Drones are being used across the US by a Florida-based company to help repel mosquitoes.
Leading Edge Aerial Technologies, based in Daytona Beach, Florida, has drones that spray for mosquitoes in hard-to-reach areas in almost half of all states in the United States and Australia.
Drones from the company can be rented or purchased by counties, and they can cover areas as small as one acre or as vast as 250 acres, usually in regions where new homes are being constructed.
According to the manufacturer, the PrecisionVision 40X is the “most versatile [unmanned aircraft system] in the world, capable of applying granular materials, liquid, Ultra Low Volume, and multispectral/LIDAR imagery.” It is now in operation in Broward County, Florida.
Prior to employing drones, personnel had to wade into marshes and spray the region with a backpack blower, which was a laborious procedure.
“You can imagine how inefficient that is, how dangerous it is for the technicians and also [the] environmental footprint of either the vehicle or the technician traversing the terrain,” President and CEO Bill Reynolds stated, adding that using a drone is 12 times faster than conventional methods.
President and CEO Bill Reynolds said that utilizing a drone is 12 times faster than using traditional techniques.
“You can imagine how inefficient that is, how dangerous it is for the technicians and also [the] environmental footprint of either the vehicle or the technician traversing the terrain,” Reynolds said.
“[W]e excel in the sense that the unmanned aircraft are quiet,” Reynolds stated. “They don’t have helicopters flying over their houses making the applications, so the precision of applications as well as the noise is dramatically reduced.”Â
According to Reynolds, the EPA-approved chemicals, which are produced by a different business, kill mosquito larvae in the water by triggering bacteria in the insect’s stomach.
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The effectiveness of the spray will be evaluated by on-site inspectors returning to these locations and using dipping instruments to perform tests in the water.
Having worked in mosquito control for forty years, Reynolds claimed that the use of spraying drones has greatly aided in the suppression of disease-carrying mosquito species that may be found in a variety of climates, including freshwater, salt marshes, and snowmelts.
Teams that assist in lowering mosquito numbers are “very prone and proactive in terms of monitoring for those species,” according to Reynolds. “It’s an amazing group of people that a lot of folks don’t really know about.”
The mosquito is known as “the world’s deadliest animal” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because to its ability to spread diseases such as dengue, malaria, West Nile, zika, and yellow fever, among others.
