cameron sits down in Kansas City, at NEHA AEC, with Dan Markowski of the American Mosquito Control Association to discuss resources for environmental health departments, CDC-funded best practices and data guidance, climate-driven mosquito range expansion, the critical role of year-round surveillance, and modern ultra-low volume adult mosquito control. Recorded live on the exhibit floor at NEHA AEC 2026 in Kansas City. Beyond Data Management, powered by HS GovTech.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

This is Beyond Data Management Podcast, however, HFG. Now live from Kansas City is Kansas Government.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Rolling on from Kansas City, day number two, in the uh AEC exhibit hall here at Niha. And um we're having a lot of fun conversations today. And uh Dan Markowski has stopped by, and we were just actually joking that your organization is uh AMCA without the Y. That is correct. And you're the American Mosquito Control Association, aren't you? Yes, we are. So I think a lot of people will be interested because a lot of the environmental health departments have a vector program. That is correct. So if they're not familiar with you, they really should be, right? And so like you're kind of explain for yourself, like what do you guys do and sort of like what's your role in as an association in helping with especially the folks that are here at Niha, environmental health departments? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Our we've been around for a while. Our membership is primarily public health program districts, county, municipal level around the country and internationally. And they do the mosquito surveillance and control, usually West for important diseases like West Nile, Eastern encephalitis in the in New England area. Um, and then we're we're beginning to slowly reach out and and realizing that yes, many environmental health departments are also doing mosquito surveillance and control, setting their own traps and going to the lab and so how can we help them do a better job of mosquito surveillance?

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Excellent. So, what resources, how do you guys help them? Because I know they're I I may just be the last guy to find out, but I'll bet there's some smaller agencies out there that are like, really? I didn't know that existed.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Yes, you you're not the last guy to figure it out. Let me let me tell you. We've we've been working for uh for a couple of years now. We've we've gotten uh grant funds from the CDC, we've developed uh multiple resources, training materials, uh best management practice, you know, how to do surveillance, what you should do, how to do your data management, how to handle the data that you collect from mosquitoes, and then make proper mosquito management decisions from that data. So we've developed best management practices, training materials for all of that. We've also developed a uh uh communications platform so people can go and then if they don't have a good PR department, you know, it's a smaller program. Yeah, they don't have a PIO on staff. Uh we've got content, uh downloadable uh graphics, uh messaging. That's excellent.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Where can people find that stuff?

SPEAKER_02 2:38

They can find it on the website we we built for it. It's solutions.mosquito.org. That's a great domain name.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Yeah, it's a good thing.mosquito.org, and we'll put that in the description here when this posts on all the platforms. Perfect. Um so I guess so. Mosquitoes, it seems it's cyclical, and I think the media has something to do with it, right? Sure. You know, one one cycle, West Nile is, you know, we're all gonna die. Right. But then what happened to Zika? Was it that mosquito born too? That was mosquito in the media a few years ago, and then you don't hear about it anymore.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Correct. It was it was very big for for good reason. It was relatively it it had been around for a while, uh, but then it started breaking out of its normal transmission pattern. Okay, and was affecting children and infants and and mothers. So it became very serious. In and it's still around, it's still there, but it's more uh South and Latin America where they're seeing it. In the US, uh fortunately, we have organized mosquito control programs like in Miami-Dade County. It's that holds it off. And it can hold it off because it's only it's only transmitted by one primary species of mosquito, they're not super abundant. So you can you know what you're targeting in that situation. That is correct. They can target, they can do the surveillance for it, target it, and keep it below, you know, kind of epidemic level.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

It seems that we're getting a lot more of what I think Americans used to traditionally think of as, oh, that's the third world disease or virus. You know, even things like the screw worm, which is now on U.S. soil.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Do you do you think it's if you look into your crystal ball, do you do you see that continuing that we're going to see things that we may have defeated decades ago and even new and emerging threats that make it way to our shores?

