The Pillars of IPM: Part IV

By Rich Kozlovich

The pillars that hold up the structure of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in structural pest control are arrogance, deceit, deception, ideology, lies, ignorance, scare tactics and its foundation is the Precautionary Principle; the bulwark of junk science.

The predictions and scares thrown up by the environmental movement has become conventional wisdom by repetition; yet have proven false time after time. That is the trouble with conventional wisdom. It still has to face the march of time before it becomes traditional wisdom. Unfortunately, these latest philosophical philosophies of the day have so very often left devastation in their wake in so many countries around the world.

From Malthus to Paul Ehrlich (look them up) they almost have a monopoly on being wrong. So then, why do we so readily accept their scare mongering? The goal for those who wish to implement IPM as a separate, practical pest control concept is the elimination of pesticides. I seem to have to repeat this over and over because so many claim this isn’t true, which makes me wonder what planet they are living on. If we are to eliminate all of these products that have been so effective and beneficial to mankind we had better ask three questions.  (I am paraphrasing these questions from comments made by Thomas Sowell. RK)

1. IPM (or green pest control for that matter) is better as opposed to what? If bed bugs are any indicator, IPM is an abject failure as opposed to using effective, inexpensive, easy to use chemistry that is available to everyone.
2. How much will it cost? Once again. If bed bugs are the touchstone we are to use. IPM is an abject failure.
3. What hard evidence do you have? The reality is that most of what the EPA promotes is based on “risk assumptions”, not actual science.

If the environmentalists truly are concerned about people’s health, why aren’t they taking stands to support DDT? Why aren’t they supporting genetically modified foods such as “Golden Rice”? Golden Rice is a genetically enhanced product that would bring much needed Vitamin A into the diets of the children in Asia and Africa. This one item alone would prevent 500,000 children from going blind every year. Americans have been using genetically modified (GM) foods for years without any adverse effects. Yet, well-fed activists living in industrialized countries have blocked aid in the form of corn that is GM to starving people in Africa between the years 2002 and 2004. This action alone caused the deaths of thousands. Then again, is it possible this is exactly what they want? Who are the killers here?

If they are really concerned about indoor air quality, why aren’t they supporting power plants in Africa so that those people don’t have to breathe the fumes of cooking fires made from dried dung and the respiratory problems that result? They are against chlorine in drinking water. What is the result of such thinking? Thousands died and tens of thousands were sickened when environmental activists convinced South American leaders to eliminate chlorine from their water supplies.

They oppose every one of these advancements, and as a result the afflictions, disease and starvation in Africa, South America and South East Asia is rampant and devastating to these poor countries. So few resources are spent of so many problems that could easily be fixed with modern agriculture techniques, modern chemistry and modern technology! Who is to answer for all of the, misery, squalor, diseases and deaths in the third world as a result of environmentalist policies?

It would seem to me that those that have supported and fought against all of the above items, including DDT, are guilty of crimes against humanity. At the very least they surely must be guilty of depraved indifference. Are these the people we are to listen to? They talk about theoretical risks while real devastation is taking place. Do they really care about the health and safety of our families or is all of the just a ploy to rid us of the tools needed to keep our society from becoming the nightmare that the third world has become.

However, I have to ask this. Let us suppose that this isn’t a ploy, and let us assume that they really do care so much about us and our families; then we have to ask, why do they hate the families of third world so badly?

Do environmentalists really believe they have created an environmental paradise in the third world with the policies they promote? If that is the case, why haven’t they moved there instead of continuing to stay in this environmental horror of well-fed comfort, economic advancement and chemical technology known as the western world? The real question we have to ask ourselves is this; who are the real killers here, pesticide manufacturers and applicators or environmental activists?

If IPM gains traction with consumers it will be because the environmental movement and their junk science allies have undermined all that we have done for the last 60 years. This will have been accomplished by consistently ignoring the actual science in preference of junk science by the activists, regulators, media, society as a whole and our own industry. We must begin to immediately recognize that any pest control concept called anything other than pest control diminishes us and what we do as an industry and is in reality an attack on our industry.

