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QUESTION:

Summer is gone but all the little biting, flying
insects are still here in Rio de Janeiro. It’s very hard to identify the species, but I have a thought that we’re dealing with small flies and biting midges. Can you give me some insights on these pests and is there a specific protocol to control them? What else can be done about these unwelcome guys?

ANSWER:

It would be difficult for me to tell you with certainty what these little insects are Marcus, but tiny biting flies would be common in warm and humid areas such as yours, and the biting midges called No-see-ums could be a common culprit. Many of the species of these blood feeders in the family Ceratopogonidae are very small, but they make up for their size with an impressive and painful bite. Since you are way down in Brazil this is truly just my guess, but other than mosquitoes these no-see-ums would be a popular choice, and they often will be very common along coastal areas. There is another family of biting flies that also are very small and these are called Sand Flies in the family Psychodidae. This family also includes our common “drain” flies, but unlike the harmless drain flies their cousins the sand flies (genus Phlebotomus) do bite and suck blood.

Biting midges are difficult to deal with, and primarily because of their widespread potential breeding sites. Effective fly management relies heavily on dealing with the source, and with mosquitoes this is possible because they breed as larvae in standing water, which can either be drained or treated in many cases. Biting midges live their larval lives in just about any wet situations, so even wet soils and accumulations of decaying plant material on the soil serve as settings where the larvae can live in comfort. Obviously this makes them hard to treat, as you cannot go around spraying pesticides on every square foot of damp soil, and even if you could you would have to treat repeatedly to have any effect. Sand flies will breed in similar situations, but the no-see-ums are a bit more diverse, also using semi-aquatic habitats or even dampness on old logs.

In tropical areas the breeding and adult fly activity is year round. Females lay batches of 30 to 100 eggs, these hatch in a few days, and depending on the species of fly new adult flies emerge in anywhere from 3 to 10 weeks. The eggs are placed directly onto the substrate the fly larvae will live in. As do all flies they have complete metamorphosis. Adult fly activity is highest at dawn and at dusk, but may have some activity throughout the day, especially if it is cloudy and warm. Adult flies often stay fairly close to the breeding habitats if food is available to them, and they are not overly picky about the kind of blood, feeding on birds, reptiles, amphibians, and other mammals too.

One interesting control being tested is a PVC fenceline that emits carbon dioxide and octanol attractant, the same things used to draw mosquitoes to traps. Flies are attracted to these signals and are then trapped and killed. This is being tested in Florida. Chemical controls are limited, particularly for the larvae, since widespread spraying of damp locations is not feasible. If you can identify specific aquatic habitats you can treat with larvacides such as bacteria or IGR’s, but treating wet soils is not practical. If some event is to be held outdoors you can fog shortly before the event, cutting down the number of adult flies present in the immediate area for a period long enough, hopefully, to give relief. The active ingredients in space sprays dissipate rapidly though, and would need to be repeated frequently. There also are “barrier” treatments with residual insecticides that could be applied to thick shrubbery, hoping to kill resting adult flies that may be hiding there. These could last several weeks.

In tropical environments I wouldn’t make any promises to a customer about actually eliminating biting midges. The best you can hope for, given that the breeding habitats remain, is to reduce the problem. Since the flies continue to breed throughout the year control measures would need to be done continually as well. You should inspect the property carefully, and recommend to the customer any changes they should make in watering, to eliminate excessive damp locations and standing water. Potted plants should be allowed to dry, catch basins emptied, rain gutters kept from filling, etc., and these efforts will at least reduce production of the flies on their property. Otherwise, a very difficult pest to control.

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QUESTION:

What are the main biological and behavioral
differences between the Webbing Clothes Moth
and the Case-making Clothes moth? Also, what are the most helpful preventive measures and the more appropriate treatment protocol?

