Is There a Boom Or Bust Coming For Natural Pest Control?
The world is going green. "Green" could be your color of environmental stress, the impetus that compels cuttingedge technology, the buzz word of this socially conscious. Concern for the natural environment and man's impact on it's bringing a slew of new services and products to advertise pest control isn't any exception. Environmentally-friendly pest control solutions are growing in popularity, particularly in the industrial industry. Even eco-savvy residential individuals are requesting about natural alternatives to pesticides that are traditional, but their ardor usually cools when faced by the 10 percent to 20% cost differential and more extended treatment times, sometimes a few weeks.
The raising of America's environmental awareness, coupled with increasingly stringent federal regulations regulating conventional chemical pesticides, appears to be changing the pest control industry's focus to Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques. IPM is regarded as merely safer for your environment, yet safer for people, pets and secondary scavengers such as owls. Of 378 pest control companies surveyed in 2008 by Pest Control Technology magazine, two-thirds said that they offered IPM professional services of some sort.
Rather than jelqing pest websites with a noxious cocktail of insecticides intended to kill,'' IPM is targeted on environmentally-friendly prevention techniques developed to maintain pests out. While non - or - no-toxicity products may also be used to encourage pests to pack their bags, control and removal efforts revolve around finding and eliminating the causes of infestation: entrance points, attractants, harborage and food.
Particularly popular with schools and assisted living facilities charged with protecting the fitness of the nation's youngest and oldest citizens, those at highest risk from poisonous compounds, IPM is catching the interest of hotels, office buildings, apartment complexes and other commercial ventures, as well as low-income residential clients. Founded in equivalent parts by environmental concerns and health hazard fears, curiosity about IPM is attracting a lot of fresh environmentally friendly pest management services and products -- both high- and low-tech -- to market.
"most likely the most effective product out there is a door sweep," confided Tom Green, president of the Integrated Pest Management Institute of North America, a non-profit company that prides green exterminating businesses. In an Associated Press interview posted on MSNBC online last April, Green clarified,"A mouse could squeeze through a gap the size of a pen diameter. Therefore, in my explanation have obtained a quarter-inch gap underneath your doorway, so far as a mouse is more concerned, there isn't any door there whatsoever." Cock Roaches can slither through a oneeighth inch crevice.
IPM is"an improved way to pest control for the health of your house, the surroundings and the family," explained Cindy Mannes,'' spokeswoman for the National Pest Management Association, the 6.3 billion pest control industry's own trade association, at the exact same Associated Press story. But because visit this page is a relatively recent addition to the pest control arsenal, Mannes cautioned that there is very little industry consensus on this is of green services.
IPM prefers mechanical, physical and cultural procedures to control pests, but might use bio-pesticides produced from naturally occurring materials such as animals, plants, bacteria and certain minerals.
The others, like trained dogs that snore bed bugs, seem decidedly lowtech, but employ advanced methods to achieve success. By way of example, farmers used dogs' sensitive noses to sniff out pests for centuries; however, training dogs to sniff out explosives and drugs is a rather recent progress. Employing those very same practices to show dogs to sniff out termites and bed bugs is known as cutting edge.
Yet another brand new pest control procedure is contraceptive. After bay area was threatened with mosquitoes carrying potentially lifethreatening West Nile Virus, bicycle messengers were hired to cruise the town and shed packets of biological insecticide in to the city's 20,000 storm drains. Akind of birth control for mosquitoes, the newest method was considered safer compared to aerial spraying with the compound pyrethrum, the normal mosquito abatement procedure, as per a recent report published on the National Public Radio site.
Of course , there are efforts to construct a better mousetrap. The innovative Track & Trap system attracts mice or rats to your food station dusted with powder. Rodents render a blacklight-visible course which allows pest control experts to seal entry paths. Coming soon, night watch uses pheromone research to trap and lure bed bugs. In England, a sonic apparatus designed to repel rodents and rats is being tested, as well as the aptly named Rat Zapper is supposed to deliver a lethal jolt using just two AA batteries.
Alongside this influx of new environmentally friendly products rides a posse of regulations. Critics of contemporary EPA regulations restricting the sale of certain pest-killing chemicals accuse the government of limiting a homeowner's power to safeguard his property. Even the EPA's 2004 banning of this chemical diazinon for household use a couple of years past removed a potent ant-killer from the homeowner's pest control arsenal. Similarly, 2008 EPA regulations prohibiting the sale of small quantities of effective rodenticides, unless sold inside an enclosed snare, has stripped rodent-killing compounds from the shelves of hardware and diy stores, limiting the homeowner's capacity to secure his family and property from such disease-carrying pests.
Acting for the public well, the authorities pesticide-control activities are specially geared toward protecting children. In More Bonuses with a May 20, 2008 report on CNN online, a study conducted by the American Association of Poison Control Centers signaled that the rat poison was responsible for nearly 60,000 poisonings between 2001 and 2003, 250 of them resulting in serious injuries or death. National Wildlife Service examining in California found rodenticide residue in every animal analyzed.
Consumers are embracing the idea of natural pest control and environmentally friendly, cutting off pest control products and processes. Availability and government regulations are limiting consumers' self-treatment choices, forcing them to show to pest control businesses for relief out of pest invasions. While this has proved a viable alternative for industrial customers, few residential customers seem willing to pay high costs for newer, more more labor intensive green pest control products and even fewer are prepared to wait the further week or two it could take these products to work. It's taking leadership efforts on the part of pest control organizations to teach consumers from the long term benefits of green and organic pest treatments.
Despite the fact that the cold, hard truth is that if people have a problem with pests they want it gone and so they need it gone today! If rats or mice have been inside their house destroying their property and endangering their family disease, if termites or carpenter ants are eating their home equity, even in case roaches are threatening their toilet or if they are sharing their bed with bed bugs, consumer interest in environmental surroundings plummets. When people call a pest control company, the main point is that they need the fleas dead! Now! Pest control firms have been standing facing the tide of consumer requirement for prompt eradication by enhancing their green and natural pest control product offerings. These brand new natural products take the most responsible long term strategy to pest control; the one that protects the environment, children, and our personal health. Sometimes it's alone moving from the tide of popular demand, but true leadership, in the pest control industry, means embracing these new natural technologies when they are not popular with the user - nonetheless.