What we do is more important than some indefinable concept called IPM. In the real world of pest control we protect children, we protect homes, we protect food. We are on the front line of defense for the health and safety of the people of the world. We save lives! We are part and parcel of the public health service that stands on the wall and says; no one will harm you on my watch. What we do isn’t just a job; it is a mission, and we can’t carry out that mission that without preventative and corrective applications of pesticides.

I am not opposed to the tools and techniques that are used in so-called IPM programs because these tools and techniques are what we have preached and practiced for 150 years. The names of those tools have changed, but the tools are the same. Liquids, powders, baits, traps cleaning up debris and trash, sealing up access and harborage areas, drying up wet areas along with trapping and netting. These tools and techniques are 150 years old, and newspaper clippings going back to 1850 prove that. Just because we have added some new products such as IGR’s and some new baits doesn’t make it some kind of brand new thing called IPM. It’s still pest control.

The very idea of calling pest control anything but pest control is what I am opposed to. Words mean things and meanings have consequences. They provide the basis for ideas and concepts, including bad ones that can become pathways to unforeseen disasters. Words create ideologies. Junk science ideologies can only survive if they are fed by demagoguery. “IPM is an ideology, not a methodology.”

In summary, I object to using the term IPM, which needs to be eliminated from the lexicon of pest control terms. I object to attempting the creation of something outside of traditional pest control called something other than pest control. Something, which cannot be defined and will ultimately be used against our industry because someone says, “I don’t buy it”. I object to concept without form. I object to philosophical flavors of the day. I object to change for change sake. I object to the condescending arrogance of those caterwauling about IPM. But mostly, I object to the decisions made or influenced by the leaders and IPM harpies of our industry who then move on leaving the rest of us, and the companies we leave to our children, to live with the outcome.

Lastly, we need open and public debates regarding IPM. Let those that have views on this subject stand up against each other in a public forum and take their best shot before an audience of stakeholders. Let the manufacturers, distributors and applicators get a good look at what is presented and then finally after all has been said and done, let the industry decide if there really is a logical foundation for such a thing as IPM in structural pest control, and then decide what to do about it.  


Final thoughts to ponder.

When the leaders of the environmental movement make misanthropic comments about humanity and how the Earth is better off without mankind; why do we believe them when they say that we should adopt their policies, “because it is for the children”?

We have had the “best” and “brightest” tell us that everything we have done for 60 years is all wrong. We also have had more people live longer, healthier, happier lives than ever in human history. At the end of WWII the world’s population was about 2 billion people. Currently it is around 6.75 billion. It took thousands of years to hit 2 billion, but we have hit 6.75 in less than seventy five years. Can we assume they are wrong? Because it is clear that someone must have been doing something right!

It seems that no matter how much technology we develop to make life better; we keep hearing… and believing… that it is all making us sick. Don’t we ever ask ourselves; why so many more people are living longer healthier lives if everything modern is making us so sick?

I am convinced that the “best” and “brightest” amongst us believe that as long as they keep dumping more and more horsepucky on us that eventually we won’t notice the smell. Or worse yet; we will think that the smell is normal.

Finally; if “green” is so much better than modern civilization, why did anyone abandon it in the first place? If “green” was so good, there wouldn’t have been any pest problems; right? How then, did manufacturers convince anyone that they needed pesticides?

There is no such thing as IPM in structural pest control, and to be green is to be irrational and misanthropic. That is a view that has logical foundation.

The Pillars of IPM, Part I
The Pillars of IPM, Part II
The Pillars of IPM, Part III

###

The Pillars of IPM: Part III

By Rich Kozlovich

The pillars that hold up the structure of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in structural pest control are arrogance, deceit, deception, ideology, lies, ignorance, scare tactics and its foundation is the Precautionary Principle; the bulwark of junk science.

Why IPM?

“We all know what IPM is or; we all know what Green means. Really? The reality is that there is “no universally accepted definition of the IPM and Green phenomena in structural pest control; there is no consensus as to their range, their ideological origins, or the modalities of action which characterize them.” – Paraphrased statement by Stanley G,. Payne in the book Dictionnaire historique des fascisms et du nazisme as cited and quoted in the book Liberal Fascism

I’m told IPM is obviously necessary.