ANSWER:

The Webbing clothes moth (WCM) and the Case-making clothes moth (CMCM) are very closely related. They both are in the moth family Tineidae but in separate genera – Tinea and Tineola. They are among a handful of small moths whose caterpillars are truly capable of eating and digesting the keratin in animal products such as hair, feathers, or skin. They are never really common, but when they do occur sometimes it can be in significant numbers. A couple of other moth species also occur that are very similar to the CMCM, and these are the Household Casebearer Moth (Phereoeca uterella – HCM) and the Plaster Bagworm (Phereoeca praecox – PB), although there is some disagreement on the actual names and separation of these two moth species. However, on a regular basis I see infestations of the PB in southern California, and on a few occasions have seen pretty big infestations of the HCM as well.

One piece of the biology of these moths that may not be well known is that fungus is an alternative food resource for them, and in fact the times I have seen the HCB moth the larvae were just thick on wood where the white fungal mycelia was growing in a wet area. This could be a confusion for you if you find the larvae, in their little silk cases, wandering around within a structure and assume they must be infesting some fabrics someplace. Instead, they may have wandered away from some place where molds or fungi were growing. The PB moth may feed on fabrics like the CMCM does, but it also is a general scavenger and may instead be feeding on other organic materials they find, including spider webs and dead insects. In general when you take a close look at the silk cases of these 3 similar moths you find the case of the CMCM is composed of bits of material (threads, etc.), the PB case is covered with fine grains of sand and dirt, and the case of the HCB moth often is very dark, due to the molds or mildew incorporated into the case.

The WCM larva does not make a little silk case to carry around with it as it wanders, but instead creates a “tunnel” of silk over itself on the material it is infesting. Within this silk you generally find large accumulations of fecal material, and the silk and these fecal pellets help distinguish the damage as being from the moth and not from carpet beetles. This moth is more likely to pupate right there on the material it was eating, whereas the CMCM larva is a very active larva, and often will be found wandering and dragging it silk case a great distance from whatever it was infesting. This makes it more of a challenge for you when you find the larvae to then search to discover the actual source of the infestation.

Control MUST begin with finding the source of the problem. It is tempting to “fog” a room to kill off all the moths resting on the walls and ceiling, but this really does nothing to stop the problem. The infested items are going to be hidden someplace in a closet, dresser, or storage box that a fog or mist will not touch. A careful inspection will finally reveal the source which then can be disposed of or treated in some manner to kill the larvae and eggs on it. If the damage is too great then simply placing it in a sealed bag and tossing it is recommended, but if the item can be salvaged then dry cleaning or laundering in hot water and hot dryer will work. The area should be thoroughly vacuumed, possibly treated locally with a residual insecticide, and the items then stored in a sealed container to prevent re-infestation. The use of moth balls of PDB (paradichlorobenzene) is excellent for killing moths and larvae and for repelling them from the storage location, but these also impart a strong odor to the fabrics near them, and this may not be appropriate. The moth balls also evaporate and need to be replenished constantly, so storage of susceptible items in sealed bags or boxes is preferred. Cedar-lined chests and closets really do very little to repel any insects, and of course ultrasonic repellers are useless scams.

Both of these moths as larvae will feed on feathers, wool and other animal hair products, dead insects, etc. They may attack stuffed animal mounts, and protecting these is difficult without disfiguring the look of the mount. Pheromone traps do exist to attract the adult moths as monitoring devices, and these can be placed and replenished quarterly. Pesticides play almost no role in “preventing” problems from clothes moths, and the emphasis should be on proper storage of the materials that the larvae may feed on.

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QUESTION:

I have read in the “Cockroach Control Manual pg. 54” that insecticide residues from crack and crevice aerosols last longer than standard liquid insecticide residues. If I use Orthene crack and crevice aerosol will I get better results
(% kill and better residual performance) versus using Orthene Pco in water at 1% solution and applying it with a crack and crevice tip?

