New Delhi: Mumbai airport’s brand new terminal is battling a mosquito onslaught with guppy fish, mist machines and NASA-certified mosquito death traps, an airport official said on Friday.
The hi-tech building boasts plush interiors and art on the walls, but is lined by open gutters and the slow-moving, garbage-choked Mithi river, breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
A range of methods were being used to tackle the insects, including introducing guppy fish in the gutters and other water-logged areas, said Vaibhav Tiwari, a spokesman for GVK-Mumbai International Airport Ltd, the public-private enterprise that runs the airport.
The fish eat the larvae that hatch in the water, before they can grow into adult mosquitoes.
The new terminal, completed last year, is estimated to have cost $2 billion, and covers around 5.6 square km.
Twenty trial models of mosquito-trapper machines certified by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration had been installed and house-keeping staff were using battery-operated electric rackets which electrocute insects caught in their wire mesh.
11/04/14 DPA/Business Line
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The hi-tech building boasts plush interiors and art on the walls, but is lined by open gutters and the slow-moving, garbage-choked Mithi river, breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
A range of methods were being used to tackle the insects, including introducing guppy fish in the gutters and other water-logged areas, said Vaibhav Tiwari, a spokesman for GVK-Mumbai International Airport Ltd, the public-private enterprise that runs the airport.
The fish eat the larvae that hatch in the water, before they can grow into adult mosquitoes.
The new terminal, completed last year, is estimated to have cost $2 billion, and covers around 5.6 square km.
Twenty trial models of mosquito-trapper machines certified by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration had been installed and house-keeping staff were using battery-operated electric rackets which electrocute insects caught in their wire mesh.
11/04/14 DPA/Business Line
