On a clear night in September, the Wilcox family got ready for the airplane that would soon fly overhead and spray a pesticide to fight an invasive moth discovered on the Monterey Peninsula. They shut the windows and stayed indoors.

"I didn't think much of it. We thought it wouldn't be harmful," said Air Force Maj. Timothy Wilcox, who's enrolled in the U.S. Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey.

The very next day, the Wilcoxes' 11-month-old son, Jack, started wheezing. It got so bad, his eyes rolled back in his head, the boy's father said. The baby spent his first birthday in the hospital on oxygen and medication.

"Jack had been the picture of health, a breast-fed baby who never got sick," Wilcox said. "We were shocked for this to happen."

Now the baby takes two physician-ordered drug treatments a day as a precaution against an asthma attack.

The Wilcoxes are one of hundreds of families in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties that reported health problems last year after the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Food and Agriculture ordered an aerial spray of pesticides containing synthetic insect pheromones and other ingredients in a campaign to eradicate the light brown apple moth.

Planes doused houses, decks, yards, cars, city streets - and anybody who happened to be outside. Afterward, some residents complained of shortness of breath, chest tightness, burning in the throat, eye irritation and muscle and headaches, among other symptoms.

In spite of the complaints, U.S. and state agricultural officials say they intend to aerial spray every county in the Bay Area starting in August. They'll return to Monterey and Santa Cruz counties in June.

California Secretary of Agriculture A.J. Kawamura and federal agriculture officials assert that the pheromone pesticides are safe. Without eradication, they say, the nonnative pest spotted for the first time in the United States in California last year could spread to and damage up to 250 different crops in the state.

Rigorous testing promised

This time around, agriculture officials will give state medical experts an opportunity to sign off on a pesticide product before it's used in aerial spraying, said USDA spokesman Larry Hawkins. There will be more rigorous animal testing on the product, he said.

"If none passes muster, we won't have any products to use, and we wouldn't be doing any aerial application," Hawkins said.

Despite assurances, aerial spraying in California faces steep public disapproval. Santa Cruz County has filed a suit to stop the spraying, and a dozen cities targeted for spraying have passed resolutions against it pending further study.

The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, fearing injury to wildlife, has forbidden spraying into its waters. Marin Organic, a Point Reyes Station association of farms and nurseries, supports a moth spray moratorium.

Five state lawmakers have introduced bills to control aerial spraying.

Critics question the safety of pesticide products and whether a full-scale aerial campaign is necessary or would even be effective.

Sometime this week, the California Environmental Protection Agency, along with other state agencies, is expected to respond in part to the safety concerns of Monterey and Santa Cruz county residents with the release of a follow-up report addressing about 400 health problems conveyed from citizen groups, physicians' reports and telephone calls to state and local government agencies.

Until now, representatives of the state Department of Food and Agriculture have appeared to downplay any correlation between the residents' health concerns and the spraying.

But the Wilcoxes and hundreds of other residents think it's taken too long - seven months in the Wilcoxes' case - for the state government that conducted the spray program to seriously follow up on reports submitted in good faith. They want an investigation into whether the planes have left health problems in their wake before the agencies spray again.

"I think it's unacceptable that state agencies haven't had feet on the street since day one, actively collecting citizen complaints and making it easy for citizens to make those complaints," said Michael Lynberg, a Silicon Valley communications consultant who got so frustrated that he set up a post office box to accept reports, which he passes on to the state.

Questions about Checkmate

Sprayed was a product called Checkmate, containing a synthetic moth pheromone - an insect attractant that disrupts mating and eventually curtails the population - and 10 other ingredients.

There hasn't been a full panoply of long-term animal tests on the Checkmate product, according to state health officials. Until officials ordered it sprayed over Monterey and Santa Cruz counties, it had never been used over an urban area.

The USDA obtained an emergency exemption from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to use the Checkmate products. State agriculture officials went along with the plan, and because of the exemption, the products didn't go through the normal vetting process under California law.

After the spraying, state health officials said the amount of pesticide applied in Monterey shouldn't have posed severe health risks. But they've also refused to rule out that the spray could affect human health, particularly people who are vulnerable such as children, the elderly and the chronically ill.

They have also acknowledged that eye, skin or respiratory irritations reported by some residents could have been caused by high applications, not by low ones. But they said the pesticide levels used in Monterey were extremely low, making it unlikely that anyone was exposed to a high dose.

Ron Tjeerdema, a UC Davis toxicology professor and a member of the state agricultural department's task force on the aerial spraying, said in an interview that he reviewed the list of ingredients and didn't find anything of particular concern. Some of the ingredients are found in other products, he said.

But Dr. Megan Schwarzman, a research scientist in UC Berkeley's School of Public Health, cautioned that just because the chemicals are found in other products "doesn't indicate their toxicity or their safety."

As for the Checkmate used last year, Schwarzman said, "We don't have information on the potential long-term health effects in people. That information could well be reassuring. Without that information, we have too many questions to feel OK about it."

Agriculture officials are testing other products for the next series of sprays because the Checkmate used previously remained active for only about a month, and officials want a product that will last at least 60 days, the USDA's Hawkins said.

They don't want to have to keep returning to spray, he said.

Dr. William Ngai, a public health medical officer at Cal EPA, has said that before the next spraying, manufacturers will be required to reveal not only the main ingredient - already required by law - but also all of the additional ingredients. Under law, the manufacturers, claiming proprietary rights, don't have to declare all of the ingredients.

The agency's spokesman, Sam Delson, said if the state sprays again, a better real-time system would be established for people to report any illnesses. The system should make it easier for the state to respond to them more quickly and effectively, he said.

Asked about why the state hasn't gotten back to the Wilcoxes about Jack's reaction, Delson said health officials are now investigating it.

More trouble for boy

When Jack began having trouble breathing, the Wilcoxes called their military pediatrician in the Presidio, then rushed him to the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. Emergency room doctors put him on oxygen and started a series of respiration therapy treatments with drugs. He stayed the weekend.

At home, he seemed fine until the end of September. Then it started again. He couldn't breathe. They took him back to the community hospital. From there, he was sent to Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford.

"My wife said it was a scene from 'ER.' Everyone was rushing around. He stopped breathing. They gave him a shot. He started breathing again."

Back home, the Wilcoxes worried whether there would be permanent damage or whether he would be sensitive to chemicals and other irritants all of his life.

When the state sprayed again in October in Monterey, they took Jack to Travis Air Force Base outside the spray area to wait it out. They had him tested for allergies at the end of the month, and he came up negative. Since then, Jack has had to receive twice-daily treatments of Pulmicort, a corticosteroid, as a preventive measure.

"We hope we haven't any permanent damage." Wilcox said. "What are we doing when we weigh crops, economics and money before health?"

Seven months ago, Wilcox filed a formal complaint with the state's hot line and received a brief form confirmation note with a case number and assurances that someone would get back to him. He has heard nothing. Finally, he wrote Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and also his wife, Maria Shriver.

"Not one person from the state called to inquire or to request records," Wilcox said. "It was almost like they wanted me to go away, to ignore the fact that we had a possible bad reaction."

At a glance Problem: The light brown apple moth has been found in the Bay Area. Its larvae could harm more than 200 types of crops. Eradication: Officials plan to spray a pesticide over Bay Area cities to disturb its mating. Spraying is expected to start Aug. 1, and continue in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties starting June 1.