By Rich Kozlovich (Originally published in 2011. RK)
For those who have asked; I know that most people split the word bed and bug to come up with bed bug….however, I find that the dictionary allows for both….and I like this spelling; bedbug, get over it!
Renee Corea has been in the forefront of New York City’s battle against bedbugs and is part of their Bed Bug Task Force. I first became aware of her web site, New York vs Bed Bugs ,some months back when she highlighted two articles I did on the subject in her post of May 24, 2009, called, Blaming EPA is not the answer either.
She went on to say, “I have been wanting to write about this for a while but the most credible public proponent of the idea that the great bed bug debacle of the 21st century is all EPA’s fault was Rich Kozlovich who has written two passionate posts on this subject, Bedbug Summit: Activity As A Substitute For Accomplishment and The Butterfield Bill: Activity as a Substitute for Accomplishment, Part II,but writing about Kozlovich’s views seemed daunting because he has already divided the pest control industry into Chamberlains and Quislings and, well, what do you do with that, engage, laugh? For someone on the outside, even selective engagement would be acquiescing to the futility and politicizing."
I thought it worthwhile to respond by saying, “I have just become aware of your site and I will put you in my favorites. Having said that I would like to add my views to this posting. I would also like to correct one of your statements in that I have already divided the pest control industry into Chamberlains and Quislings. Actually I have divided the pest control industry into Chamberlains, Quislings and Churchills. Every organization is divided in this manner; appeasers, traitors or defenders.”
She responded, “Hi Rich, thank you for your comment. I will have more thoughts I expect but I just wanted to say for now that I believe that EPA is showing leadership now. Whether it is late or not, it is necessary as the situation is indeed dire, and I want to hang on to the hope that they will be able to do just that, lead. As for IPM, it’s too complex and politicized a debate for me to engage. I will have to write for an explanation of the Kilgore comment, however. It’s been hard to smile this week and your pointing out my Churchill omission did the trick, so thanks for that.”
We have corresponded ever since. I have yet to find a site that follows this issue any better and she has taken great efforts to trace the history of bedbugs and their control. I would like to recommend the site to everyone. You will have to go back some way to get it all, but the trip is worth it!
Recent articles on her site are worth exploring as she writes, “I was moved by this post: Bedbugs: A Modern-Day Leprosy. Seriously. – Bart Campolo – God’s Politics Blog (Cincinnati)”, which clearly outlines the problem with all of these so-called solutions that are being touted and promoted, whether it is IPM (whatever that really means, after all, we must remember that Phantom is now IPM, so I don’t know why Dursban can’t be IPM!) or heat treatments, freezing treatments or fumigation. Whether they work or not isn’t the issue; they are out of reach financially to the vast majority of the population of the U.S.; and if that is true, and it is, where does that leave the rest of the world? If the least of us cannot rid themselves of this plague, we will never be rid of them again.
An article that was highlighted involved an interview with Ron Harrison, Entomologist, Ph.D., is director of technical services for Orkin, Inc., which was informative but meaningless as far as outlining the real answer; inexpensive efficacious chemistry that is available to everyone!
And there was a posting regarding “Bed Bug Central is coordinating charitable bed bug treatments for the holidays. Details of the program and how to apply here:” Good heartedness, compassion and kindness are not to be eschewed, but what about tomorrow and the day after that and the months and years that follow? It is the same problem and the same real answer; inexpensive efficacious chemistry that is available to everyone! I say this over and over again because it is true.
Although the history of this event doesn’t correspond to this issue, Cato’s words ring in my ears; Carthago delenda est! -- Carthage must be destroyed, because it clearly shows that you must stand for something and say so….often…..if anything is to be accomplished.
Showing posts with label Bed bugs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bed bugs. Show all posts
Sunday, March 17, 2019
The American Dream Didn’t Include Bed Bugs. Part I: The Problem
By Rich Kozlovich (Originally published in 2011 RK.)
In recent months the bed bug issue has reached headline proportions on the national scene. National television news networks have featured the story, magazines have highlighted the problem nationally and newspapers have focused on local infestations that seem to be out of control and growing. It is almost like one of those overnight movie star sensations who won an award only to find out that he has been in the entertainment business for fifteen years. We, the pest control industry, have known this day was coming for some time, and in point of fact I know one old timer who ominously stated over ten years ago that bed bugs would be back.
After 1994 the Congress made an attempt to fix the Delaney Act, which amended the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 (FFDCA). The Delaney Clause states that nothing can be used if "it is found to induce cancer when ingested by man or animal, or if it is found, after tests which are appropriate for the evaluation of the safety of food additives, to induce cancer in man or animal". But because it was so extremely complicated and convoluted (made mores so by a court case Les v. Reilly) it was implemented in such a way that it basically declared that if something was carcinogenic at any level it was carcinogenic at every level and nothing that tested carcinogenic could be used in any food additives in processed food.
Since Delaney required zero risk versus negligible risk the whole thing became so perverse that Delaney would forbid the EPA from registering new pesticides that were perceived safer if they tested carcinogenic. This was known as the Delaney Paradox. This clearly had created a regulatory nightmare based on a law that had no basis in real science. Because of this the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued a statement in 1987 outlining four principles that pesticide law should meet
1. All pesticides should be regulated on the basis of a consistent standard, so that there is no "double standard" for raw vs. processed foods or for old vs. new pesticides. The NAS found no public health reasons for treating residues on raw or processed foods differently.
