TECHNICALLY SPEAKING: The Manufacturer Told Me So!

If you have read your labels lately, you’ll realize that it is not uncommon to see pests such as ants, cockroaches, silverfish, firebrats, spiders, boxelder bugs, ticks, lice, fleas, a plethora of stored product pests, bees and wasps, bedbugs, drywood termites, etc., listed. Our inclination is to assume that such statements are based on thorough and independent scientific research.

My experience is that blanket efficacy claims like those above have rarely born the scrutiny of field testing. Manufacturers using generic pest labeling, e.g., cockroaches and ants (and in some cases those listing specific species), are using our customers as the testing ground for their products.

Now, I don’t really mind doing this when a manufacturer approaches me with an experimental use permit (EUP) and asks for a product to be tested. However, my experience has been that products are not always field tested against every pest on their label. Thus, before we make any assumptions about a product’s efficacy, we should expect manufacturers to provide field research demonstrating the effectiveness of their product against ALL pests listed on their label.

LAB DATA VS. FIELD DATA. A case in point: the other day I received a telephone call from a regional sales representative from a manufacturer that is breaking into our industry. The courtesy call was to determine if I was familiar with their product and its ability to control a wide variety of ants. The caller proceeded to read a list of ants on their label. Since we don’t have white-footed ants and only a few incidents of Argentine ants in our area, the ant that piqued my interest was the Pharaoh ant.

My concern is that research has repeatedly demonstrated that Pharaoh ant colonies fragment when treated with residual insecticides. Since the product I was discussing with the sales representative was a new pesticide class and is a residual insecticide, I was curious about the efficacy data they had on using their product for Pharaoh ants. My thinking is it would be nice to have a residual insecticide that would not cause the colony to fragment.

Not to my surprise, I was told that there was laboratory data to support the claim that their product would control this ant species. Unfortunately laboratory data is not field data and usually consists of confining test insects to a treated surface or forcing them to cross a treated surface to reach food, water and/or harborage. In these scenarios most insects will die, implying that the product is efficacious. To date, I have not received field data on Pharaoh ant studies.

Testimonials are other forms of data that are used to support efficacy claims. Profound statements such as, “Having used Product X for the past two years, one application of Product Y solved our problem.” This is overly simplistic, but it is not research and does not inspire confidence.

Many people rely on EPA’s product registration as an efficacy validating process. I know that EPA requires efficacy data for product registration but I am unaware of many efficacy claims being refuted during the registration process. The exceptions to this are termiticides and possibly rodenticides, which are subjected to rigorous efficacy requirements.

Bedbugs are back and appear to be here to stay. The frequency of our service calls regarding this pest double each season. My concern is product availability and efficacy. I have tried several products that list this pest on the label and in most cases I have had poor results. Where is the data to support the efficacy claims, which allowed this pest to be included on the label? Who has colonies for future efficacy testing?

I doubt little, if any, field efficacy data exists and thus trial and error is the only option we have. Unfortunately customers become very impatient when we are not able to resolve their problem in a timely fashion.

EFFICACY TESTING. Shifting to the other end of the spectrum, another efficacy issue is overkill. It is interesting that many of the research papers (efficacy testing) I have read on ant control indicate that 1.0 percent boric acid is the ideal concentration for ant baits. This concentration is high enough to kill the ants, however, it does not kill the foraging workers before they return to the nest, insuring better distribution of the bait in the colony.

Yet I have numerous boric acid ant bait manufacturers sending me registered products containing 5.0 to 6.0 percent active ingredient. I can only speculate on the rationale — more is better. However, in the case of ants and a successful baiting strategy, more is apparently self-defeating — they’ll feed on it but how much makes it back to the colony is questionable.

CONCLUSION. The industry should not be the testing ground for product efficacy because control failures affect our customers and our reputations. There is a wealth of resources (universities with urban entomology programs) available to manufacturers. Hopefully, they will continue to use these invaluable resources to provide us the information we need to make sound pest management decisions.

Remember when it comes to efficacy data — let the buyer beware!

The author is technical director of American Pest Management, Takoma Park, Md. He can be reached at 301/891-2600 or rkramer@pctonline.com.