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Absolutely. I think that is that is exactly where the situation is going for mosquito and other vector-borne diseases. Um I think we can all we can all talk about uh the changing climate that we're that the country is experiencing. Summers are getting hotter, but they're also getting longer.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Yeah, so that's air conditioning in October in places that you wouldn't have needed it past August.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Exactly. So that's allowing mosquitoes to invade new new areas. They're moving further north. So they expand their territory because it's warmer longer. It's warmer longer, they can they have a longer breeding period, and with that they're bringing these viruses with them. They're bringing these disease pathogens with them. So you're seeing these disease pathogens getting introduced more frequently. Dengue virus is another perfect example to Zika. It's it's slowly becoming, you're seeing it more and more frequently in South Texas, South California, Florida. Wow. So you're seeing these things that we didn't have really 10 years or more of it.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

I think it was, and I don't want to misquote him on something this important, but I think Dr. Dijak had mentioned once when we that it's almost endemic, in his opinion, in parts of Florida.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

That is correct. Uh that's terrifying. Yes, it is. There's a little bit of debate. Is it is it endemic? Is it still introduced? We won't get into that. We won't try to solve that today.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Well, don't they like play games with the genetics? No, this strain is just a little different, so it doesn't count. You could do that, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

But regardless of endemic or not, it's there every year, pretty much in one form or another, in one location or another. So it's becoming a and that's a marked change, right? That is a marked change. Where we've been that is correct. Wow, you really threw down some sunshine on the topic. Yeah, well, you know, it it what I the way I look to it is it it speaks to the importance of continued surveillance and monitoring for these diseases, for these mosquitoes, so that you can you can address it before it becomes a large-scale public health.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

What would you tell an environmental health department that maybe hasn't had a program or a robust one in the past, but they they see this evolving sort of threat landscape. What would you tell one that's just like earlier starting out? Like where sh where would you tell them to put their energy first to to start having a defense for the community? Sure.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

I the most important thing, of course, is funding. Yeah, yeah. We all need more money. And be and the reason I say that is because what you really need is dedicated staff throughout the year, throughout the years to do that surveillance because you don't want to wait, you don't want people to be your sentinel animals. You don't want to wait until human cases of disease pop up and now we have to do something about it. It's much better if you have staff that can do routine surveillance year in, year out, and you can track this, and then you can get ahead of it. And you prevent those human cases.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Also, you don't you you can trend better off of multiple years of data too.

SPEAKER_02 7:20

Absolutely. You can get a much better handle on is this a bat, you know, because you can start to see those trends in May or June that may indicate a disease outbreak in August or September. And so you can get ahead of it by months. And by doing that, then you can implement interventions and maybe never even get human cases, which is why I think Zika, for example, isn't very common because you it everyone got peaked to it, all the districts in southern Florida and then they can just jump right out.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

What is the like I think a lot of people probably have just a very crude idea in their head of how ms how you handle like mass management. How do you, if you've got a population of mosquitoes, how do you guys get it under control? Like what are you?

SPEAKER_02 8:04

Yeah, well, that's the controversial part. Because once you have mass populations of infected adult mosquitoes, there's really only one way to get at 'em. That's spring pesticides. Yeah, you gotta put the poison on them. Yeah, yeah, that's right. You gotta put something on them. So so we do a lot to not get to that point. So you do a lot of public education, you do a lot of larvicide, you do a lot of habitat uh modifications to try to reduce where these mosquitoes are coming from. But the reality is you can't get rid of it all. Right, yeah, there's too many. There's too many places, too much. You are gonna have adult mosquitoes. So eventually you're gonna have to to do some truck applications, aerial applications. And but again, if you're doing surveillance properly, if you've got a a routine program, now you can start to target that more. You don't have to spray the entire town, you can spray the area where they're coming from.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

So you actually know where to go hit instead of crop dusting Main Street.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Exactly. And you can get them before they ever get to Main Street.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

And is that still pretty controversial today in the community? Spraying spray and poison's always been, right? Like there's history there.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

It's never been something that everybody wanted. But are they human safe now, largely? I mean, I know human safe, that's probably a big word, I shouldn't use big words, I don't understand, but but largely speaking, uh, does it get blown out of proportion if it's done judiciously in a targeted way?