2. A uniform "negligible risk" rather than a "zero risk" standard for carcinogens in food, consistently applied, would best enable EPA to improve the overall safety of the food supply, and would result in only modest reductions in the benefits of pesticide use to farmers.
3. EPA should set its regulatory priorities by focusing first on the most worrisome pesticides used on the most-consumed crops.
4. The Agency should adopt a comprehensive analytical framework for forecasting the broad-scale impact of its pesticide-specific regulatory actions on the overall safety of the food supply.
This clearly seems to be more than reasonable and justified. Unfortunately the fix ended up being as bad as the problem. Possibly worse because the EPA was being forced by lawsuits to enforce Delaney to its fullest extent, and if that had occurred we might have gotten rid of it entirely, instead we ended up replacing it with another compromise now based on risk assumptions.
The FQPA changed the rules regarding the 100 fold safety factor tied up in pesticides by a potential factor of ten, ratcheting up the safety factor from 100 to a potential of 1000. (This explanation is a “really” shortened and simplified version of this subject. Please go to Frank B. Cross’s extremely well done and lengthy examination of this subject in the article, “THE CONSEQUENCES OF CONSENSUS: DANGEROUS COMPROMISES OF THE FOOD QUALITY PROTECTION ACT”)
At this point I think it worthwhile to explore this issue of carcinogenic testing. The EPA bases it judgment on rodent testing. Make no mistake about this; a mouse isn’t a little man and using rodents that are genetically predisposed to growing tumors for testing and then exposing them massive doses of anything to make that determination isn’t the best science as required under the Information Quality Act.
In 2005 the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) (As a point of disclosure: I am member of ASCH) petitioned the EPA to “Stop declaring chemicals carcinogens based on rodent tests alone”. ACSH noted that the law permits EPA “to adopt policies that err on the side of caution when faced with genuinely equivocal evidence regarding a substance's carcinogenicity, but the IQA does not permit EPA to distort the scientific evidence in furtherance of such policies.”
The petition argues that EPA ”distorts scientific evidence through its Guidelines' use of "default options," its purported right -- based not on scientific evidence but its regulatory mission to protect human health -- to assume that tumors in lab rodents indicate that much smaller doses can cause cancer in humans. Erring on the "safe side" in regulatory decisions does not, argues the petition, permit EPA to falsely claim that such regulated substances truly are "likely to be carcinogenic to humans." To do so, argues ACSH, is a distortion of both science and law. “
Finally after months of delays the EPA formally responded saying “that their Risk Assessment Guidelines are not statements of scientific fact -- and thus not covered by the IQA -- but merely statements of EPA policy.” My question was then and is now. If EPA policies aren’t based on scientific fact, what are they based on?
In 1950 the legal limit for DDT was seven parts per million. Why? Because they couldn’t test below that; so anything below seven parts per million was zero. As the years went by we have learned how to detect substances at parts per billion, then parts per trillion, then parts per quadrillion and parts per…well…even higher numbers that I can’t recite. At some point we will be able to detect everything in anything. But should that matter? No! At some point the molecular load will be so small that cells will not respond to it. Under Delaney that wouldn’t matter. It was later discovered, mostly through the efforts of Dr. Bruce Ames, that the number of naturally occurring carcinogens was shockingly high. Take for an example the traditional Thanksgiving dinner menu which is filled with carcinogens.
So the goal to fix Delaney was a worthy one, but devastating as it was replaced by the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) in August of 1996 by Congress and the Clinton EPA under Carol Browner. This amended FFDCA and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and rodenticide Act which the structural pest control industry also falls under. This ended up being one of the most significant environmental and public health bills passed since the Nixon administration, and most of the Congress didn’t really understand what this was going to mean.
As a result of FQPA we lost (in the U.S.) whole categories of pesticides that had been used for years safely and effectively here and around the world.
Along with all else, the EPA requires pesticides to be re-registered after fifteen years. That means more unnecessary and expensive testing. It costs around $300,000,000 to bring a new pesticide to market. Manufacturers want to make sure that re-registration is worth it to them before they spend millions of dollars more on re-testing. Further testing for what you might ask? Who knows, because after a product has been on the open market for fifteen years you absolutely know what, if any, hazards it represents to humanity or to nature. Most importantly after fifteen years these products have probably gone out of patent. That means there is less value to the primary registrant, and if that is the case, there was no value incentive for the manufacturer to spend millions of dollars more to retest. They then simply pull their registration “voluntarily”.
This is just another way the EPA has found to eliminate pesticides without banning them, which can be a messy process; a process in which they would probably lose. When you ban something you have to show reasons for the ban. You have to have facts, figures and….most importantly….real science. If there is none the product stays. They have avoided all of that through their system of rules which can make it a de facto ban without any messy legal stuff.
Organophosphates, such as Dursban absolutely kill bed bugs; on contact and as well as a residual. But in 1996 the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) was passed and that changed all the rules. This national policy under the EPA to create uniform regulations with the stated goal to reduce the use of pesticides based on assumed risks cannot occur without compromising the health of the nation. This national bed bug plague is one of those issues, and the tip of the iceberg. Make no mistake about this; if bed bugs were transmitters of disease such as malaria, yellow fever, encephalitis or West Nile virus we wouldn’t be having this national conversation.
I did have a thought that crossed my mind. I wonder if the decline in bed bugs and the decline in leprosy in western countries ran concurrently. Perhaps that could be an interesting area of study.