If IPM is so obviously necessary, why has the EPA spent untold thousands of dollars on grant money to promote it at the local level? If they have the science to support their views on IPM, why do they need to promote it? They certainly have the regulatory power to impose it, and it should be obvious to the most casual observer that they certainly have the desire to impose it. Why then don’t they just impose it? It is simply because they lack the science to support such an action!

The public is demanding it.

Once again, if that is the case why does it have to be promoted? At the Greater Cleveland Pest Control Association we spent a great deal of time organizing training programs that include people from outside of the pest control industry. A few years back we started a training program for the public health departments from around the state hoping for a better understanding between us that we called, the Forum on Pest Control and Public Health, and invited PCO’s and public health officials from all over the state. We started small with local county health department. The first one was almost 10 years ago now, and was intended to expand their understanding of what new techniques and tools were being used in modern pest control.

After the program was over I asked a senior member if they enjoyed the program. Her affirmative response was tempered by one objection. She said I needed to be careful about using “jargon”. Surprised by her statement I asked; what jargon? Her response; “IPM”. At that time none of the rest of them had ever heard of it. We went to the officials of local school districts informing them that there may be changes coming down from the state regulators regarding pest control. When IPM was mentioned, their response was universal. What’s IPM? If the public is demanding it, why is it that so many knowledgeable, educated, intelligent people had never heard of it and had no idea what it was supposed to be?

So why did IPM have to be promoted? That is an easy question to answer. It turned out that people weren’t demanding it after all because they never heard of it. So in order to get people to actually start demanding it, EPA had to promote it. After all, how could anyone demand it if they never heard of it?

Interestingly, many companies servicing schools in Ohio had been years in advance of the other states. In point of fact, I was working for the company that started what would be characterized as the first IPM school program in Ohio over 20 years ago. As one EPA official stated, “that was before anyone ever heard of it”.

If IPM gains traction with consumers it will be because the environmental movement and their junk scientific allies have undermined all that we have done for the last 60 years by consistently ignoring the actual science in preference to demagogic junk science.

We have a more professional image.

Baloney! The movie Arachnophobia is often thrown up as an example of how people view our industry. By Hollywood maybe, but real people that saw the movie viewed this as a caricature of who and what we are; not the substance or the reality. We are thought of as professionals when we do our jobs and get rid of their pests. Period!

IPM is more effective than traditional pest control.

One of Dr. Marc Lame’s (well know entomologist and promoter of IMP) favorite lines is; IPM is proactive while traditional pest control is reactive. What a load of horse pucky! Pest control, no matter what you call it, is now and has always be proactive and reactive, and calling it IPM doesn’t change that.

By attempting to create something called IPM for structural pest control versus traditional pest control we have created an attitude that one is different from the other. One is superior to the other. Worse yet, the impression is given that IPM’ers are good and all others are bad. Wrong! IPM is traditional pest control. We come back to the basics once again. Do we really believe that what we have been doing for the last 60 years has harmed the public? Or has the structural pest control industry been part of the finest public health program the world has ever seen through our use of pesticides?

IPM is the great divider for the pest control industry. If the idea that IPM is something other than pest control then we can easily accept the idea of eliminating pesticides. The fact is the only ones who actually have a clear understanding as to what IPM really means are the environmentalists. They know it is the best tool they have had in a long time to promote the eventual elimination of pesticides and the destruction of pesticide manufacturing and application industries.

If you have any doubt this is the goal, look to Canada, who has fallen under the sway of these people with their exaggerated and/or false claims. As a result there are whole areas of Canada where pesticides cannot be used. I would think that this would be a clarion call to our pest control companies and those in leadership positions. We appear to be deaf. Activists along with local politicians are working to eliminate preemption laws in at least five Midwestern states in order to affect the same kind of result as has taken root in Canada. Their primary tool to attain this goal is the promotion of IPM. Through training seminars for school executives and maintenance personnel along with the concerned local populace they present the same theme.

IPM is the alternative to pesticides and pesticides are killing us.

Why then are we trying to find common ground to please these people? If we accept IPM in one form they will demand more restrictions in another form. The only way that we could truly please these anti-pesticide activists was if we all collectively committed suicide.

Health concerns.

