In my seventy five years of life and forty years in the pest control industry I’ve seen a lot of changes. Some positive, and unfortunately, many very negative. Changes that were 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, and even phone calls from all over the country, 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, and I think it's fair to ask if the pest control industry is any different?
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, especially with their embrace of "green" pest control, and IPM. I find this especially true with those holding advanced degrees in our industry.
The NPMA supported School Environmental Protection Act. Ohio refused, and at Legislative Day told our Senators and Representatives we were not in harmony with NPMA on this. John Boehner was one of them.
Perhaps I missed it, but as far as I can tell they've been silent on repealing the Food Quality Protection Act, and some even claimed it was a good law. However, when looking at the history of the FQPA, that was understandable at the start. But time is the great leveler of truth.
This originally was a law that was intended to be a pro-pesticide bill, and stop the foolishness over the 1958 Amendment of the of the 1937 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act known as the Delaney Clause. An amendment that unscientifically declared if something tested carcinogenic at any level, it was carcinogenic at every level. But the EPA turned this into one of the most corrupt anti-pesiticde law since the EPA banned DDT. As a result, we lost Ficam and Dursban, (carmabates and organophosphates) because of EPA's irrational and radical changes regarding risk and unending testing. More here. Then there was the demands regarding endocrine distuptors.
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.
It has seemed to me that over the decades the NPMA has far too willingly embraced a philosophy of appeasement with the neo-pagan secular psuedo-religous movements of the left.
Then there was the Butterfield Bill, as I outlined in my aritlcle, The Butterfield Bill: Activity as a Substitute for Accomplishment, Part II, which NPMA wanted us all to support. Why? I read it, and was outlined what was wrong with it. I was told I needed to see the positive aspects of that bill. I asked - what were they? I didn't get an answer.
Well, it didn't pass, and if it had, it wouldn't have done anything to relieve the plague of bed bugs in America. If passed it would have been an expensive waste, and an ineffectual imposition on our industry and the public. In short, more government, less results. And we were supporting this why?
Why? That’s the question I keep asking, and I don't get satisfactory answers.
In the early years of the modern green movement - started largely with the 1962 publication 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.
Now that whole narrative has been shown to be blatantly false, so what did they do? Now the big ones are endocrine disruption (and here), Colony Collapse Disorder, and the junk science surrounding the Sixth Mass Extinction. All of which have been proven false by time and real science.
When the federal government banned DDT industry rose up as one to defend it, and it was the same for chlordane. Then came the Food Quality Protection Act and which brought about 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 it’s still used as an agriculture product under the brand name Lorsban. But since we now know how deceitful the EPA has been with it's Secret Science on Dursban. Why aren't we demanding Dursban's return?
The makers of Ficam W (bendiocarb), which I understand 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 – CAN stand up to be counted, and fight the good fight. why CAN'T the NPMA?
A fight the entire industry should have been fighting and should still be fighting. But nothing happened. Quietly as church mice, passive as sheep and as rational as lemmings, NPMA did nothing useful to maintain our ability to use pyrethroids as we've been doing for decades. Oh, I can hear the screams now about how much NPMA did, but the proof is in the pudding. We have unreasonable restrictions.
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 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, while the lawns, fields and shrubs can be covered with pyrethroids by the lawn care and agricultural industries.
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 here in the United States? Or more specifically California.
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; with one study claiming 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, so where did that come from? Agriculture! Until recently there was no real effort to eliminate it for agricultural purposes, but the Scott Pruitt, President Trump's first director put a stop to that saying they were going to follow the science. While that's still being litigated, the important fact is this: The chemical companies fought to keep it for agriculture. Why not structural pest control? Why hasn't NPMA been more strident on these matters?
But the real questions that need answering are these:
- NPMA seems to have a penchant for embracing leftist narratives on pesticides and junk science. Why?
- Now our national association is deciding if it's going to get involved in "diversity" issues. Why?
The structural pest control industry has nothing to be ashamed of. We've accepted people from every walk of life in our industry, regardless of race, religion, sex and even sexual orientation. In Ohio, in the 1960's one of the founders and first President of what's now the Greater Cleveland Pest Control Association was Bob Caldwell, and is a past President of the Ohio Pest Management Association. He's black. In the 1960's Ohio was either the first or among the first to choose a woman for it's state association President, Betty Portwood, and our current President is Molly Patton Marsh. John Patton's daughter.
Betty has now passed and was in her 90's, and Bob is still running his company, and both were respected and treated accordingly by our industry forever.
- What are NPMA's priorities?
- Why has the NPMA decided to get involved in social engineering?
- Is that their job?
- Where in the NPMA constitution does it outline that as a duty?
- If that became their job, when was that decided, and by whom?
- Does that mean we can start posting about social issues on the NPMA Open Forum now?
In the past anyone doing so would have their posts deleted, and even then, we were subject to unpublished and unknown standards for acceptance, even if the posts or comments met the posted criteria for acceptable posts. I've been there, so I know it's true. Just like EPA had secret science, it would appear, the NPMA had, and possibly still has, secret standards for posting on the Open Forum regarding topic, and who was posting. But either way, we still have to come back to the main questions.
- Why is the NPMA getting publicly involved with Social Justice issues?
- What is their agenda, and why?
- If the NPMA can be so public about social issues that have no bearing on pest control, how can they restrict anyone else from doing so?
- Is that blatant hypocrisy!
I think those are important questions because they've clearly gone in directions that are not part of the real reason they came into existence, which used to be to fight for the structural pest control industry against all adversaries and enemies, in and out of government.
- What is their agenda now?
- What are their priorities?
- Who articulated such an agenda and priorities and why?
- Do we need to redefine and rewrite the NPMA constitution and bylaws?
Make no mistake about this:
"If there is ever a contest for words that substitute for thought, “diversity”
should be recognized as the undisputed world champion. You don’t need a
speck of evidence, or a single step of logic, when you rhapsodize about
the supposed benefits of diversity. The very idea of testing this wonderful, magical word against something as ugly as reality seems almost sordid." Thomas Sowell
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