In recent months the bed bug issue has reached headline proportions on the national scene. National television news networks have featured the story, magazines have highlighted the problem nationally and newspapers have focused on local infestations that seem to be out of control and growing. It is almost like one of those overnight movie star sensations who won an award only to find out that he has been in the entertainment business for fifteen years. We, the pest control industry, have known this day was coming for some time, and in point of fact I know one old timer who ominously stated over ten years ago that bed bugs would be back.
After 1994 the Congress made an attempt to fix the Delaney Act, which amended the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 (FFDCA). The Delaney Clause states that nothing can be used if "it is found to induce cancer when ingested by man or animal, or if it is found, after tests which are appropriate for the evaluation of the safety of food additives, to induce cancer in man or animal". But because it was so extremely complicated and convoluted (made mores so by a court case Les v. Reilly) it was implemented in such a way that it basically declared that if something was carcinogenic at any level it was carcinogenic at every level and nothing that tested carcinogenic could be used in any food additives in processed food.
Since Delaney required zero risk versus negligible risk the whole thing became so perverse that Delaney would forbid the EPA from registering new pesticides that were perceived safer if they tested carcinogenic. This was known as the Delaney Paradox. This clearly had created a regulatory nightmare based on a law that had no basis in real science. Because of this the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued a statement in 1987 outlining four principles that pesticide law should meet
1. All pesticides should be regulated on the basis of a consistent standard, so that there is no "double standard" for raw vs. processed foods or for old vs. new pesticides. The NAS found no public health reasons for treating residues on raw or processed foods differently.
2. A uniform "negligible risk" rather than a "zero risk" standard for carcinogens in food, consistently applied, would best enable EPA to improve the overall safety of the food supply, and would result in only modest reductions in the benefits of pesticide use to farmers.
3. EPA should set its regulatory priorities by focusing first on the most worrisome pesticides used on the most-consumed crops.
4. The Agency should adopt a comprehensive analytical framework for forecasting the broad-scale impact of its pesticide-specific regulatory actions on the overall safety of the food supply.
This clearly seems to be more than reasonable and justified. Unfortunately the fix ended up being as bad as the problem. Possibly worse because the EPA was being forced by lawsuits to enforce Delaney to its fullest extent, and if that had occurred we might have gotten rid of it entirely, instead we ended up replacing it with another compromise now based on risk assumptions.
The FQPA changed the rules regarding the 100 fold safety factor tied up in pesticides by a potential factor of ten, ratcheting up the safety factor from 100 to a potential of 1000. (This explanation is a “really” shortened and simplified version of this subject. Please go to Frank B. Cross’s extremely well done and lengthy examination of this subject in the article, “THE CONSEQUENCES OF CONSENSUS: DANGEROUS COMPROMISES OF THE FOOD QUALITY PROTECTION ACT”)
At this point I think it worthwhile to explore this issue of carcinogenic testing. The EPA bases it judgment on rodent testing. Make no mistake about this; a mouse isn’t a little man and using rodents that are genetically predisposed to growing tumors for testing and then exposing them massive doses of anything to make that determination isn’t the best science as required under the Information Quality Act.
In 2005 the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) (As a point of disclosure: I am member of ASCH) petitioned the EPA to “Stop declaring chemicals carcinogens based on rodent tests alone”. ACSH noted that the law permits EPA “to adopt policies that err on the side of caution when faced with genuinely equivocal evidence regarding a substance's carcinogenicity, but the IQA does not permit EPA to distort the scientific evidence in furtherance of such policies.”
The petition argues that EPA ”distorts scientific evidence through its Guidelines' use of "default options," its purported right -- based not on scientific evidence but its regulatory mission to protect human health -- to assume that tumors in lab rodents indicate that much smaller doses can cause cancer in humans. Erring on the "safe side" in regulatory decisions does not, argues the petition, permit EPA to falsely claim that such regulated substances truly are "likely to be carcinogenic to humans." To do so, argues ACSH, is a distortion of both science and law. “
Finally after months of delays the EPA formally responded saying “that their Risk Assessment Guidelines are not statements of scientific fact -- and thus not covered by the IQA -- but merely statements of EPA policy.” My question was then and is now. If EPA policies aren’t based on scientific fact, what are they based on?
In 1950 the legal limit for DDT was seven parts per million. Why? Because they couldn’t test below that; so anything below seven parts per million was zero. As the years went by we have learned how to detect substances at parts per billion, then parts per trillion, then parts per quadrillion and parts per…well…even higher numbers that I can’t recite. At some point we will be able to detect everything in anything. But should that matter? No! At some point the molecular load will be so small that cells will not respond to it. Under Delaney that wouldn’t matter. It was later discovered, mostly through the efforts of Dr. Bruce Ames, that the number of naturally occurring carcinogens was shockingly high. Take for an example the traditional Thanksgiving dinner menu which is filled with carcinogens.
So the goal to fix Delaney was a worthy one, but devastating as it was replaced by the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) in August of 1996 by Congress and the Clinton EPA under Carol Browner. This amended FFDCA and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and rodenticide Act which the structural pest control industry also falls under. This ended up being one of the most significant environmental and public health bills passed since the Nixon administration, and most of the Congress didn’t really understand what this was going to mean.
As a result of FQPA we lost (in the U.S.) whole categories of pesticides that had been used for years safely and effectively here and around the world.
