Study Finds No Major Harm From Malathion

Newly released results of the first medical tests of Southland residents exposed to the controversial pesticide malathion show that it caused no major side effects, even in people most likely to suffer allergies and asthma, health officials said.

Los Angeles County health officers, who studied more than 100 residents in Los Angeles and Orange counties, said the results reassure them that the threat of health hazards was extremely low in neighborhoods that were sprayed with the pesticide between the fall of 1989 and summer of 1990. The sprayings were part of a state-sponsored effort to combat the Mediterranean fruit fly.

However, environmentalists and anti-spraying activists said they remain skeptical. Mollie Haines of Garden Grove, whose neighborhood was sprayed nine times, said the test results did little to reassure her. “I’m not just concerned about rashes, but long-term health effects, and no one is studying that,” she said.