Safety starts by having a thorough understanding of the products you are using and the environments to which you are applying them.
There are several aspects of safety you need to keep in mind while performing mosquito control services: personal; customer; and, environmental. The first step to safety is to understand the products you’re using, as it is with all pest control products and protocols. Thoroughly read all product labels and only use them as directed. It’s your responsibility to know how to use all products effectively and safely. If you’re not certain about something, ask someone who knows. The best source of product information is the manufacturer. They’re your partner in pest control. Not using products as directed can put you, your customers, and the environment at risk. Remember: the label is the law. Wash up. You’ll see it on every product label and it’s just common sense: “Wash hands thoroughly with soap and water after handling and before eating, drinking, chewing gum, using tobacco or using the toilet.” Do it! Personal protective equipment. It’s important to protect yourself by wearing appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) when handling products and performing mosquito control treatments. Information on the minimum PPE recommendations is listed on every product label and safety data sheet (SDS). If you’re in doubt as to what PPE to use or have questions, contact the product manufacturer for additional information. Ensure all PPE is properly fitted and maintained. Recommended personal protective equipment will vary by product and may include: Protective clothing. The most common cause of pesticide poisoning is absorption of product through the skin during mixing, loading, application, and equipment maintenance. Minimize exposure by wearing appropriate clothing. At a minimum, wear long-sleeved shirts, long pants, as well as shoes and socks. More toxic pesticides may require the addition of an apron or chemical-resistant clothing, which may be reusable or single-use. Respirators. Protect yourself from airborne product by using the correct type of respirator specified on the label. There are many types of respirators with various filters. Everyone’s head and face are shaped differently, so each PMP should have their own correctly sized and fitted respirator. Always test the respirator before each use. Annual fit tests and medical evaluations should be performed before using a respirator. Eye protection. As you likely already know through experience, our eyes are very sensitive to pesticides. Look for label instructions that indicate you should use eye protection. Types of eye protection include safety glasses, goggles, and face shields. Goggles offer better protection than safety glasses when working with liquids, which may splash. Goggles can be: open-vented, which protect your eyes from impacts; indirect vented, for protection against splashes; and, non-vented, good for protecting your eyes from gasses, mists, and fumes. Hand protection. There are many types of gloves made from a variety of materials. All are designed to protect you from product being absorbed through the skin. Check the label for the most appropriate type of glove to use, which may be waterproof or chemical resistant. Waterproof gloves are not the same as chemical-resistant gloves. Chemical-resistant gloves may have a barrier laminate or be made from nitrile rubber, neoprene rubber, or viton to prevent exposure to products. Ensure gloves fit properly and you have extras on hand in case the ones you’re wearing are damaged or wear out. If you even think you may have a leaky glove, throw it away and get a fresh one. Foot protection. Often wearing shoes and socks is sufficient when handling pesticides, although some product labels may indicate you should wear chemical-resistant footwear. Wear your pant legs outside of boots and shoes to help ensure nothing accidently splashes or dumps in. Make sure to clean footwear of all powder or liquid products to avoid accidentally contaminating other areas. Drift is always a safety issue. As one PMP said, any drift is bad drift, because it can be a safety risk for the technician, anyone in the area, and the environment. It’s absolutely critical to ensure it’s not too windy to perform mosquito control service. If it’s too windy, do not perform the service! • Check the weather. If it’s forecast to rain before you estimate the product will dry, reschedule service. Check the product label for weather-related restrictions. Rain may also simply wash product from the treated area. There are many factors that impact how quickly a product will dry, including temperature, humidity, and airflow. • Stay at least 20’ away from water sources. Some products are toxic to fish and reptiles. Consider covering pools and decorative ponds with a tarp to avoid drift problems. Mark an “X” on the top side of the tarp so you know which side is up at your next job. Fold it so that the clean side doesn’t come into contact with the potentially contaminated side. Keep your back toward a pool or other water source and treat away from it, not toward it, while paying attention to the wind direction. • Avoid product drifting into any area with edible plants or flowers. Fruits and vegetables must be thrown away if they are inadvertently treated with product that’s not labeled for this application. Avoid treating areas with blooming plants, you run the risk of killing beneficial bees. • Inspect the yard before performing treatment. You’ll be able to identify harborage areas, while determining what products and equipment to use. You’ll also be able to remove items that could potentially be contaminated, including pet’s water bowls, kids toys, tables and chairs, among other items. Take a look at the neighbor’s yard to see if anything there could be problematic.