Along with all else, the EPA requires pesticides to be re-registered after fifteen years. That means more unnecessary and expensive testing. It costs around $300,000,000 to bring a new pesticide to market. Manufacturers want to make sure that re-registration is worth it to them before they spend millions of dollars more on re-testing. Further testing for what you might ask? Who knows, because after a product has been on the open market for fifteen years you absolutely know what, if any, hazards it represents to humanity or to nature. Most importantly after fifteen years these products have probably gone out of patent. That means there is less value to the primary registrant, and if that is the case, there was no value incentive for the manufacturer to spend millions of dollars more to retest. They then simply pull their registration “voluntarily”.
This is just another way the EPA has found to eliminate pesticides without banning them, which can be a messy process; a process in which they would probably lose. When you ban something you have to show reasons for the ban. You have to have facts, figures and….most importantly….real science. If there is none the product stays. They have avoided all of that through their system of rules which can make it a de facto ban without any messy legal stuff.
Organophosphates, such as Dursban absolutely kill bed bugs; on contact and as well as a residual. But in 1996 the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) was passed and that changed all the rules. This national policy under the EPA to create uniform regulations with the stated goal to reduce the use of pesticides based on assumed risks cannot occur without compromising the health of the nation. This national bed bug plague is one of those issues, and the tip of the iceberg. Make no mistake about this; if bed bugs were transmitters of disease such as malaria, yellow fever, encephalitis or West Nile virus we wouldn’t be having this national conversation.
I did have a thought that crossed my mind. I wonder if the decline in bed bugs and the decline in leprosy in western countries ran concurrently. Perhaps that could be an interesting area of study.
Monday, February 25, 2019
Roasted Bedbugs and Old Memories
By Harry Katz
While my short term memory today is bad, I can still recall the acrid smell of roasting bedbugs in bedsprings with a candle when I was a youngster in the 1920’s. Candling bedsprings was what my mom learned when she lived in Russia at the turn of the century. We also put bottle caps filled with an oil of some type under the bed legs.
Many years later, in the 1940’s, when I was an exterminator (no “pest controllers” or “pest management” people then), bedbugs were endemic with the general public. The bugs were picked up in cloak rooms at school, at work, in theater seats, streetcar seats, etc, etc. Pyrethrum sprays, oil based, were available--no residuals, no EPA.
While treating a housing development, I once found a bedbug that was twice the normal size. I gave it to my friend Arnold Mallis in his Gulf Oil lab at nearby Harmarville, PA, who sent it to his friend Dr. L.Usinger in CA. Sure enough it was a bedbug based on the chromosomal pattern. Dr. Usinger wrote asking for more specimens. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any more so apparently I did too good of a job and as a result I potentially missed out on having a strain of bedbugs named after me. See Mallis’ Handbook on Pest Control, 7th Edition, p324.
Before the BC (Before Carson) Era, mostly oil based DDT and pyrethrum sprays were marketed in stores for bedbugs. Pest controllers, however, used a variety of toxicants. NPCA recommended 2% malathion for DDT resistant bedbugs. Others recommended diazinon, lindane,, methoxychlor, thanite, even deldrin. All cautioned not to spray the mattress. I used lindane at 0.1% with pyrethrums to kill the DDT resistant bedbugs. I got best control by using the dust made by mixing two desiccants, silica aerogel with diatomaceous earth. The DE tamed down the fluffy silica aerogel. I don’t know if the labels would permit this today, but this was permitted then. I sprinkled three tablespoons of the dust on the mattress, and lifted the sheet to distribute the dust. This is an excellent residual to control the emerging nymphs from the eggs laid in the mattress tufts. Heat from the body speeds the hatching time. I used the DDT spray in baseboards, wall crevices, perimeter, bed stands, furniture near the bed. (Never on the mattresses or sofas.)
If propoxur aerosol was available now for bedbugs, as it is available for other crawling insects, we would indeed have an excellent addition to our arsenal to control the bedbug, but not on mattresses or sofas. By today’s standards, our industry practices in the early days were primitive. I vividly recall ads with “Confidential Service” in phone books. Some talked about ‘secret formulas’. One promoted his barium carbonate rat bait as a virus. Some PCOs deliberately left streaks of sodium fluoride on the basement walls, and a smelly pesticide to prove that they did something, otherwise they would not get paid.
In the 50’s, several men died when they ate bread at a Salvation Army free food shelter in Pittsburgh, PA. The baker mistook white sodium fluoride for a bread ingredient. That is when the first law regulating pesticides was passed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture: sodium fluoride products had to be colored blue. I recall one old timer brought me an insect to identify. It was a subterranean termite. Another old timer became bald when he inhaled fumes from a solution of thallium sulphate that he was cooking with bait for rats. These excesses ended to a large extent because of Rachel Carson’s epic book, Silent Spring, which was a major motivating force behind the creation of the modern environmental movement, and caused the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency which promulgated regulations that were necessary to place controls on the sale and use of toxicants.
We truly grew as an industry and I believe that requiring companies to be tested and licensed brought this about. However, we have to remember that the first licensing was not introduced into the pest control industry by the EPA. Testing and licensing was first introduced into pest control in cities like Cleveland, Ohio by the pest control industry itself, years before the EPA.
In her book, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson described how a Penn State Researcher lost the sight of one eye while experimenting with the first batch of chlordane (1068) that was produced. She neglected to mention that the offending contaminant had been removed from the chlordane before it was marketed.
