US Wages War on Bugs Afflicting Troops Abroad

Fluorescent rodent feces, a promising new mosquito repellant and a better flytrap are all part of a war on bugs designed to protect U.S. troops around the world.

These undated photos provided by the Louisiana State University AgCenter and taken by post-doctoral...

These undated photos provided by the Louisiana State University AgCenter and taken by post-doctoral researcher Tom Mascari, show a female sand fly marked with Rhodamine B, a fluorescent dye, using brightfield microscopy, left, and using fluorescence microscopy, right. The images were taken as part of research to learn whether sandflies could be killed by feeding rats on bait laced chemicals toxic to the flies but harmless to the rodents. (AP Photo/LSU AgCenter, Tom Mascari)

(AP)

Researchers in the Pentagon's Deployed Warfighter Protection Research Program highlighted pest-fighting innovations this week at the American Mosquito Control Association convention attended by some 800 scientists and insect control experts. Their aim: to take no prisoners among disease-carrying flies, mosquitoes and other bugs that threaten Americans in uniform abroad.

Even the common fly is counted among the enemy.

"When you're deployed, I would say 90 percent of all soldiers, service members, are going to have issues with filth flies," said Army Lt. Col. Jason Pike, executive officer of the 65th Medical Brigade's Force Health Protection and Preventive Medicine program headquartered in South Korea.

"Filth flies carry many organisms which cause diarrhea ... It might not be fatal, but one soldier out of commission affects a lot of other people," he said.

Begun in 2004, the Deployed Warfighter Protection Research Program dispenses $5 million a year to find new ways to combat disease-carrying insects that threaten the troops — applications that ultimately could protect the public at large.

Military-driven research has produced past innovations against malaria and dengue and helped develop DEET, a key ingredient in most modern repellants. It even has led to chemical-treated fabrics that ward off ticks and mosquitoes.

Fighting bugs is a "global perpetual need," said program coordinator Graham B. White of the Armed Forces Pest Management Board. "Even if nobody went to war for a long time, these things would still need to be developed."

He said small insecticide sprayers developed through the program are now in use. The program also backed testing that secured recent Environmental Protection Agency approval of an insecticide spray that is highly toxic at low doses to adult mosquitoes but safe for mammals.