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                       By Linda and Bill Bonvie, Globe Correspondents

                       Date: 01/10/1999 Page: L5

                       Section: Travel

                  Linda and Bill Bonvie are New Jersey-based health and environmental-writers
                  who first broke the story on aircraft disinsection in a 1993 magazine article.

                 To anyone whose fear of flying to certain foreign countries is based on the
                  possibility of being sprayed with a pesticide before arrival, there is good and
                  not-so-good news.

                  The practice, extensively publicized several years ago, has now been largely
                  curtailed, according to the US Department of Transportation, which has even
                  seen fit to withdraw as no longer necessary a proposed rule that would have
                  required airline passengers to be told in advance of such ``disinsection.''

                  Largely due to the urging of the DOT and former Transportation Secretary
                  Federico Pena, 20 countries and territories have dropped their requirement
                  that passengers be exposed to a pesticide sprayed while they are on board,
                  leaving only two countries with direct service from the United States --
                  Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago -- still upholding the policy, according to a
                  press release from the agency.

                  A reality check, however, reveals that while the number of destinations
                  requiring the spraying of inbound flights, usually at the top of descent, has
                  indeed diminished, there still remain significant hidden risks of pesticide
                  exposure for many who fly abroad. Among those exposed (barring a change
                  in Australian policy, which now appears highly unlikely) would be anyone
                  heading down to Australia, either now or for the summer Olympics in the year
                  2000 -- including the athletes themselves. Although not sprayed directly by a
                  flight attendant wielding a can of insecticide, such passengers, along with the
                  crew, would be spending long hours in aircraft cabins that have been
                  thoroughly saturated with a ``residual'' spray -- that is, one whose chemical
                  residue is designed to linger on surfaces and seat cushions for weeks. As is
                  now the case with aerosol disinsection sprays, this particular one -- applied
                  overseas by US airlines approximately every four weeks -- has not been
                  approved for such use by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

                  In other instances, spraying while passengers are on board has reportedly
                  continued despite destination countries dropping the requirement, apparently
                  due to bureaucratic snafus involving either intransigent officials or airline
                  confusion. The DOT, however, either downplayed or overlooked such
                  obstacles when issuing a Feb. 2 news release in which Transportation
                  Secretary Rodney E. Slater proclaimed the agency's ``four-year effort to halt
                  the spraying of insecticide on aircraft while passengers are on board'' has
                  ``achieved dramatic success.'' The release identified six nations -- Australia,
                  Barbados, Fiji, Jamaica, New Zealand, and Panama -- as allowing the
                  spraying of empty planes as an alternative method, and two others with no
                  direct US connections, Kiribati and Madagascar, as still requiring direct
                  in-flight spraying.

                  Despite the DOT's attempt to minimize its significance, however, residual
                  spraying is a source of real concern to flight crews and many consumer
                  activists. According to Linda Laurent, a Houston-based attorney who is part
                  of a legal team representing flight attendants in a class-action lawsuit now
                  pending in Louisiana, both types of pesticides ``act similarly on a person, but
                  the residual is actually ``a lot worse.''

                  ``We are suing the chemical manufacturers, who we feel have a greater
                  responsibility,'' Laurent says, adding that the potential number of airline
                  employees involved in the action ``could be in the thousands.''

                  Becky Riley, spokeswoman for the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to
                  Pesticides, says the active ingredient in the residual product -- permethrin -- is
                  ``classified as a possible human carcinogen, in addition to being a nerve
                  poison. The chemical has been shown in animal studies to cause damage to
                  the liver and lungs, and exposure can result in tremors, salivation, vomiting,
                  diarrhea, and loss of coordination.'' Deliberately introducing ``intentional
                  poisons'' of this sort into a confined environment with poor air quality at best,
                  Riley believes, poses ``special risks to infants and children, pregnant women,
                  and those with allergies, asthma, chemical sensitivities, or weakened immune
                  systems.''

                  Yet, even people trying to avoid being exposed to cabin spraying are often
                  unaware of the risk from residuals. A United Airlines spokesman recently
                  noted that he occasionally gets calls from passengers worried about the spray,
                  ``but not so much with the residual, because obviously, that's more
                  transparent to the customer.'' Australia's insistence that pesticides be used
                  (along with similar mandates in other countries) stems from a basic
                  disagreement with US health officials over the merits of aircraft disinsection.
                  The US abandoned the practice in 1979 after the Centers for Disease Control
                  and Prevention found it to be neither safe for occupants nor a particularly
                  significant means of keeping out any health threat from alien insects; the
                  Aussies continue to believe otherwise.

                  But while Pena did succeed in persuading a number of foreign governments to
                  officially dispense with their disinsection policies, there is no guarantee that
                  airline passengers can rely on what the DOT was told in every case. India, for
                  instance, is one of the countries that is supposed to have ``dropped the
                  spraying requirement at the urging of DOT.'' A check of airlines flying to that
                  country, however, indicates that the spraying has continued nonetheless --
                  something confirmed by a DOT spokesman who declined to be identified but
                  who said his own investigation had shown Indian health officials to be issuing
                  orders that contradicted their government's position.

                  In other cases, the airlines themselves appear to be either operating under
                  conflicting edicts or failing to communicate with the DOT. An American
                  Airlines representative, for instance, said his airline's list of destinations calling
                  for the spraying of flights included Argentina and Costa Rica -- two more
                  countries supposed to have dropped the requirement. And some countries
                  have continued to require spraying of aircraft arriving from locales other than
                  the United States. Britain, for instance, mandates that flights from malarial
                  countries be sprayed.

                  Meanwhile, the airlines have found various ways of coping with the EPA's ban
                  on the use of several dozen insecticides for the disinsection of occupied cabins
                  -- including Airosol Aircraft Insecticide, a d-phenothrin formula once used
                  exclusively on international flights. Although manufacturers must now change
                  the products' labels to prohibit their application to occupied aircraft, some
                  airlines have stockpiled old cans of the product, which they can legally use to
                  accommodate those countries that still require spraying. Others have turned to
                  using pesticides produced abroad.

                  But the DOT's withdrawal of its proposed notification rule means that to find
                  out if any chemical is slated to be used on a particular flight, passengers will be
                  left having to either consult the agency's Web site (www.ostpxweb.dot.gov/),
                  which lists airline contact sources, or inquire when making reservations -- a
                  still less-than-reliable approach. A recent inquiry to United Airlines'
                  reservation number regarding spraying on New Zealand flights, for instance,
                  ended up with the airline representative having to consult the airport in
                  Auckland for information.