I also recall my friend Carroll Weil telling me that he was appointed to Congress’ MRAK Commission to investigate demands to outlaw DDT. Carroll was President of the Toxicological Society of America and a Fellow at the prestigious Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh, PA. He found that the data which the Committee used was badly flawed. The mice that they used for testing were specially bred to develop tumors . Even a benign tumor is reason to cancel a registration of a pesticide with the USDA. Carroll argued with the anti DDT members until late in the night. Finally, they said they would publish an addendum, and he capitulated, making it unanimous. Because the United States cancelled DDT registration, it was not available anywhere. Millions of natives in Third World countries died from malaria because they were not able to spray a few ounces of DDT solution on inside of their huts. Rachel Carson wrote the book to save the lives of many people from deadly toxicants. An unintended consequence was the death of millions to malaria.
At a hearing before an EPA appointed Judge to determine the future of DDT registration, after hearing lengthy talks by top scientists for many days, the Judge ruled that there was not sufficient reason to cancel the registration. Despite this, the head of the EPA, Ruckelshaus, ruled that DDT was in fact a carcinogen, overruling his own Administrative Law Judge.
This originally appeared in the May Issue of the Ohio Pest Management's quarterly newsletter, The Standard. RK
.
While my short term memory today is bad, I can still recall the acrid smell of roasting bedbugs in bedsprings with a candle when I was a youngster in the 1920’s. Candling bedsprings was what my mom learned when she lived in Russia at the turn of the century. We also put bottle caps filled with an oil of some type under the bed legs.
Many years later, in the 1940’s, when I was an exterminator (no “pest controllers” or “pest management” people then), bedbugs were endemic with the general public. The bugs were picked up in cloak rooms at school, at work, in theater seats, streetcar seats, etc, etc. Pyrethrum sprays, oil based, were available--no residuals, no EPA.
While treating a housing development, I once found a bedbug that was twice the normal size. I gave it to my friend Arnold Mallis in his Gulf Oil lab at nearby Harmarville, PA, who sent it to his friend Dr. L.Usinger in CA. Sure enough it was a bedbug based on the chromosomal pattern. Dr. Usinger wrote asking for more specimens. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any more so apparently I did too good of a job and as a result I potentially missed out on having a strain of bedbugs named after me. See Mallis’ Handbook on Pest Control, 7th Edition, p324.
Before the BC (Before Carson) Era, mostly oil based DDT and pyrethrum sprays were marketed in stores for bedbugs. Pest controllers, however, used a variety of toxicants. NPCA recommended 2% malathion for DDT resistant bedbugs. Others recommended diazinon, lindane,, methoxychlor, thanite, even deldrin. All cautioned not to spray the mattress. I used lindane at 0.1% with pyrethrums to kill the DDT resistant bedbugs. I got best control by using the dust made by mixing two desiccants, silica aerogel with diatomaceous earth. The DE tamed down the fluffy silica aerogel. I don’t know if the labels would permit this today, but this was permitted then. I sprinkled three tablespoons of the dust on the mattress, and lifted the sheet to distribute the dust. This is an excellent residual to control the emerging nymphs from the eggs laid in the mattress tufts. Heat from the body speeds the hatching time. I used the DDT spray in baseboards, wall crevices, perimeter, bed stands, furniture near the bed. (Never on the mattresses or sofas.)
If propoxur aerosol was available now for bedbugs, as it is available for other crawling insects, we would indeed have an excellent addition to our arsenal to control the bedbug, but not on mattresses or sofas. By today’s standards, our industry practices in the early days were primitive. I vividly recall ads with “Confidential Service” in phone books. Some talked about ‘secret formulas’. One promoted his barium carbonate rat bait as a virus. Some PCOs deliberately left streaks of sodium fluoride on the basement walls, and a smelly pesticide to prove that they did something, otherwise they would not get paid.
In the 50’s, several men died when they ate bread at a Salvation Army free food shelter in Pittsburgh, PA. The baker mistook white sodium fluoride for a bread ingredient. That is when the first law regulating pesticides was passed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture: sodium fluoride products had to be colored blue. I recall one old timer brought me an insect to identify. It was a subterranean termite. Another old timer became bald when he inhaled fumes from a solution of thallium sulphate that he was cooking with bait for rats. These excesses ended to a large extent because of Rachel Carson’s epic book, Silent Spring, which was a major motivating force behind the creation of the modern environmental movement, and caused the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency which promulgated regulations that were necessary to place controls on the sale and use of toxicants.
We truly grew as an industry and I believe that requiring companies to be tested and licensed brought this about. However, we have to remember that the first licensing was not introduced into the pest control industry by the EPA. Testing and licensing was first introduced into pest control in cities like Cleveland, Ohio by the pest control industry itself, years before the EPA.
In her book, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson described how a Penn State Researcher lost the sight of one eye while experimenting with the first batch of chlordane (1068) that was produced. She neglected to mention that the offending contaminant had been removed from the chlordane before it was marketed.
I also recall my friend Carroll Weil telling me that he was appointed to Congress’ MRAK Commission to investigate demands to outlaw DDT. Carroll was President of the Toxicological Society of America and a Fellow at the prestigious Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh, PA. He found that the data which the Committee used was badly flawed. The mice that they used for testing were specially bred to develop tumors . Even a benign tumor is reason to cancel a registration of a pesticide with the USDA. Carroll argued with the anti DDT members until late in the night. Finally, they said they would publish an addendum, and he capitulated, making it unanimous. Because the United States cancelled DDT registration, it was not available anywhere. Millions of natives in Third World countries died from malaria because they were not able to spray a few ounces of DDT solution on inside of their huts. Rachel Carson wrote the book to save the lives of many people from deadly toxicants. An unintended consequence was the death of millions to malaria.
