In my thirty plus years in
the pest control industry I’ve seen changes – very subtle and very slow, but as destructive as a glacier – in the
thrust of our thinking and our views of reality. I find myself the only openly heterodoxical writer
in our industry nationwide. Although based on e-mails I believe there may be a
‘silent majority’ out there. Let’s face
it; heterodoxy isn’t for the faint of heart.
Timothy P. Carney [writer
for the Washington Examiner] said Washington is a debate club for the logically
impaired, with its share of fallacies, sophistries, oversimplifications and
utter absurdities. I find this pattern repeats in more areas than just
Washington. Through legislative power
and massive amounts of grant money federal bureaucrats have had a great deal to
do with undermining any natural sense of logic in the minds of everyone in the
nation, including industry. Is the pest control industry any different? We now believe there really is such a thing as Integrated Pest Management in structural pest control, in spite of the fact there is no logical foundation, and we fail to grasp that 'green' pest control borders on neo-pagan mysticism.
In my years I have seen our industry go from being ardent defenders of
pesticides universally, to a substantial number who are almost as anti-pesticide
in their approach as anyone from the Sierra Club or the NRDC. Why?
That’s where the fascination comes in.
In the early years of the modern green movement - started largely with the
publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson’s science fiction book, Silent Spring - the
green movement insisted pesticides were a major cause of cancer. I remember those days, and I also remember
the conversations by the older members of my family talking about this. People believed modern living was
responsible. They were right, but for
the wrong reasons. Industry [and cities
and towns in America] were responsible for many sins against the environment,
so it was easy to point the finger, but mostly it was pointed at industry. The real finger of blame should have been
pointed at the personal habits of people themselves. That was where the rise in cancer rates appeared.
Over the years the rates of cancer have consistently dropped, and yet we
still hear the irrational – and unscientific – mantra that pesticides cause
cancer. If you were to take a plastic overlay of our modern demographic and put it over the demographics of those living in 1914 and those living in 2014 you would
notice two very distinct differences.
Very few people smoked and very few people lived past 65, the two major
areas of cancer related deaths. The
decrease I spoke of would be even more dramatic if we reduced the demographic
of smokers and the aged from our modern demographic chart.
When the federal government banned DDT industry rose up as one to defend
it, and it was the same for chlordane.
By the time we came to the irrational elimination of Ficam and Dursban (chlorpyrifos), [Neither were banned in spite of what you may read. The manufacturers
pulled their registration for structural applications] there was very
little argument, and when Dow decided not to fight it the other companies manufacturing chlorpyrifos gave up. Was it a business decision? You
bet! Chlorpyrifos was out of patent and
it represented a very small percentage of their annual intake, at least from
structural pest control, and the lawsuits kept coming. It is interesting that the last time I looked
chlorpyrifos is still used as an agriculture product under the brand name Lorsban.
The makers of Ficam W (bendiocarb),
which is still used in Australia and New Zealand and I’m told still works on
bed bugs, gave up also. Why? We lost two whole categories of pesticides [organophosphates and carbamates] from
our arsenal with that terrible piece of legislation called the Food Quality
Protection Act, which wasn’t about food or protection. It was about making it too expensive to keep pesticide
registrations active, thereby banning pesticides without having to go through
all those nasty and potentially messy legal and scientific steps - where they
would have lost.
Now we come to the new
restrictions on pyrethroids, and there is hardly a peep, except from Ohio’s
pest controllers. People at the national
level may not like it, but if the Ohio pest controllers – who are responsible
for the very existence of NPMA – didn’t stand up to be counted, and fight the
good fight - a fight the entire industry should have been fighting and should still be
fighting - nothing would happen. What’s worse it appears the manufactures of pyrethroids,
known as the “Pyrethroid Working Group
(PWG), an industry task force whose members are AMVAC, Bayer, Cheminova,
DuPont, FMC Corporation, Syngenta and Valent’, were part and parcel of this
pesticide reduction scheme. I would
have loved to have been a fly on the wall when the Pyrethroid Working Group was
formed. I wonder, does this whole thing sound conspiratorial to anyone besides me?
I know…I know….there’s no
such thing as a conspiracy. I often wonder why the people who have never read a
history book are so ardent in that view.