ANSWER:

My thinking on this is that the same active ingredient in a stabilized aerosol formulation may last longer once applied than one that was mixed with water and applied as a spray solution. The reason for this, if it is true, could be the water factor. Organophosphates and carbamates in particular (and the acephate in Orthene products is an organophosphate) can be very sensitive to breakdown in water due to hydrolysis. This is even more so if the water used as the diluent has a high pH factor (high alkalinity) or if the mixture is allowed to sit overnight or longer before use. There could be substantial degradation of the active ingredient in the water itself. In aerosols there typically was no water in the solution, but petroleum hydrocarbons of some kind were used as the diluent, and this tends to help maintain the integrity of the insecticide molecules.

Aerosols offer one more advantage over liquid water based sprays, and that is the ability to keep the material in that crack or crevice when you apply it. If any of the solution runs out of the crevice it suddenly becomes a “spot” treatment, and if you are obligated by the product Label to apply the material ONLY as a crack and crevice treatment in some situation, either you now are treating off-label or you need to immediately clean up that exposed material. The propellent in many aerosols flashes off very quickly, leading to immediate drying of the spray from the can, and leaving only the active ingredient as a thin layer on the surface. This is one advantage of the area spray products such as Precor 2000 for fleas. It uses alcohol as a major part of the diluent, and this evaporates almost immediately upon application, leaving the treated surfaces dry within minutes.

The disadvantage to aerosol products is their cost, as well possibly as the disposal of a lot of empty aerosol cans. Most of these can be wrapped in newspaper and disposed of in a waste container, according to their labeling. But, mixing concentrate products in a hand sprayer with water is nearly always going to cost less than using an aerosol product for the same application – same square footage or linear coverage. So, I would agree that it is likely that aerosol products do last a bit longer than the same active ingredient mixed with water for application.

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QUESTION:

Many ant bait products kill various species of ants “at the source”, the goal being the Queen. What happens to the rest of the colony after the queen dies?

ANSWER:

I believe the goal of ant baits is actually to kill ALL the ants in the colony, not just the Queen (or Queens, as some ant species may have numerous Queens laying eggs). Most ants will ingest the liquid and gel baits themselves, as the adult ants, but will feed protein baits to the larvae so that the larvae can pre-digest this material first, and then regurgitate it back as food for the adult workers. The white-footed ant is one of the unusual ones in this respect, with larvae feeding heavily on “trophic” (unfertilized) eggs that the queen produces in abundance.

Thus, if the worker ants gather the liquid and gel baits that contain carbohydrate attractants they should consume the bait themselves, along with offering some of it to other workers in the colony, the larvae, and the Queens too. In this manner, with a little luck, these active ingredients get passed around to all members of the colony and potentially can kill them all, not just the queens. As we know, all ants working in that colony are females, and many of these may have the ability to begin egg production if the queen dies, which eventually she will, and in this way the colony itself does not necessarily die off just because the founding queen is no longer there. If the ant baits killed only the queens the colony could still continue to produce new offspring. The ultimate goal certainly is to ensure the queens are dead too, but the workers tumble as the active ingredients take effect.

Many of the ant baits are stomach poisons only, and rely on being ingested. A few have contact active ingredients such as fipronil, so these have the potential to kill the ant workers just in the act of carrying them to the colony. All of the active ingredients are designed to work slowly, giving the workers plenty of time to carry the bait back into the colony and pass it around before the ant itself begins to feel the effect. Of course the active ingredients also need to be non-repelling, allowing the ant to carry it in its mouth without any repulsive effect by the bait. These are the reasons that baiting is such a magnificent method for ant control IF the ants will accept the bait, so offering them a variety of choices (gel, granule, protein, sugar) to see which kind they are taking may be needed.