OK, what health concerns? Cancer, asthma or is it that old saw, “we don’t know the long term effects”? The rate of cancer in children has not increased. According to the book “Are Children More Vulnerable to Environmental Chemicals?” in 1938 the number deaths to childhood cancer was 939 of children under 14 in a base population of 130 million or 1 out of every 138,445. This was during the depression and I doubt if diagnostic, reporting or record keeping techniques were nearly as good as it is now. In 1998 the number was approximately 1700 in a base population of 280 million or 1 out of every 164,705.

The rate of cancer has dropped for the rest of the population also. If you were to lay out the demographic for cancer in 1900 and create a plastic overlay with the cancer demographics for the year 2000 you would find two obvious differences. In 1900 there were very few smokers and very few people who lived over 65. If you take those two demographics out of the equation you would find that the drop in cancer would be startlingly greater.

The latest information regarding asthma is the terrible effect that cockroaches have on asthmatics. Well, pesticides eliminate cockroaches which has the uncanny result of seriously reducing asthma. There has never been a scientific study that has linked pesticides and asthma. However, according to Ohio State University these are some of the asthma triggers they do know about;

“pollen, mold, animal, protein (dander, urine, oil from skin) house dust/dust mites, cockroaches and certain foods. Infections can cause irritation of the airways, nose, throat, lungs, and sinuses, and may precede an asthma attack strong odors and sprays, such as perfumes, household cleaners, cooking fumes, paints, and varnishes chemicals such as coal, chalk dust, or talcum powder air pollutants changing weather conditions, including changes in temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, and strong winds. Chemical exposure on the job, such as occupational vapors, dust, gases, or fumes. Medications, such as aspirin and sulfites, cause up to 20 percent of adult asthmatic attacks as a result of sensitivities or allergies to them. These medications often include: aspirin, other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications, such as ibuprofen, indomethacin, naproxen and sulfites used as preservatives in food and beverage.”

With this many asthma triggers how can anyone know what is the real cause of asthma? In point of fact, they don’t have a clue as to what really causes asthma.

“We don’t know the long-term effects.” Sure we do. We live longer, healthier and happier lives. I saw an Oprah Winfrey show where she and a friend went to one of those places where modern families decided to live as they did 200 or 300 years ago. Flies were swarming everywhere. Eating dinner was like living next to a garbage can in the middle of August. How much would you be willing to bet that if she actually had to live there for a month she would have paid me a million dollars for an aerosol can of fly spray; and she wouldn’t have cared what was in it.

In spite of the latest CDC and JAMA reports (whose methodology must be seriously called into question) there is no justification that we need to eliminate pesticides from the schools. This is made clear by JAMA’s authors of the report own admission that “Given both the nonspecificity of the clinical findings of pesticide poisoning and the lack of a standard diagnostic test, some illnesses temporally related to pesticide exposures may be coincidental and not caused by these exposures."

The numbers of alleged pesticides incidents (1,972 alleged injuries occurred over a five year period) only three were considered serious and only a total of 13 percent were reported by medical professionals. The rest were by family members or others who would have no way of knowing whether it was pesticides or not. This is miniscule compared to the 3.7 million children that suffer some sort of significant injury to factors other than pesticides every year in schools. Actually, about 445 times greater than the alleged rate for pesticide incidents.

These reports are unworthy of even being mentioned when weighed against the childhood deaths worldwide as a result on not using pesticides. No mention was made of the important health benefits pesticides provide to children. Benefits that are not available in most parts of the world. Places where they would love to be able to apply these life saving products. The fact is that used properly pesticides are perfectly safe.

Who decided we needed something called IPM?

The environmentalists and their allies in government along with the universities who are desperate for government grant money. The most sure fire way to get grant money is to promote IPM. There was a time when the university extension departments were filled with pesticide users, pesticide believers and some were even pesticide patent holders. That appears to have changed. They are retired and replaced with those that have become infused with the “litany” of the environmental movement. Grant money and environmental indoctrination has made many of them true believers. It would be interesting to see how the universities would react if the only grant money available was for the purpose of proving that IPM doesn’t exist. They would do an about face so fast you would swear that they were the color guard in a military parade.

I’m told we can't challenge those in academia. They are educated, intelligent and have done the research! They display an obvious attitude of; "We know best so don’t question us!"  Isn’t that the Dan Rather defense?