Just a thought!
And why were these
restrictions applied only to structural pest control and not to lawn care or agriculture? We have substantial restrictions against where
and how we make pyrethroid applications to structures, but the lawn and shrubs
can be covered with them. Does that
sound irrational to anyone besides me?
All this to protect an
almost microscopic shrimplike creature known as Hyalella azteca, a creature
that is capable of living in extremely adverse conditions, and is one of the
most prolific creatures in North America and South America. Pyrethroids are used extensively everywhere.
How can that be if these products are so deadly to Hyalella?
I have spent some time
going over the information available and there are a number of things I would
like to see answered. Since this “shrimp” is so impacted by small amounts of
pyrethroid materials – even though one study claimed the appearance of
chlorpyrifos created a more toxic impact, which I found truly interesting since
we are no longer using chlorpyrifos in structural pest control, but it's still used in
agriculture and there’s no effort to eliminate it for agricultural purposes - therefore
there are questions I would like to see answered.
How can they tell these
traces are coming from structural pest control and not lawn care, agriculture
and DIY home applications? Thirty years
ago when we were using a very large amount of liquids structural pest control
only used 4% of all pesticides purchased. It must be far less now, so why would
structural pest control need to be so restricted?
Since Hyalella are amongst the most prolific creatures on the planet, how long
did these products impact the areas tested. Did they resurge? How quickly did they
resurge? Was more than the San Joaquin
Valley part of a national testing pattern? If California was the only area
tested it should have been easy to determine what impact this had on the
surrounding eco-system. What was it? What impact would this have on other areas
of the country?
Canada is a heavy user of
pyrethroids and yet the Hyalella population is thriving. I would like to see the study methodology, and
how strong the study is and what wording was used? Mostly it seems to me the
impact appears to be inconsistent. I would also like to see if the study
determined what difference it would have made if they all died, or if some
died. If they did all die; in what size area did it occur; how wide spread; how
often did they find 2 parts per trillion in the water; what was the water mass;
was it still water or a stream or river...or even a stream that is only a
stream when it rains, AKA, a ditch with deposits left until the next
rain. Finally what was the total number
count living within the region before and after treatments?
The real question is
whether or not these questions were asked by manufacturers, along with our
national and other state associations - and if not - why not?
One of the things I have
come to understand in my sixty seven years of life and thirty three years in pest control is this. Pesticide manufacturers – as allies – are at
best leaky vessels. Their long range
vision is about profits – and it should be – but we also have to understand
they will do what is good for their bottom line even if it means abandoning a
segment of the pesticide applicator industry, and those who use the least
amount of pesticides are of the least amount of concern to them. And that’s us!
But that isn’t the whole
story. This is where the story really
gets intriguing. I have criticized
manufactures for their bottom line mentality, but what about us?
In the last couple of
years we had an anti-pesticide law passed in Cuyahoga County, Ohio on county
property. We discovered this was going
on at the last minute and could only testify against it at the third reading. That’s way too late to stop things, but we
wanted to go on record. As the months
progressed we came to an interesting insight.
The lawn care people and structure pest control people weren’t upset by
this. Why?
I don’t know what the lawn
care contract was before, or ended up being afterward, but the cost of a two
year contract for the county’s structural pest control program was
approximately $45,000. After all the
dust settled it ended up being approximately $145,000 for a two year
contract. And I have to believe any pest problems that
might occur could be explained away far more easily than before.
For many years I have been
saying what we do isn’t a job, it’s a mission.
Maybe it isn’t after all! For many years I have been saying we are the
thin gray line that mans the wall telling the world no one will harm you on my
watch. Maybe we aren’t after all! For
many years I have been saying this should be treated as a moral issue, not a
financial one. Maybe I'm wrong about all of this!
But one thing is clear to
me. At some point we will have to come
to a point where all this is going to create a disaster. We have bed bugs as a national plague,
mosquitoes are carrying dengue fever right here in the U.S., and the tick
population is increasing along with Lyme disease. Does anyone think that getting rid of
pesticides might – just might – have something to do with that?
When disaster finally strikes I would like to know who will answer for it?
No comments:
Post a Comment