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QUESTION:

We have a customer with warehouses used for storing bakery goods in waiting for sale to its
customers. One of the main items stored is wholewheat flour on pallets stacked 10 to 15 feet high. They are complaining that mice are ruining some bags of flour.
Upon inspection, small 3/4 inch holes can be seen in the bags of flour in one out of 50 bags. It also seems that these holes are in the top bags of the pallets only. No other penetrations are found in any other bags. It’s almost like they are dropping from the ceiling 10 feet above and
penetrating the top bags on the pallet, as there are no penetrations in the sides of the other bags of flour.
All pallets are moved regularly and placed 3 feet from the walls for inspection, sticky traps placed throughout. However, sticky traps have
proven to be non-effective. Maybe some way to keep them from getting on the pallets?
These warehouses are “Open Bayed” meaning doors are open all day during operation. Upon inspection it seems like the mice may be running through the interior walls as well. This is not a
food handling establishment and I am wondering if we can use tracking powder in the wall voids and Liqua-tox in those areas suitable for placement.
The customers are very good at sanitation and sealing of holes, voids, etc., however the walls seem to be the travel points. It seems focusing on exterior and wall voids are where I need to focus. What are your opinions?

ANSWER:

First I think we need to recognize that this is indeed a food “handling” establishment, which is defined as “any place other than a private residence where food is held, prepared, processed, or served”. The presence of all of these bags and pallets of food product stored there would qualify it as “food handling”, even though the food may not necessarily be exposed.

Second, it would be important to determine just where these mice are coming from, and if in fact there are mice, since you don’t specifically state that you know this damage is being caused by them. The use of a regular flashlight to examine all possible travel routes for evidence such as droppings, and an ultraviolet flashlight to inspect for urine, would be very helpful. This would allow you to inspect those overhead beams to see if somehow this is how the mice are getting onto the pallets. While mice could definitely drop a short distance to access food they also would easily climb up onto the pallets and bags, and this would seem like a more likely access for them.. Since they could not jump the 10 feet back up to the rafters they must be climbing down off the bags and heading back to their harborage, so I suspect that this is the more likely route. But, just to be sure it pays to inspect overhead as well, if only to eliminate that possibility. If you do find urine spots or footprints or droppings on the overhead beams then setting snap traps in stations along those beams would be effective.

I know it is typical for many warehouses to leave exterior doors open to facilitate movement of people and forklifts, but obviously this encourages rodents to enter and makes exclusion nearly impossible. Your inspection should include the entire exterior of the warehouse to see what openings do exist that could be permanently closed, and at the least this will narrow the entry of the mice to just the open doors, and now you can concentrate your initial defenses on either side of these doors. When a mouse first enters a structure it may spend up to an hour investigating things right in that immediate area, and if you have placed a number of stations on either side of the doorways you should get the mice quickly to enter the stations, now landing in traps or finding bait, depending on what choice you make. You also could place stations on the OUTside on either side of the doorways, hopefully intercepting them before they even get inside. Mice still are going to be nervous about traveling in exposed places, and will enter stations perceiving them to be secure places to hide temporarily.

I think that either a labeled tracking powder (used only in voids or in Tamper resistant stations) or Liqua-tox could be effective, and would be labeled for use in this kind of situation, ensuring that neither could get onto food or food surfaces. The liquid bait also would need to be in a station of course, and placed so that it would not get dumped by people or equipment running into the station.

But, an important beginning would be to determine for sure where the mice are traveling inside, and placing LOTS of traps and stations along those routes. Sealing off exterior entry points where possible will limit the entry potential to just a few open doors and you can concentrate your stations around these points for earlier interception of invading mice.

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QUESTION:

What are the real pros and cons of Thermal fogs and Cold aerosols (ULV) in a mosquito management
program in a home complex?

ANSWER:

Thermal foggers essentially dribble the liquid insecticide onto a hot plate that then vaporizes the material, creating very tiny droplets of the liquid that are capable of floating or staying aloft for much longer periods of time. This may be beneficial if you are trying to release the fog at one point but allow it to drift with the breeze for a greater distance from that point. The droplets are in the range of 1 to 5 microns, compared with ULV droplets that are in the range of 5 to 20 microns in diameter. The ULV size is still pretty darned small, but being larger it falls faster, so in that same light breeze the ULV fog is not going to be carried as far.