Backpack mister/sprayers: Be careful. They’re heavy! Backpack mister/blowers are a popular tool for PMPs performing mosquito control. A 3.7-gallon backpack mister/blower can, on average, treat a 5,000 sq. ft. property. Backpack mister/blowers provide good coverage, can use about one-third less product compared to a truck-mounted sprayer, and there’s no hose to lug around. There are safety concerns regarding the use of backpacks. They’re heavy! One gallon of water alone weights approximately 8.34 lbs. PMPs reported the average weight of “fully loaded” backpack mister/blowers is 50 lbs., depending on the equipment weight and the tank capacity. One PMP indicated they were originally using 3.7-gallon (31 lbs. of water) backpacks and are now switching to 2.1-gallon (17.5 lbs. of water) backpacks due to safety concerns. “The weight of the backpack has been a concern; we practice safety with our technicians to prevent injury.” Not surprisingly, carrying too much weight can contribute to poor disk alignment, fatigue, and muscle strain, especially in the shoulders and back. It’s important to take precautions when carrying mister/blower backpacks. As with any heavy object, bend at the knees when lifting a backpack. Regular training for all technicians on ways they can protect themselves physically is recommended. Another PMP shared that techs “need to be fit and in shape” to handle the weight of the blowers and that performing mosquito control services for 4–5 hours daily is reasonable. “Blowers full of 3–5 gallons [of water] in the hot summer is tough work.” The number of service calls a technician may make varies greatly by company: from 2–3 per week, to 10–12 per day and as high as 15–20 treatments per day for those on commission. The range of hours on the road per day is as low as 4 and as high as 10. One PMP indicated 6–7 hours per day “is plenty.” How much weight are others carrying?
Spraying ivy or other vegetation growing on the exterior of a house also will help control other perimeter pests.
Ticks are responsible for the transmission of more vector-borne diseases than any other arthropod or insect in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They estimate that in the U.S. 300,000 or more people are annually diagnosed with Lyme disease, which is transmitted by ticks.
Tick control service is rapidly growing and is a season extender on either side of mosquito control services. The active months for treating mosquitos and ticks generally correspond with each other — with a little overlap. Depending on the area of the country and the weather, tick treatment can begin as early as April and go to as late as November — with spring being the most important time to treat. As a general schedule: first treatment in mid-May — as close as possible to the emergence of larval ticks; second in mid-June; and, final treatment when the mosquito season is winding down.
Spray where they live. Mosquitoes, depending on the species, will have resting sites 10’ and above. Ticks live at ground level, so use the mister/blower more like a leaf blower, keeping the nozzle low. Use attachments to help angle the spray to be almost parallel to the ground and keep the blower air-flow rate as close to maximum as possible. As with mosquito treatments, never treat edible plants, flowers, or blooming plants.
Technicians are at a real risk of vector-borne diseases when conducting tick treatments. One in 20 tick bites may transmit a pathogen, so if a technician is bitten by five ticks, they have a 25 percent chance of contracting a disease. In addition to required personal protective equipment (PPE) per product label, wear light-colored clothing and tuck your pant legs into your socks during application.
To kill ticks on mice, here’s an easy DIY project:
What you need to do to help customers and employees find and remove such environments.
To control mosquitoes around a customer’s home, a pest management professional can spray the lawn and foliage with an insecticide, Insect Growth Regulator (IGR), or repellent, or offer a misting program to dispense insecticide into the air. But if the customer doesn’t do his/her part in eliminating conducive conditions on the property, mosquitoes are likely to continue to develop.
This is one of the reasons it is so important for the pest management professional to not only inspect the entire property prior to recommending or providing treatment, but also to educate the customer on conducive conditions that contribute to mosquito development. This should include both any conducive conditions that are discovered during the inspection as well as conditions that are commonly found in backyards and in other residential settings.
“The number one conducive condition is standing or stagnant water,” said Professional Pest Management Alliance Executive Director and National Pest Management Association Vice President of Public Affairs Cindy Mannes. “Mosquitoes lay their eggs in water where the larvae develop and need only about ½ inch of water to breed.”
Virginia Tech researchers have found a gene that can reduce female mosquitoes over many generations.
Males are preferred because they do not bite. Female mosquitoes bite to get blood for egg production and are the prime carriers of the pathogens that cause malaria, Zika, and dengue fever.
In this case, Zhijian “Jake” Tu and colleagues found that placing a particular Y chromosome gene on the autosomes of Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes — a species responsible for transmitting malaria — killed off 100 percent of all female embryos that inherited this gene.
The extra copy of this gene, which the researchers call Guy1, is passed on to both sexes but only males survive. Furthermore, these male mosquitoes do not appear to have any detectable reproductive disadvantages in the laboratory.
The findings were published Sept. 20, 2016, in the journal eLife.
“The Guy1 protein is a strong candidate of the male-determining factor in Anopheles stephensi,” said Tu, a professor of biochemistry in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and a member of the Fralin Life Science Institute Vector-borne Disease Research Group. The Guy1 gene is not related to Nix, a male-determining factor recently discovered in the Aedes aegypti mosquito by Tu’s lab and collaborators.