Make no mistake about it; those who promote IPM in our industry diminish us with an arrogant self-righteous attitude; looking down on anyone that disagrees with them. They, like the environmentalists, have become a bunch of “self perpetuating head nodders ” that sit and discuss what is right for the industry in an “echo chamber of self congratulations”.

Where is the evidence that we need to seriously alter what we have been doing? Where are the serious health problems? Where is the devastation of wild life that would make this an automatic? I’m not talking about fanciful opinions. Opinions are not facts. If we accept the term IPM as part of the lexicon of pest control terms then this must eventually replace the term “pest control” and we have to accept the idea that what we have been doing for the last 60 plus years has been detrimental to humanity and has devastated wildlife. Do we really believe that? Why do we so readily accept this nonsense?

We accept it as an industry because we are uninformed, ill informed and complacent! For an industry that is so heavily involved with science we are terribly unaware of much of what we need to know. Dr. John Ray, PHD in psychology, former university sociology teacher made the following observation. “If the many past mistakes and follies of science were better known, people would be much less likely to accept uncritically the pronouncements about environmental matters coming from scientists.”

If anyone has any doubt, I recommend you read the following books.

1. Are Children More Vulnerable to Environmental Chemicals? (American
Council on Science and Health)
2. Eco-Imperialism, Green Power Black Death, by Paul Driessen
3. Junk Science Judo by Steven Milloy, Junk Science.com
4. The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg, a former environmental activist who has turned against the environmental movement.
5. Facts Versus Fears (American Council on Science and Health)
6. America's War on Carcinogens: Reassessing the Use of Animal Tests to
Predict Human Cancer Risk. (American Council on Science and Health)

The Pillars of IPM, Part I
The Pillars of IPM, Part II
The Pillars of IPM, Part IV

###

The Pillars of IPM: Part II

By Rich Kozlovich

The pillars that hold up the structure of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in structural pest control are arrogance, deceit, deception, ideology, lies, ignorance, scare tactics and its foundation is the Precautionary Principle; the bulwark of junk science.

What is IPM?

What actually is Integrated Pest Management? That is a constant bone of contention in the structural pest control industry, the universities and the anti-pesticide movement.

IPM started out as an agricultural concept which was first outlined in an obscure agricultural magazine called Hilgardia in 1959. In agriculture there is no problem defining IPM. They knew they couldn’t eradicate all of the pests in fields no matter how many times the fields were treated. Therefore, instead of over spraying and only getting marginally better results; which didn’t justify the added costs; it was decided to develop threshold limits that would apply before making pesticide applications. Therefore the logical foundation for IPM is based on threshold limits. A certain about of pests do a certain amount of damage. Once the threshold for damage occurs it will become economically practical to apply pesticides. That is a simple, logical, and scientific foundation for IPM in agriculture, which I am told isn’t really practiced in agriculture because of the cost of determining what the threshold limit actually is.

The way it works is this. Fields are divided into grids; so you measure down so many feet and shake off all the bugs into a container and then count them. Then you repeat this process over and over again. Usually it is some poor graduate student who is doing this hot, sweaty, rotten job. To have real workers doing it is expensive throughout a growing season. That is the logical foundation for the whole concept in agriculture; threshold limits based on economics.

Let me say this unequivocally, emphatically and absolutely. There is no logical or scientific foundation for such thing as IPM in structural pest control. What is the threshold limit for brown recluse spiders in someone’s home? Is it 10, 20 or maybe it is 100? I would be willing to bet the owner thinks it is zero. In the 1960’s a minor government bureaucrat (in an attempt to categorize what we do) applied the term IPM to the structural pest control industry and it stuck. Based on the definitions by various government agencies it basically states that the applicator has the right to use his judgment as to what to use and when. If that really is the case, then who has the right to determine what constitutes IPM otherwise?

IPM as the greenies would have it is an ethereal concept that is indefinable, or if you prefer, it is unendingly definable and re-definable according to your point of view, ideology or by just whimsically saying, “I don’t buy it” therefore it isn’t IPM. They advocate such mystical concepts as “least toxic”. What constitutes “least toxic”?