I found an interesting chart one time that listed the differences in drift potential for various droplet sizes, and while the exact numbers may not be 100% accurate it still gives an amazing comparison. To start with the spray droplets that may be created by power spraying, where a lot of these fine droplets are in the realm of 500 microns in diameter, a droplet released at 10 feet of height in a 3 mph breeze will take only 1.5 seconds to hit the ground and travel only 7 feet off site. The fine particles in that spray may be 100 microns in diameter, and in that same 3 mph breeze will fall that 10 feet in 10 seconds but potentially travel 410 feet off site. This would be plenty of time to thoroughly coat a neighbor’s yard with pesticide they did not want there if you were not careful while spraying trees, shrubs or fences in a customer’s yard.

If we get down to that 5 micron droplet of a thermal fogger or even many of the smaller particles from a ULV fogger, in a 3 mph wind from 10 feet high the droplet takes 66 minutes to reach the ground and can travel as far away as 3 miles!! Here is your possible concern with thermal fogging – that fog is going to go a long distance, and you have no control over where it ends up. This may be what you want in a wooded or rural setting, but perhaps not so desirable in a residential setting. Since mosquito “misting” devices produce ULV droplets this points out the concern some states have regarding a system of one person’s property delivering pesticide onto the neighboring properties, and those neighbors may have strong concerns about pesticides and not want their properties sprayed in this manner.

I think you also have more options with ULV foggers, including some relatively low cost electrical models. Some of the older thermal foggers also were pretty noisy, so using them discreetly was not likely to happen. There even was an opinion I once read, but it may have been the opinion of someone who sells ULV foggers trying to convince us that thermal foggers were inferior. This opinion, though, was that the thermal fogger droplet size could be so small that it did not even attach to insects as well as ULV droplets do, but was more likely to just drift on by the mosquito and miss it. How realistic this is I really don’t know, but I toss it out for your consideration.

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QUESTION:

Ground Bees – If and when treatment becomes necessary what would be a better option, dusting each individual burrow (and if so which dust?)or flooding with a wettable powder like Demon WP or something else? Seems to me that in a case where we are dealing with hundreds of nests that both methods would be very time consuming to complete.


ANSWER:

This is a tough call to make. You are correct in suggesting that treatment generally is unnecessary, and hopefully that is the route that should be approached first. We really need to help our customers understand that not all bugs should be killed. In the interest of a cleaner environment and a smooth operating landscape there are many kinds of insects that should be preserved. Unfortunately, most homeowners are not familiar with all the beneficial insects that appear at their porch lights or on their plants, and since they do not know their instinct is to ask that you kill them all. This would be the improper thing to do, and one of our roles as professionals is to learn what these insects are, understand their importance and role in nature, and educate our customers to understand that tolerance is better than a scorched Earth approach to pest management.

That little sermon behind us, but I truly do believe it is the best route to take, there will be times when harmless little burrowing bees simply cannot be tolerated by some of your customers, and it is their right to demand that these beneficial insects be eliminated in some way. There are non-chemical approaches that could be considered, and the primary one is to make the soil where the bees are working either unattractive or unavailable. The female bees will be active only for a short period of time, excavating the tunnels and chambers in them, providing a supply of food in each chamber, and then depositing their eggs and abandoning the job forever. They are not social insects (although sometimes bumblebees or yellow jackets may burrow in the soil) and as solitary bees they really don’t give much attention to any people hanging around near them. While they “could” sting the likelihood is extremely low, and given the benefit of bees preserving them is preferred.

The soil is not always appropriate for creating tunnels and burrows if it is very dry, particularly if it is loose soil or sandy, so keepin the area from being irrigated may be helpful. It may even be possible to discourage the bees by daily raking over the area to ruin their work of the day before, filling in the tunnels. Depending on where this soil is and how much is involved you may be able to recommend covering it with bark, gravel, or mulch, or even a sheet of plastic for a temporary period of time.

