At 1 A.M., a Truck Rolls Down Your Street — and Some Neighbors Want to Know More

Most of us sleep right through it. Somewhere between one and five in the morning, on nights the weather cooperates, a truck from the Camden County Mosquito Control Commission works its way down the block trailing a fine ultra-low-volume mist, and by the time the coffee's on you'd never know it came. This month alone the trucks have run through parts of Voorhees, Cherry Hill and West Berlin, and before that through Gloucester City, Haddon Heights, Audubon, Winslow and Berlin — a quiet, pre-dawn routine that's been part of a South Jersey summer for longer than most of us have been alive.

And for the most part, we're grateful for it. Anyone who's tried to enjoy a backyard in late August knows the enemy. The commission doesn't spray for sport; it works with the state's public-health laboratory in Trenton, testing mosquito samples for West Nile virus and other diseases, and returns to treat an area when the bugs there turn up carrying something you don't want your kids catching. That's the case for the whole operation, and it's a good one.

A fair question drifts up with the mist

But lately, in a few corners of the county, a question has started drifting up alongside the mist: what exactly is in it, and how would we know? I heard it first from a woman I met at a farmers market in Collingswood, who told me she'd woken to the sound of the truck and realized she had no idea whether she should have brought the dog's water bowl in off the porch. The commission's guidance says the spray isn't harmful to people or pets, but advises folks with respiratory sensitivities to avoid direct contact — and it's that small gap, between "not harmful" and "but avoid it if," that some residents want closed with plainer talk.

These aren’t the questions of cranks. They’re the questions of neighbors who want the mosquitoes gone and also want to know what’s landing on the tomato plants.Max Cedar

An arrangement built on trust

In my experience, the folks asking aren't trying to shut the trucks down. They're trying to be treated like adults who can handle information. A notice a day ahead, a phone number that reaches a person, a straight answer about the product being used — that's not a lot to ask, and the commission does post schedules when it can. The friction tends to be less about the science than about the feeling of being talked past.

What strikes me, walking around these towns, is how much trust the whole arrangement quietly runs on. You let a public agency mist your street in the dark because you assume somebody competent decided it was safe and necessary. That assumption is usually right. But trust is a thing you keep by feeding it — a little transparency here, a returned call there — and a thing you can lose faster than a mosquito commission can regain it. Summer's winding down. In a few weeks the trucks will finish their season and go quiet until next June. A few neighbors would just like to know, before they close their eyes, exactly what's coming down the street.

Based on reporting from The Retrospect, The Sun Papers, Camden County, and CBS News Philadelphia.