Modern Pest Control

Many people in the pest control industry are good, honest people. There are others who are in the wrong line of work. The pesticide industry is a lot like the pharmaceutical industry. Money comes first, public health and safety are in the background. For instance, spraying baseboards around a home on a regular basis is something many companies still do even though it has no value whatsoever, except to kill time in a customer’s house. I asked my service manager when I started in the business 45 years ago why we sprayed baseboards and that is what he told me. Other companies like to power spray pesticides around your home and call that pest control. It isn’t. It is pesticide pollution and destroys the environment. First, the pesticide doesn’t last very long, which is good, but while it is there it kills a lot of bugs, most of them not pests. Then birds will eat the dead bugs and die, but since nobody checks the dead birds, the pesticide industry will deny this. The pesticides also kill a lot of beneficial insects as well. One lady called me and said that the company sprayed around her home and she found six dead praying mantids, but not a single dead cockroach. Again, this is a gimmick to make it look like the company is doing something. What makes it worse, some companies will spray around the outside of homes in the winter. That is patently ridiculous and if you have a company doing that, tell them to take the winter off. The bad part is that this kind of spraying is legal as the pesticide label permits it. Most of the label focuses on applying pesticides to crack, crevices and voids where pests hide, which is proper. They also allow for spraying baseboards and around the house, which has no function except for the company to use and buy a lot more pesticides. It is all about money, not public safety or environment well being.

The problem with the pesticide industry is that a large number of pest control operators (PCOs) are poorly trained and not well regulated. Many of them are not familiar with the label or Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) of the chemical they are applying.

If a PCO tells you the pesticide he is spraying is perfectly “safe”, you may have a problem. It would be a federal violation to make that kind of statement. If he says it is so safe you can drink it, offer him a glass! If the PCO is spraying your baseboards with a pesticide, it means he doesn’t know what he is doing and you need to be concerned. If you see a pest control truck on the street and it has hand sprayers and other small equipment loose in the back so anyone can grab it, stay away from that company. If they haven’t got enough sense to lock up their equipment, they are in the wrong business.

The pest contro companies could save a lot of money by doing pest management properly and they could charge a lot less money, but the stockholders in Bayer, Dow, Syngenta and the other pesticide suppliers wouldn’t like it.

Here is what you need to do when hiring a pest control company. First, make sure they can properly identify the pest you have when they inspect your home. If they are true professionals, they will know the scientific name of the pest and give it to you so you can Google it for more information. If the representative that comes to your home or business doesn’t recognize your pest and offers to treat your home anyway, do not let him. If they offer to take the bug back to their office for identification, that is fine. Also ask to see their Applicator or Operator’s License of anyone who comes to your home.

A professional pest management specialist will inspect your home or business, identify any pests and offer to treat the infested areas safely and effectively. Most companies want to make regularly scheduled visits to your home. That is okay as long as they just don’t spray pesticides inside and outside your home and call it pest control as I mentioned. They should come to your home or business periodically and inspect for pests, for conditions conducive to pests and for possible entrance ways for pests to come inside. If you have a crawl space under your home, they should go under your house and look for leaks or areas where pests can get into the main portion of your home. They should carefully inspect around the outside and look for wasp nests or other potentially dangerous pests near your home or business. They should even check any spider webs attached to your home to see if swarming termites are in the web. Pesticides should only be applied if there is a pest present that requires it. In the winter, they can inspect your house as they normally do and then also offer suggestions on how to pest-proof your home or business. Maybe install door sweeps, fix holes around plumbing and even trim branches from trees that are touching your home. This is IPM (Intelligent Pest Management).

Many companies and certainly all the larger ones have a clause in their contract that prohibits you from suing them. The clause reads something like this:: “Any dispute arising out of or relating to this agreement or the services performed under this agreement or tort based on claims for personal or bodily injury or damage to real or personal property shall be finally resolved by arbitration administered under the commercial arbitration rules of the American Arbitration Association.” In 1995, the U. S. Supreme Court established that mandatory arbitration clauses could be used in contracts between companies and consumers. Since that time, the clause has been widely used by the pest control industry. One of the problems, and there are several, is that it is not free. It could cost the consumer up to $2,000 up front in order to start the arbitration process. Very few people have that kind of cash lying around. If you are asked to sign a contract with a pest control firm, look for that clause. If it is present, you can cross it out and ask the company representative to initial it. If they refuse, don’t sign the contract. There are plenty of pest control operators who do not require contracts to conduct their business. They don’t want you to find out how useless their generic spraying is and cancel the service.

If you do hire a company, ask them to give you a copy of the label and the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) of any pesticides they use. Read the label and MSDS carefully. Choose your pest management professional carefully. Use the same criteria you would use in choosing a doctor or any other professional.

I got a letter with some bugs in it from a lady in Alto, NM. She said she had the local exterminator out four times at a cost of over $1000 to control them and she still had them. He said they were the larvae of some sort of flying beetle. The specimens she sent were actually duff millipedes, a completely harmless little millipede that will shortly die of dehydration once it enters the home. No pesticides were necessary to control it. In fact this fellow tried every pesticide in his truck and failed to control it because he didn’t know what it was. The only thing he succeeded in eradicating was the lady’s bank account.

