Reader Opposes IAC

I am opposed to any donation or any surcharge applied from purchased chemicals. I have been in business 30+ years. During these years I have worked very hard to promote my company’s interest in (protecting) customers’ homes and the environment. No help was asked and none was given.

The respect of the people and communities I serve has been earned by being dedicated to doing the best job possible. Doing this is the best public relations, not some campaign that will only help a limited few.

Companies like mine do not need image enhancement. Connie Chung or Dan Rather has never visited me.

I just finished reading "Latest Trends in Cockroach Control" by Stoy Hedges in the June issue of PCT. The article was well done, however the photo on page 24 totally contradicts what the author stated about the use of dust — "This formulation is ideal for treatment of voids..." It is absurd to think you could apply a dust into a crack behind a sink splashboard and have it go where you want it! If it doesn’t end up on a food-contacting surface, the sink or in the coffee pot, it will fall down into the cabinet below and onto whatever is in that cabinet. If the technician is wearing rubber gloves and a respirator to protect himself, what about the homeowner? That picture scares the heck out of me and doesn’t belong in a professional publication used for training purposes.

I was glad to get a negative response to my articles critical of EPA, specifically the letter in the June 1999 issue of PCT by Sam Bryks, pest control manager for the Toronto Housing Authority in Canada. This contrasts with the letters and phone calls that I received lauding me for the series.

If Mr. Bryks would be operating in the marketplace and competing with others to eradicate pests quickly at competitive rates, he would indeed be in trouble. Few customers want to hear a lecture. Few employers can afford to pay for the time required to educate their customers (assuming that the technician could do it).

Mr. Bryks suggests that I read Silent Spring. Indeed I have, many times. I appreciate the value of the book in helping to end the indiscriminate excesses in the use of some really hazardous toxicants. I have also read reams of literature by researchers who exposed the half-truths in Miss Carson’s classic and write of the indiscriminate excesses in legislating the demise of some valuable and innocuous toxicants. For starters, I suggest that he read any of the publications by Professor J. Gordon Edwards of the Department of Biological Sciences, San Jose State University, San Jose, Calif.

If Mr. Bryks read my articles, he would know that I predated Whitmire’s crack and crevice concept and that I helped bring into widespread use (among other important alternatives to conventional pesticides) the Li’l Hummer vacuum cleaner, diatomaceous earth and IPM concepts. For years I decried the excessive use of termiticides which most PCOs believed to leave an effective, continuous barrier for five years. I also railed against the practice of pseudo-IPM practitioners who gave only lip service to the term. My chapter on holistic pest control in the 6th edition of the Mallis Handbook of Pest Control was written in 1982.

I believe it is important for more PCOs to press legislators to force EPA to base their decisions on sound scientific data, and not on anecdotal, unsupportable hypotheses. These are often used by powerful zero-tolerance lobbies that are dedicated to removing the last molecule of the PCOs’ tools for protection of health and property. In their zeal to protect the one person in a million who may get a tumor which may be cancerous, they have caused the deaths of untold millions to disease — deaths that could have been prevented. They were cancelled for political reasons only. No valid scientific studies support the cancellation of DDT and chlordane.

I do not look forward to the "good old days" when we had to candle bedsprings to burn the bedbugs.

Deerfield Beach, Fla.

The more I read PCT the more amazed I am at what you consider news. I just got done reading Robert Sincovich’s article about roach control in low-income housing which highlights the use of baits in June PCT. It must have been five years ago when the gel baits for roaches were fairly new to the market that I told you about my success in wiping out an infestation at the West Warwick, R.I. public housing facility. This was 160 units of "stacked" housing, not separate "condo" style units as the article implies (sprawling complex).

After a major company had been in there for 13 years accomplishing nothing against this infestation by using sprays and fogs, I cleaned it out in six weeks with monitoring traps, Gentrol and both Siege and Maxforce baits (in separate areas so we could compare products). The traps were installed and left for a week just to see where the roaches were.

As expected they were virtually everywhere. In week two I removed all the traps and baited and applied Gentrol in every unit, the logic being that we kill as many as we can get bait into and keep the rest of them from repopulating the place. Two weeks later I put monitors in the same places they had been before and then began checking them on a rotating basis each week. Within a few weeks there were near zero roaches. We waited six months to officially declare victory, but the battle was won in six weeks. For follow-up I divided the building into four sections figuring that an application of Gentrol could be stretched to a four-month interval. Each month I inspected 25% of the units and reapplied the Gentrol. By the fifth week (a space of four weeks) we were back to the beginning. I kept the roaches out of the building this way for the three years that we won the bid.

Incidentally, the roaches mentioned in the article weren’t in the door hinges for the food value of the grease — door hinges aren’t greased. They were in there because when the door is shut there is a lovely crack for them to seek harborage in. The infestation mentioned was at a level where the roaches were resorting to secondary and tertiary harborage sites due to overcrowding.

Those of us who cut our pest control teeth in low-income housing as I did for seven years in South Providence (not the section you see on the TV series) can tell you that roaches in the bureau drawers, door hinges, toy box, food cupboards, under throw rugs, in the microwave shell, light fixtures, behind baseboards and under the edges of vinyl floor covering are just a few of the common places to find them in low income housing. Welcome to my world guys!

Coventry, R.I.