At a hearing before an EPA appointed Judge to determine the future of DDT registration, after hearing lengthy talks by top scientists for many days, the Judge ruled that there was not sufficient reason to cancel the registration. Despite this, the head of the EPA, Ruckelshaus, ruled that DDT was in fact a carcinogen, overruling his own Administrative Law Judge.
This originally appeared in the May Issue of the Ohio Pest Management's quarterly newsletter, The Standard. RK
.
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Crisis! New York Style vs. the Real Thing
Paul Driessen
I would like to thank Mr. Driessen for allowing me to re-publish his work. This origianlly appeared here. Mr. Driessen is the author or Eco-Imperialism, Green Power, Black Death. This is the apex of “green books” if you really want to know what the green movement is all about. It is a small paper back that is easy to read and doesn’t take a great deal of time. If you read this and your aren’t outraged then you have no heart. If there was any better book that outlines how many people have died and suffered as a result of greenie activities I don’t know what it is. Anyone and everyone who is involved in pesticides, whether at the manufacturing, distribution or application levels NEEDS to read this book! Any honest hearted person who is concerned about the environment, humanity and factual science needs to read this book. This is my selection as the best read Purchased through Eco-Imperialism web site. Originally published in 2011. RK
“Don’t let the bedbugs bite” is no longer a fashionable good-night wish for Big Apple kids, even in the city’s high-rent districts and posh hotels. Growing infestations of the ravenous bloodsuckers have New Yorkers annoyed, anguished, angry about officialdom’s inadequate responses, and “itching” for answers.
Instead, their Bedbug Advisory Board recommends a bedbug team and educational website. Residents, it advises, should monitor and report infestations. Use blowdryers to flush out (maybe 5% of) the bugs, then sweep them into a plastic bag and dispose properly. Throw away (thousands of dollars worth of) infested clothing, bedding, carpeting and furniture.
Hire (expensive) professionals who (may) have insecticides that (may) eradicate the pests – and hope you don’t get scammed. Don’t use “risky” pesticides yourself. Follow guideline for donating potentially infested furnishings, and be wary of bedbug risks from donated furniture and mattresses.
New Yorkers want real solutions, including affordable insecticides that work. Fear and loathing, from decades of chemophobic indoctrination, are slowly giving way to a healthy renewed recognition that the risk of not using chemicals can be greater than the risk of using them (carefully). Eco-myths are being replaced with more informed discussions about alleged effects of DDT and other pesticides on humans and wildlife.
Thankfully, bedbugs have not been linked to disease – except sometimes severe emotional distress associated with obstinate infestations, incessant itching, and pathetic “proactive” advice, rules and “solutions” right out of Saturday Night Live.
It is hellish for people who must live with bedbugs, and can't afford professional eradication like what Hilton Hotels or Mayor Bloomberg might hire. But imagine what it’s like for two billion people who live 24/7/365 with insects that definitely are responsible for disease: malarial mosquitoes.
Malaria infects over 300 million people annually. For weeks or months on end, it renders them unable to work, attend school or care for their families – and far more susceptible to death from tuberculosis, dysentery, HIV/AIDS, malnutrition and other diseases that still stalk their impoverished lands.
This vicious disease causes low birth weights in babies and leaves millions permanently brain-damaged. It kills over a million annually, most of them children and mothers, the vast majority of them in Africa. It drains families’ meager savings, and magnifies and perpetuates the region’s endemic poverty.
Emotional distress? Imagine the stress that comes from having no escape from destitution and disease; having to support a child with a perpetual ten-year-old’s mental functions; burying your baby, wife or sibling; or wondering whether you can walk twenty miles to a clinic, before the child you are carrying dies, and whether the clinic will have (non-counterfeit) medicine to cure her.
Frustration over absurd bedbug “solutions”? Imagine the reaction Africans must have to “malaria no more” campaigns that claim they will (eventually) eradicate the disease solely with insecticide-treated bed nets, drugs, “capacity building,” education and (maybe someday) mosquitoes genetically engineered not to carry malaria parasites. As to insecticide spraying, and especially DDT – fuggetaboutit.
DDT is the most powerful, effective, long-lasting mosquito repellant ever invented. Spraying the eaves and inside walls of mud huts and cinderblock homes every six months keeps 80% of the flying killers from entering. It irritates most that do enter, so they leave without biting, and kills any that land. However, many aid agencies refuse to encourage, endorse or fund spraying.
Many don’t even want to monitor mosquito and malaria outbreaks, or determine actual success in reducing disease and death rates. That would be more difficult and expensive than counting the number of bed nets distributed, and underscore the embarrassing reality that their “comprehensive” (and politically correct) insecticide-free programs achieve only 20-40% reductions in morbidity and mortality. By contrast, as South Africa and other countries have demonstrated, adding insecticides and DDT can bring 95% success.
We would never consider 20-40% fewer deaths a “success” for American children. Why should Africa?
Since EPA banned DDT in 1972 – after the United States and Europe had eradicated malaria – billions have been stricken by the vicious diseases, and tens of millions have died. That is intolerable.
We need adult supervision and informed debate on pesticide policies, laws and regulations. We can no longer leave those decisions to unaccountable anti-chemical activists in pressure groups and government agencies. These zealots are making decisions that determine the quality of life for millions of Americans, especially poor families – and life itself for billions of malaria-threatened people worldwide.
If not for the economic and mental health of Americans afflicted by bedbugs – support responsible, ethical policies for Africa’s sick, brain-damaged, and dying parents and children.