“The extra copy of the Guy1 gene is only passed down to half of the progeny, leaving some females among the mosquitoes that did not inherit the gene in the next generation,” said Frank Criscione, who is the first author of the paper and worked on the project when he was a graduate student in the Tu laboratory.
In order to produce all male offspring, all progeny needs to inherit this extra copy of Guy1. This is one of the group’s future objectives and can potentially be achieved by using genome editing.
Yumin Qi, a research scientist in the department of biochemistry, is a co-author of the paper.
“I think a lot of people have no idea where mosquitoes breed,” said Texas A&M Professor and AgriLife Extension Service Urban Entomologist Mike Merchant. So having someone who understands — and can explain — the mosquito life cycle and can explain where and how they will breed provides important information for homeowners.
EDUCATING HOMEOWNERS. There are a variety of ways to educate your residential customers on mosquito control and conducive conditions, but the first step is for pest control company managers and technical directors to educate their workforce, Mannes said. This not only includes the PMPs who are out in the field, but also employees who answer the phones, so they can be the first step in providing factual information to consumers. Other ways of educating customers (and your staff) include:
CONDUCIVE CONDITIONS. Given these methods of education, the most important facts on which customers should be educated include areas of mosquito breeding, other conducive conditions and steps they can take for prevention. Merchant notes that a mosquito harborage inspection and recommendation service could be provided as either a value-add or an add-on service.
Following are five steps to share with customers to eliminate conducive conditions:
PREVENTING BITES. While all these steps can help reduce or eliminate conducive conditions, it is impossible to completely eliminate mosquitoes. Thus, it is also important for consumers to understand ways they can protect themselves from mosquitoes. Following are steps that Mannes recommends for consumer protection:
Most species of mosquitoes are most active between dusk and dawn, so taking precautions and minimizing activity then is most critical. “However,” Mannes said, “it is important to note that the species of mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus are daytime biters, so you need to take the same precautions during the day.”
The new date is Jan. 23, 2018.
McCloud Services announced a new date and location for its annual Pest Invasion integrated pest management and food safety seminar. The 2018 seminar will take place Tuesday, January 23, 2018, at The Hyatt Lodge at McDonald's Campus in Oakbrook, Ill.
The all-day seminar will feature information on timely topics related to pests and other contamination concerns for the food supply chain of custody, including public health importance and FDA regulations, pest exclusion and sanitation, foodborne illness and security. The annual conference is attended by more than 300 professionals from the food, pest management and environmental health industries.
Confirmed speakers and topics for this year's conference include James Miller, Trece and Anna Berry, McCloud Services: Using Pheromones to Monitor and Control Stored Product Pests; and John Spink, PHD, Food Fraud Initiative, MSU: Food Fraud. Information on additional speakers and presentation topics will be announced in the coming weeks.
The acquisition of Marietta, Ga.-based Northwest Exterminating is Rollins’ largest acquisition since it acquired HomeTeam Pest Defense in 2008.
ATLANTA and MARIETTA, Ga. — Rollins, Inc. has entered into a definitive purchase agreement with Northwest Exterminating to acquire its pest control business. This will be a cash purchase, and the transaction is expected to close in early August, subject to the satisfaction of customary conditions and regulatory approval. This is Rollins’ largest acquisition since it acquired HomeTeam Pest Defense in 2008. Based in Marietta, Ga., Northwest provides pest control, termite and wildlife services for approximately 120,000 customers in Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and North Carolina. The company has developed relationships with premier home builders to provide pre-treatment services. The family-owned and operated organization was established in 1951 by L.A. Phillips and his wife Emma Lene Phillips. From a family of two, the company has grown to a family of more than 500 team members and 23 service centers through the southeast. With reported 2016 revenue of just over $50 million, Northwest Exterminating ranked 17th on PCT's most recent Top 100 list.
Rollins will partner with the Phillips family, who will remain with the company, along with their entire management team. Northwest will continue to operate as a separate business, and one of Rollins’ Specialty Brands, along with: HomeTeam, Western Pest Services and Waltham. “We are most pleased to have entered into this agreement with the Northwest organization,” said John Wilson, President and Chief Operating Officer of Rollins, Inc. “This acquisition provides significant opportunity for both Rollins and Northwest to grow and learn from each other. We see many benefits from this combination. Northwest has built a valuable business and a loyal team, as well as a reputation for excellent service. We look forward to working with Northwest’s president, Steve Phillips, and his great group of professionals.” Steve Phillips, son of the company founder said, “We are excited to have found a partner in Rollins that will take excellent care of our team members and provide extraordinary service to our customers after the transition of ownership. Rollins shares the values that Northwest was founded on – namely: honesty, integrity and excellence.”