If I use the most efficacious product and only have to do it one time, would that be considered least toxic, versus another product that may be considered less toxic except that it might have to be used two, three, four or even ten times?  Which would be "least toxic", and to whom or what? Who decides that?

Since they also want pesticides to be used as a last resort, I have to ask. In the meanwhile what should be done? Should I have to use less effective measures? And if I do, for how long should I continue failing my customers? Who’s going to pay for it? What about the customers needs and wants? Shouldn't they have the most effective treatment available for the health and saftey of their families or employees? If I have to make unnecessary trips to document that these pre-pesticide methods aren’t working, why should the customer have to pay extra unncessary charges in order for some activists to feel good about themselves? If I already know that a pesticide is what I am ultimately going to have to use to rid a property of vermin, why should that be my last choice?  I will address the issues about health concerns later.

In reality the problem with the definitions wanted by the greenies is similar to their “nebulous” definition of the Precautionary Principle. This makes the practical applications of it nebulous. This in turn allows for arbitrary and capricious charges of misapplication, which is exactly what they want. But because of pressure from the EPA many states have had to create their own definitions, therefore establishing that idea that IPM is real in our industry. No matter the science, if the state says it exists, it exists and must be dealt with.

I had the privilege of being a part of that activity in Ohio, but make no mistake about this; IPM does not exist in structural pest control. It exists only because the government says it exists. Why? Why do they insist on the existence of something that has no simple, clear, logical or scientific foundation? I will address that later.

For a long time I kept hearing the phrase, “We need to get ahead of this and define it ourselves! “ Baloney! Our goal should not have been to help define IPM in structural pest control; we should have worked unendingly to remove this agricultural term from the lexicon of structural pest control industry terms. To accept IPM as a valid structural pest control term is saying that there is a valid procedure that is something different, better, safer and more enlightened than traditional pest control. There is no way of getting ahead of this Trojan horse, and IPM is the Trojan horse of the pest control industry.

You will remember that it was the Trojan’s, not the Greeks who dragged that horse into Troy to their destruction. That account may be mythical, but we are facing the reality of our industry dragging IPM into the pest control community. What will the result be?

IPM is an ideology, not a methodology, but before we further explore all the aspects of IPM we need to define what pest control is. Pest control isn’t a methodology either; it is a practice, much like medicine.

In medicine the doctor (practitioner) examines the patient. In pest control the technician (practitioner) inspects the property. In medicine the practitioner makes a diagnosis. In pest control the practitioner identifies the pest. In medicine the practitioner determines the treatment the will give the quickest most efficacious relief possible. In pest control the practitioner determines the treatment that will give the quickest most efficacious relief possible. In medicine the practitioner outlines a program of preventative health care. In pest control the practitioner outlines a program of preventative applications.

Here is the rub. Does the doctor go through a list of techniques or products before he prescribes the one that will work the best? NO! Does the doctor start his treatment process by “bleeding” his patients first before moving on to more effective methods? NO! Yet those promoting IPM continue to demand that a whole host of hoops be jumped through before a pesticide application is made, insisting that pesticides are to be used only as a last resort. Even the EPA doesn't officially define IPM in that fashion. Are we to first resort to old techniques that became passé when pesticides were developed? If those techniques were so great; why did they abandon them for modern pest control?

Why should an experienced practitioner have to follow a circuitous plan from people who will do anything or say anything to eliminate pesticides? People who aren’t practitioners of pest control and aren’t responsible for the outcome? Do we really believe that the activists and their acolytes in government know how to treat a structure better than those in pest control? Do we really believe that all the theoretical health claims made by these people are true? Do we believe that everything we have been doing for over sixty years has been wrong?

What chemicals and techniques used in our industry constitute IPM? All of them! What happens when the baits stop working? The bulb dusters, the mechanical aerosols, aerosol cans, and liquid pesticides all start coming out of the truck. Those are all IPM tools . The techniques for their use are all IPM techniques also. I also find it interesting that the number one and two products sold in this country are liquid pesticides. Someone out there is spraying something! Are we getting the message? IPM is pest control and needs no other term to define it, unless there are hidden goals that are leading to something else by those with hidden agendas. 

