Lincoln’s Tick Task Force completes report

Lincoln, one of many Massachusetts communities in which Lyme disease is a concern, in late June issued a report summarizing the work over the past year of the town’s Tick Task Force.

The nine-member volunteer committee, backed with a $2,225 grant channeled through the Department of Public Health, focused on relatively simple preventative measures, such as encouraging proper outdoor attire and the use of a gel that kills deer ticks. The group also sought to quantify instances of Lyme disease in the community.

Among the more notable projects was the dispensing of hundreds of “tick tubes” – small cardboard structures containing cotton soaked with the insecticide Permethrin. The tubes are designed to attract mice, which carry the cotton to their nests, where the insecticide kills the Lyme disease bacteria-carrying ticks that feed on the mice.

Lincoln Assistant Town Administrator Anita Scheipers said a local Eagle Scout coordinated the production of hundreds of the tick tubes, demonstrating that such a project can be carried out at no real cost.
“You don’t necessarily have to buy these things,” Scheipers said. “It’s possible to make them.”

Local officials said it has become more difficult to gauge the extent of Lyme disease-carrying ticks in a community since the state shifted reporting responsibility from local health departments to physicians’ offices, which appears to have led to under-reporting.

In Lincoln, task force members encouraged people to stick pins on a town map marking the approximate spot where they or someone they know had a deer tick on them. The results suggest that encounters with ticks in Lincoln are widespread.

The next step for Lincoln is to work with nearby communities, Scheipers said. She noted that the Tick Task Force included one member from Wayland, with a Lexington resident participating in a less formal role.

For more about the Tick Task Force, visit www.lincolntown.org.