Comments will not be accepted that are rude, crude, stupid or smarmy. Nor will I allow ad hominem attacks or comments from anyone who is "Anonymous”, even if they are positive!
I would like to thank Mr. Driessen for allowing me to re-publish his work. This origianlly appeared here. Mr. Driessen is the author or Eco-Imperialism, Green Power, Black Death. This is the apex of “green books” if you really want to know what the green movement is all about. It is a small paper back that is easy to read and doesn’t take a great deal of time. If you read this and your aren’t outraged then you have no heart. If there was any better book that outlines how many people have died and suffered as a result of greenie activities I don’t know what it is. Anyone and everyone who is involved in pesticides, whether at the manufacturing, distribution or application levels NEEDS to read this book! Any honest hearted person who is concerned about the environment, humanity and factual science needs to read this book. This is my selection as the best read Purchased through Eco-Imperialism web site. Originally published in 2011. RK
“Don’t let the bedbugs bite” is no longer a fashionable good-night wish for Big Apple kids, even in the city’s high-rent districts and posh hotels. Growing infestations of the ravenous bloodsuckers have New Yorkers annoyed, anguished, angry about officialdom’s inadequate responses, and “itching” for answers.
Instead, their Bedbug Advisory Board recommends a bedbug team and educational website. Residents, it advises, should monitor and report infestations. Use blowdryers to flush out (maybe 5% of) the bugs, then sweep them into a plastic bag and dispose properly. Throw away (thousands of dollars worth of) infested clothing, bedding, carpeting and furniture.
Hire (expensive) professionals who (may) have insecticides that (may) eradicate the pests – and hope you don’t get scammed. Don’t use “risky” pesticides yourself. Follow guideline for donating potentially infested furnishings, and be wary of bedbug risks from donated furniture and mattresses.
New Yorkers want real solutions, including affordable insecticides that work. Fear and loathing, from decades of chemophobic indoctrination, are slowly giving way to a healthy renewed recognition that the risk of not using chemicals can be greater than the risk of using them (carefully). Eco-myths are being replaced with more informed discussions about alleged effects of DDT and other pesticides on humans and wildlife.
Thankfully, bedbugs have not been linked to disease – except sometimes severe emotional distress associated with obstinate infestations, incessant itching, and pathetic “proactive” advice, rules and “solutions” right out of Saturday Night Live.
It is hellish for people who must live with bedbugs, and can't afford professional eradication like what Hilton Hotels or Mayor Bloomberg might hire. But imagine what it’s like for two billion people who live 24/7/365 with insects that definitely are responsible for disease: malarial mosquitoes.
Malaria infects over 300 million people annually. For weeks or months on end, it renders them unable to work, attend school or care for their families – and far more susceptible to death from tuberculosis, dysentery, HIV/AIDS, malnutrition and other diseases that still stalk their impoverished lands.
This vicious disease causes low birth weights in babies and leaves millions permanently brain-damaged. It kills over a million annually, most of them children and mothers, the vast majority of them in Africa. It drains families’ meager savings, and magnifies and perpetuates the region’s endemic poverty.
Emotional distress? Imagine the stress that comes from having no escape from destitution and disease; having to support a child with a perpetual ten-year-old’s mental functions; burying your baby, wife or sibling; or wondering whether you can walk twenty miles to a clinic, before the child you are carrying dies, and whether the clinic will have (non-counterfeit) medicine to cure her.
Frustration over absurd bedbug “solutions”? Imagine the reaction Africans must have to “malaria no more” campaigns that claim they will (eventually) eradicate the disease solely with insecticide-treated bed nets, drugs, “capacity building,” education and (maybe someday) mosquitoes genetically engineered not to carry malaria parasites. As to insecticide spraying, and especially DDT – fuggetaboutit.
DDT is the most powerful, effective, long-lasting mosquito repellant ever invented. Spraying the eaves and inside walls of mud huts and cinderblock homes every six months keeps 80% of the flying killers from entering. It irritates most that do enter, so they leave without biting, and kills any that land. However, many aid agencies refuse to encourage, endorse or fund spraying.
Many don’t even want to monitor mosquito and malaria outbreaks, or determine actual success in reducing disease and death rates. That would be more difficult and expensive than counting the number of bed nets distributed, and underscore the embarrassing reality that their “comprehensive” (and politically correct) insecticide-free programs achieve only 20-40% reductions in morbidity and mortality. By contrast, as South Africa and other countries have demonstrated, adding insecticides and DDT can bring 95% success.
We would never consider 20-40% fewer deaths a “success” for American children. Why should Africa?
Since EPA banned DDT in 1972 – after the United States and Europe had eradicated malaria – billions have been stricken by the vicious diseases, and tens of millions have died. That is intolerable.
We need adult supervision and informed debate on pesticide policies, laws and regulations. We can no longer leave those decisions to unaccountable anti-chemical activists in pressure groups and government agencies. These zealots are making decisions that determine the quality of life for millions of Americans, especially poor families – and life itself for billions of malaria-threatened people worldwide.
If not for the economic and mental health of Americans afflicted by bedbugs – support responsible, ethical policies for Africa’s sick, brain-damaged, and dying parents and children.
Comments will not be accepted that are rude, crude, stupid or smarmy. Nor will I allow ad hominem attacks or comments from anyone who is "Anonymous”, even if they are positive!
A Needless, Nationwide Bed Bug Epidemic
Editor's Note: My Friend Alan Caruba who has passed allowed me to publish his work. This appeared in 2011, and I think it's like most of Alan's work - it has a sense of timelessness about it.