Let’s try to keep this in mind.  Every concept, every scientific advancement, every social issue, every economic activity has to have some logical foundation to justify its existence or it fails because without a logical foundation it can't grow into something that bears fruit.   If there is no logical base for a concept, it doesn’t exist.  There is no such logical foundation for IPM in structural pest control!   Part III will soon follow!

The Pillars of IPM, Part I
The Pillars of IPM, Part III
The Pillars of IPM, Part IV
###

The Pillars of IPM, Part I

By Rich Kozlovich

The pillars that hold up the structure of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in structural pest control are arrogance, deceit, deception, ideology, lies, ignorance, bullying scare tactics and its foundation is the Precautionary Principle; the latest bulwark of junk science.

The Precautionary Principle, which is outlined in this manner; “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically”, places a demand on industry that is simply irrational. Commonly known as the “better safe than sorry” principle it imposed this value; “If you can’t prove its safe you can’t use it.” Who could be against that? So then what is so irrational about it?

A Precautionary principle sounds logical on the surface, but the reality is this:  “The alternative fringe has embraced a trendy catchphrase: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." It's cute, it sounds impressively philosophical, and, technically, it actually is true. But it can be deceptive, misinterpreted, and misused. The alternative fringe, which interprets lack of evidence as positive support, in effect expands the slogan to mean: "Absence of evidence is evidence of presence." And the peddler of homeopathic nostrums (water imagined to contain a healing "magnetic resonance" of substances that were diluted in it) has it thus: "Absence of presence is evidence of evidence."

“But, as a practical matter, is it really true that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence? And is the slogan useful in critical scientific thinking? The slogan simply reminds us that we cannot prove a negative, that we can never be 100% sure of anything.”

(Editors note: If you follow the link you will see the article, “Absence of Evidence – Evidence of Absence?”, by Dr. Marvin J. Schissel. I highly recommend reading both of the comments. I believe they are as enlightening to the reader as to what constitutes real science as the article)

When you aren’t sure if something might cause harm, be careful and don’t do anything that could be dangerous, especially to anything really important like human lives, the environment and so on. It also seems like it would not be a new or revolutionary concept. However, the Precautionary Principle is really a lot more extreme and a lot less common sense than one might think.  

"Safety advocates who say that we shouldn't take chances, but should ban things that might be unsafe, don't seem to understand that if we banned every food to which somebody had an allergy we could all starve to death. -Thomas Sowell

The problem is the practical definitions of what do you accept as “proof” of safety and what constitutes ‘safe’. This makes the practical applications of it nebulous. This allowed for Arbitrary and Capricious decisions by European Union courts, “demonstrating that the precautionary principle has been inconsistently applied in at least 60 court decisions. By failing to provide a consistent application of the precautionary principle, it has generally been applied in an unreasonable and often unpredictable manner. ‘The principle can only remain politically viable while it remains nebulous.” That is its strength and its danger. That is the strength of the greenies demand for IPM and the very real danger of accepting IPM as a valid concept for structural pest control.

First of all, in science, nothing is safe because at some level everything will reach an unacceptable risk level. That automatically creates a paradox for any practical application of a product and a potential for nebulous judicial rulings, which is what occurred in Europe.

Secondly, demanding that you have to prove it is safe in order to use a product is scientifically and physically impossible. It is called proving a negative; and the greenies know it! It’s like asking someone if they are cheating on their wife, and when they say “no” you say, “I don’t believe you, prove it”. You can’t prove someone isn’t cheating, you can only prove someone is cheating. The same principle applies to products, you can only prove what things do, not what they don’t do.

At best the Precautionary Principle is circular reasoning, i.e. don’t do anything because something bad might happen. Well then, what do we do when bad things happen because we did nothing? Surely that should be part of the equation! Unfortunately, the greenies never apply it that way and would be outraged if that became applicable. The Precautionary Principle as the greenies would apply it would forever prevent any progress in science whatsoever. Application of this principle would forever end all of the practical benefits from scientific research, including health benefits. After all, we know that pharmaceuticals have side effects, sometimes very serious side effects, and we absolutely know that electricity isn’t safe. Edison could have never electrified the world if the Precautionary Principle had been in effect during that time.