There was another instance where one of the major companies treated a home several times for carpet beetles, without success. Actually they mistook duff millipedes for carpet beetle larvae. The misidentification of pests is common in this industry and the results can be devastating in the money spent and the pesticides incorrectly used.

Then there was the fellow who went out to a house and identified the pest as fleas and did a flea job, which consisted of spraying the carpets and furniture and fogging the house. He did it three times and was unsuccessful each time in controlling the bugs. The customer called another company who properly identified the pests as harmless springtails that did not need control. Fortunately, the owners of this house were attorneys and they sued the first guy out of business.

During the outbreak of false chinch bugs in New Mexico a couple of years ago, the pest control companies’ phones were ringing off the hook. One lady called one of the largest pest control companies in the country. A salesman went out, identified the pest as Johnson beetles feeding on her Johnson grass and wanted $450 to control them. She called me to confirm the diagnosis. Of course it was wrong as there is no such thing as Johnson beetles and very few people have Johnson grass growing in their yard. She had false chinch bugs which required no control at all.

There was the case of a pest control company spraying a home for carpenter ants several times because he said he found carpenter ant poop on the floor. The “poop” didn’t go away with the spray. Actually they were very small beetles that feed on mold and were present because the homeowner had a plumbing leak that caused some mold. The exterminator couldn’t tell a beetle from ant poop.

In another case, a woman called because she had weird worms in her house, particularly on the kitchen floor. The pest control operator came out, identified them as boll weevils, said they would get in the closet and eat her clothes, so she needed the whole house fumigated. The lady was skeptical and got another opinion. It turns out they were blow fly maggots falling from the ceiling where a dead animal was being consumed. Now the question is; is the PCO a crook scamming this lady or was he just so stupid and uninformed that he really believed his diagnosis? In either case, that is Scary.

In a similar case a man was told he had codling moths in his clothes closet. Since codling moths only eat apples, that would only be possible if he had an apple tree in the closet. The customer was smarter than the PCO and didn’t let him treat the house.

There was a pest control company power spraying around a school in Chama, NM, when children were standing close by waiting for a bus. One kid got sick and passed out and was rushed to a hospital. He survived, but the company was correctly sued. This company is still in business and has their office in Santa Fe.

Recently I was in an office building when a fellow came down the hall spraying the baseboards, while talking on his cell phone. I stopped him and asked him what he was using. He said he was sorry but he couldn’t pronounce the name of the pesticide and then he continued spraying.

There are basically three degrees of professionalism in the industry. There are the “antiquated” companies, who still go in homes and spray baseboards even though they have no idea what kind of pest the customer has or even if they have a pest. Mostly it is old-timers who still do this and it will eventually disappear. In the antiquated companies in the industry, all they know is they kill roaches and ants. One supervisor told me many years ago that there were only two kinds of ants, inside ants and outside ants! He was the service manager! That company didn’t do well over the years. Other antiquated companies recognize sugar ants, grease ants and piss ants.

The next level of professionalism is the “mediocre” group of companies. They all have the same habits and follow the same routines, regardless of how unprofessional it may be. This is usually a result of lack of training. The folks start companies and develop their methods based on what they did in previous companies they worked for, even if those methods are no long viable. While this may work for many customers and is easy to do, it still puts them behind the true “Professionals”, who take this industry very seriously. Professionalism at the highest degree should be the mission of every company, but it is not even close.

The most common level of knowledge is represented in the mediocre companies around the country. They use common names for insects that make no sense. They refer to “crazy” ants. Why are they crazy? Have they been to an insect psychiatrist? They are called crazy ants because they run around in circles. Lots of ants do that. My kids did that. It is a ridiculous name. “Acrobat” ants do not swing from chandeliers in the customer’s house and pavement ants don’t live exclusively under pavement. I have never sniffed an “odorous” house ant, so don’t know if they smell funny, but I am told they do. I have never met a customer with an ant problem who has squished and sniffed their ants. Of the 48 species of “field” ants that live in NM, only two of them actually live in fields! We have “carpet” beetles in homes without carpets. It goes on and on. Every company should strive to reach the upper level of competency and achieve true professionalism in the industry when it comes to technical knowledge and use the scientific names of the pests.

The antiquated companies will treat the baseboards of their customer’s homes. Period. The mediocre companies will spray pesticides inside and out in a general manner, and will spray pesticides in the dead of winter when bugs aren’t active. This is, of course, for show only, except all they are showing is their lack of technical knowledge.

The true professionals will only use crack and crevice materials in a building, or baits like Niban which works very well. They will treat around the outside using a pin-stream application so they can get the pesticide in cracks and crevices where potential pests hide. They will put Niban bait in water meters as they always have roaches. They will check spider webs they see for signs of swarming termites. In the winter, when there is no pest activity, they will inspect the house and offer to seal any cracks in the foundation, repair any vents, cut back any tree branches touching the roof and other things that can help prevent bugs from entering the house when spring comes around. This makes far more sense than spraying pesticides when the ground is frozen! Some so-called professionals will say Niban doesn’t work. Actually it works very well, but since it is made from boric acid and available to the public, they don’t want to use it as they think the customer may decide to do it themselves.