SPEAKER_02 9:27

Yes, I I would I think so, and I and I'll say that because I've been I've been in this industry for nearly 30 years doing this. And I think what what you can do is if you if you time the applications properly, if you use the proper products with proper formulations, proper rates, you do all of this properly, you can greatly reduce or minimize those risks. Yep. Nothing you ever do is safe. Right, right. But but we can reduce that. We can we can manage the mosquito populations while minimizing that risk. Even if it's as much as letting the public know you're gonna be doing you're gonna be running a truck down Main Street so they can if transparency about it, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Like if it looks like you were trying to sneak it in, right, right, they're gonna get suspicious of you.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

They're gonna be like, Correct and what are you doing? Correct. So if you let them know, then they can, you know, the the people that are very concerned, because maybe they have chemical sensitivities. Some people do. That's perfectly understandable. If you let them know, then they can stay inside, they can avoid that area and again risk mitigated. Because the products we use nowadays, they're not like you know, it was years ago. These aren't long-term residual products where we don't spray and it coats everything in pesticides.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

The white dust film forms, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

You don't get that anymore.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

It's yeah, it's not like you're spaying Monsanto, whatever they just the weed killer stuff. But you know, how is the public supposed to know, right? Exactly. They they hear they they because people think of the big scary words like cancer, and this is like what are you doing in my kids, my pets?

SPEAKER_02 10:56

And and we all hearken back to those days in the 60s where you see the spray trucks, just big plumes of smoke, and and you go, Oh my gosh, it's that's what no, it we've we've made a lot of advances since those days. We now we do things like what we call ULV, ultra low volume. So most of our applications are less than an ounce per acre of product. Really? Yes, it's an extremely small amount of product. Yes, and so so the idea is we atomize it to a very small droplet, roughly 20 to 30 microns. So extremely small droplet. We keep it airborne as long as we can to impact mosquitoes that are flying that night, and then it slowly dissipates. It dilutes.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Do it at night, yes, and you knock down flyers and then it settles and will get the eggs or before they're low.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

No, and then it breaks down because it it dilutes because it's it's gonna drift far enough and get diluted so you don't have large-scale deposition. So it really is just to take adult mosquitoes out of the air. That's it. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

And so so what you will see generally is within a few days, maybe a week, you'll see the mosquito numbers start to come back because new larvae immatures are but when you see that they're not infected. They don't get infected until they bite an infected bird or other host. So you know the ones that have that's that's right. You're starting over with a lot of people. So you're starting over, and so now you can continue to monitor and you know, if if it's September when you first see it and you do that application, you may not make another one that year. So you've done it one time and you're done. How long does mosquito live? Uh well the the adults unless it meets you. That's right. If they meet me, they're gonna not not too long. But uh yeah, the adults are gonna be around for eh, depending on weather, four weeks, up to six weeks. Long enough to get themselves infected. Absolutely, because they take they take a blood meal roughly once a week. So that's four blood meals each blood meal they take. They lay. The people only eat a blood meal once a week, really. Roughly, yeah. And she she takes that blood meal, because what she'll do is she'll feed on the blood. It's only the females that feed. So she takes the blood meal and she'll have to rest for a little bit. She's making a batch of eggs with the with the nutrients from that blood. Then she lays those eggs, then it give her a day or two to rest and kind of get her energy back, and then she goes off. Do it again and do it again. And that's when you start to see transmission occur, because the most vast, vast majority are not going to be, they're not going to emerge with virus. So it's that first blood meal. Second, they can bite an infected bird. And so the longer they're alive, the more blood meals, higher the odds.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Exactly. That is fascinating. Well, I tell you what, we'll have you back sometime more in the studio where we can actually get into it more because this is like really fascinating. Yeah, anytime anytime you want to. Thanks for being an impromptu drop-by too.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Well, you know, it was fun. I saw this, I didn't know what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

I don't do podcasts. Well, you would never know. You're really great at it. So, yeah, we'll have you back for like a full episode, and then like we can because you must have some great stories and things. We could talk for days. Excellent. Dan, thank you. We'll talk again soon. All right, excellent. Dan Markowski with us here, and uh was we I just met him for the first time. He can attest. So that's that's that's the fun of doing this out here on the road, is you get a lot of really smart people that raise the IQ of this booth instantly just by stepping into it, and we'll have a longer conversation in the future with Dan. For now, that'll be it for us from Kansas City. We'll talk to you soon on the Beyond Data Management Podcast, powered by HS GovTech. Check you back in a bit.