Enjoy!
By Alan Caruba
There really is no mystery to solving the nationwide bed bug epidemic. In 1946 the solution was DDT. Today the solution could still be DDT if it hadn’t been banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in the 1970s and, since then, any number of other beneficial pesticides.
I know something about this because, as a public relations counselor I have worked with pesticide manufacturers in the past and elements of the pest control industry today.
The problem isn’t so much the bed bugs as the brainwashing of Americans to believe that pesticides are worse than the pests. One of the reasons Americans live in an essentially pest-free environment in their homes, offices, restaurants, hotels, and elsewhere is the widespread use of pesticides, despite decades of effort by environmental organizations to spread and maintain an irrational fear of pesticides.
In the years following World War Two, the pest control industry had eliminated bed bugs to a point where today’s generation of pest control professionals literally had no experience dealing with them when they began to reappear in American homes, hotels, and other structures.
What is the Environmental Protection Agency’s answer? It is to hold bed bug “summits” in which industry and other experts testify to the obvious necessity to authorize the use of existing pesticides and expedite the registration of new formulations to rid the nation of this pest.
Today there is only one pesticide, Propoxur, known to effectively knock down a bed bug infestation, but when Ohio pest control professionals asked the Environmental Protection Agency for permission to use it, it was denied.
In December, Forbes magazine had an article, “America’s Most Bed Bug-Infested Cities.” Is it any surprise that three of Ohio’s cities, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Dayton, were identified as the most infested?
Among the other cities cited as suffering major bed bug infestations were New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.
A January 11th article in The Wall Street Journal, “City’s Problems with Bedbugs Getting Itchier” reported a seven percent increase in complaints about bed bugs. “Nationally,” the article noted, “one out of five Americans has had a bedbug infestation in their home or knows someone who has encountered the pests at home or in a hotel, according to the National Pest Management Association.”
The bed bug epidemic owes more to governmental regulation than to the experience and expertise of pest control professionals, all of whom must be licensed and certified by their respective States. Given the pesticides to address the epidemic, the industry could eliminate it.
It is shameful that America has to endure this epidemic, not just in terms of the physical harm that people encounter from it, but because it is entirely preventable. We are fortunate that bed bugs do not spread disease, despite the discomfort of their bites.
The last EPA bed bug summit heard 34 suggestions that would expand the bureaucracy at every level of government and expand training and licensure requirements. The answer is not more bureaucracy, but less. Not more paperwork, but the application of existing and new pesticides to rid America of the bed bugs.
The answer is more realism, less fear-mongering about pesticides, and the removal of regulatory barriers so that the pest control industry nationwide can do what it does best, eliminate bed bugs and other insect pests that spread disease and destroy property.
Enjoy!
By Alan Caruba
There really is no mystery to solving the nationwide bed bug epidemic. In 1946 the solution was DDT. Today the solution could still be DDT if it hadn’t been banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in the 1970s and, since then, any number of other beneficial pesticides.
I know something about this because, as a public relations counselor I have worked with pesticide manufacturers in the past and elements of the pest control industry today.
The problem isn’t so much the bed bugs as the brainwashing of Americans to believe that pesticides are worse than the pests. One of the reasons Americans live in an essentially pest-free environment in their homes, offices, restaurants, hotels, and elsewhere is the widespread use of pesticides, despite decades of effort by environmental organizations to spread and maintain an irrational fear of pesticides.
In the years following World War Two, the pest control industry had eliminated bed bugs to a point where today’s generation of pest control professionals literally had no experience dealing with them when they began to reappear in American homes, hotels, and other structures.
What is the Environmental Protection Agency’s answer? It is to hold bed bug “summits” in which industry and other experts testify to the obvious necessity to authorize the use of existing pesticides and expedite the registration of new formulations to rid the nation of this pest.
Today there is only one pesticide, Propoxur, known to effectively knock down a bed bug infestation, but when Ohio pest control professionals asked the Environmental Protection Agency for permission to use it, it was denied.
In December, Forbes magazine had an article, “America’s Most Bed Bug-Infested Cities.” Is it any surprise that three of Ohio’s cities, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Dayton, were identified as the most infested?
Among the other cities cited as suffering major bed bug infestations were New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.
A January 11th article in The Wall Street Journal, “City’s Problems with Bedbugs Getting Itchier” reported a seven percent increase in complaints about bed bugs. “Nationally,” the article noted, “one out of five Americans has had a bedbug infestation in their home or knows someone who has encountered the pests at home or in a hotel, according to the National Pest Management Association.”
The bed bug epidemic owes more to governmental regulation than to the experience and expertise of pest control professionals, all of whom must be licensed and certified by their respective States. Given the pesticides to address the epidemic, the industry could eliminate it.
It is shameful that America has to endure this epidemic, not just in terms of the physical harm that people encounter from it, but because it is entirely preventable. We are fortunate that bed bugs do not spread disease, despite the discomfort of their bites.
The last EPA bed bug summit heard 34 suggestions that would expand the bureaucracy at every level of government and expand training and licensure requirements. The answer is not more bureaucracy, but less. Not more paperwork, but the application of existing and new pesticides to rid America of the bed bugs.
The answer is more realism, less fear-mongering about pesticides, and the removal of regulatory barriers so that the pest control industry nationwide can do what it does best, eliminate bed bugs and other insect pests that spread disease and destroy property.
© Alan Caruba, 2011
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