In fact, the word safe can be used and misused in so many ways that it would become almost indefinable under the principles outlined in the Precautionary Principle. If it were up to these people we would still be using candles to light our homes, at least until someone noted that soot emanated from the candles and then demand that candles be banned also.  The Precautionary Principle is one of the great scams of our time and will eventually die of its own weight, but who knows what damage the greenies will have wrought before that happens.

To understand why I say these things it is necessary to lay some groundwork and go back to days of yesteryear in the pest control industry. Although pest control has a long history, the beginnings of modern pest control are traceable back to the 1850’s, however it never really took off, or was all that effective, until the advent of DDT. DDT was considered “the” silver bullet and was credited with saving the lives of hundreds of millions of people. That changed with Silent Spring.

Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring first appeared as installments in the New Yorker magazine vilifying DDT, and had never been peer reviewed before being published. Two years later she died from breast cancer, not living to see real scientists using real science shred her information. Everything she predicted about DDT was wrong and a great deal of what she presented as evidence was equally wrong and in at least one case she knowingly misrepresented the facts. Although she never called for the ban on DDT; from her work banning DDT was the only rational conclusion you could draw; provided you believed her.

It is unfortunate that the Precautionary Principle was never applied when it came to the DDT ban. Since 1972 the number of unnecessary cases of malaria totaled over 13 billion, with up to 100 million (this number varies from 30 million to 100 million depending on who you read, but even at 30 million it is certainly an argument for genocide and should fill decent people with righteous indignity) of them dying, mostly children. Many of the surviving children suffer permanent brain damage. This doesn’t count the other unnecessary diseases, afflictions and vermin people in the third world have to tolerate because of the ban, along with the long term economic and social impact on those societies. While it is true that the ban on DDT has never been legally universal, the economic pressure that first world countries put on third world countries made it a de facto ban for all but a few.

In February of 1970 then President Nixon stated in a speech that he had taken steps to eliminate DDT. He then formed EPA in December of that same year, nine months after his original declaration. Seemingly, with his marching orders in place, the first director of EPA William Ruckelshaus, an environmental activist, banned DDT in December of 1972 in spite of the fact that a federal magistrate ruled that there was no evidence to support claims against DDT, overturning any and all rulings that preceded his.

Ruckelshaus admitted two years later that the decision was based on political considerations, not science. EPA has been a virtual lava flow of scientifically dubious regulations ever since. The fact of the matter is that almost everything everyone “knows” about DDT is a lie. Ever since that very successful effort by the environmentalists the pattern has been the same.

Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D. notes that there are seven steps to this process and usually follow this pattern:

1. Create a "scientific" study that predicts a public health disaster
2. Release the study to the media, before scientists can review it
3. Generate an intense emotional public reaction
4. Develop a government-enforced solution
5. Intimidate Congress into passing it into law
6. Coerce manufacturers to stop making the product
7. Bully users to replace it, or obliterate it

The book, “Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival? — A Scientific Detective Story” based on work out of Tulane University implicated pesticides and other chemicals as endocrine disruptors. EPA pesticide chief Lynn Goldman under then director of EPA Carol Browner stated; "I was astounded by the findings…..I just can't remember a time where I've seen data so persuasive … The results are very clean looking."

This information had not yet been peer reviewed and when it was it was, no one could duplicate the results. Tulane eventually pulled the study and later it was found that someone had not been entirely honest with the data. It turned out to be another fraudulent study that was a conclusion in search of data. Furthermore, and I find this probably the most distressing part of this saga, unless the Food Quality Protection Act has recently been changed endocrine disruption regulations continue to be a part of FQPA with this study playing a direct part in that regulation. Once this kind of fraud becomes ensconced in regulations it remains an unnecessary unrelenting drain on society.

I think this lays enough groundwork to start discussing important points and ask the appropriate questions.

The Pillars of IPM, Part II
The Pillars of IPM, Part III
The Pillars of IPM, Part IV

You may wish to peruse these articles;

The Paralyzing Precautionary Principle
Precautionary Principle: Possibly the Biggest Sham of Out Time
Going in Circles, Precautionary Style
Precautionary Principle Raises Blood Pressure

You may also wish to view these pro-Precautionary Principle articles in order to test your critical thinking capabilities.

Answering Critiques of Precaution, Part 1
Answering the Critics of Precaution, Part 2



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