If treating is needed then generally treating each soil opening individually is recommended. Not only is this a more directed approach than generally spraying over the entire soil area just to kill bees working one tiny little part of it, but it puts the active ingredient and the bee into much more likely contact. In this case either a dust or a spray solution, directed into the burrow opening, should be effective, so now it is your choice as to which one is easier to apply. Dusts generally last longer than liquid sprays, but normally this is only when the dust is in a dry setting. A dust puffed into a small burrow opening may be more likely to be pushed deeper into the burrow, so this could be an advantage. “Flooding” the surface tunnel with liquid could get the material just as deep, but perhaps take longer to apply into each opening, and the liquid is going to soak into the soil around that tunnel, so perhaps the dust particles resting on the soil would be more available to the parent bee that is moving up and down during the process of digging. I guess I would opt for the dusting, using a contact insecticide rather than an inorganic desiccant dust.

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QUESTION:

We received a call about thousands of flies in a yard. When I got to the customer’s house I found that the yard was clean and the flies were in the grass. I think they are house flies. I couldn’t get one to ID it. No dogs and no cats. Could you help me with this?

ANSWER:

Given the large numbers and the fact they are concentrated in the lawn seems to hint that they may be March flies in the family Bibionidae, also called “love bugs” when they are so often found with male and female attached and mating. This is the time of year for these insects to emerge in their huge numbers, and some news stories from the Southeast already have highlighted them and their terrible nuisance value. Sometimes highways get slick from millions of mashed march flies and the bumpers and windshields of cars get solid layers of their dead little bodies, so they can be a little more than just a nuisance.

The larvae feed primarily on decaying plant materials but females often lay their eggs in the soil of turf, and the larvae then feed on thatch buildup as well as on the roots of the grass. In many species the adult flies don’t even feed, so they spend pretty much their entire adult life with the various activities of mating and egg laying and then dying within a few days. As one resource on them puts it the males and females attach and remain that way, even in flight, but of course they separate once the female feels the need to start depositing eggs.

Generally these are nuisance only, but if you feel their numbers are so high that some turf damage could occur then treating the turf to kill the adults now will prevent all those eggs from being left in the soil there.

If these turn out not to be march flies then it would be important to gather some and get the positive ID. March flies are shiny black or black with a red thorax, and are about the same length as house flies but much narrower.

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QUESTION:

What type of fly would be most common in hospitals?

ANSWER:

I would hate to profile just a single kind of fly, since there are several that deserve mention. To pick on just one kind might lead you into a false sense of security that these others can be ignored. Let’s break it down to either large flies or small flies, and the most important “large” fly is going to be the common House Fly – Musca domestica. It has a wide range of breeding habitats and is possibly the most widespread species of fly, so the opportunity for it to find its way into hospitals is the best. While blow flies will also occur regularly, their presence may be more tied to the presence of something actually inside the hospital that they are breeding in – rotting garbage that is not disposed of quickly or a dead rodent or bird in a wall or attic space. Blow flies just seem less likely than houseflies to wander in from the outside just to look around. House flies have no problem coming in at the slightest opportunity.

With the small flies the ones I seem to have seen most often in hospitals is Phorid flies. They too will breed in a variety of unsanitary situations, including filthy drains like drain flies will and fermenting juices and foods like fruit flies will. These last two flies cannot be ignored as possible hospital pests, especially in dining facilities where spills of juices or fruits and vegetables could occur. But, anyplace water settles and creates decaying organic material the phorid fly will take advantage of, and I have seen a couple of occasions where plumbing problems apparently occurred under slabs, leaking nasty water into the soil beneath the slab, and phorid flies found this opportunity and bred by the thousands.

There are other kinds of flies that will show up now and then too, and the use of UV light traps is an excellent monitoring tool for you. These will attract most kinds of flying insects, particularly when placed where other lighting is minimized and the UV light becomes more attractive. You can check the glue board inside the trap on each visit, and remove it to the office to examine under magnification. By identifying exactly what is captured on the glue you can get a forewarning of possible pest infestations. Different flies indicate different kinds of possible breeding sites, so we might even thank the fly for providing us with a hint that some unsanitary condition exists that should be taken care of in such a sensitive setting.

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QUESTION:

I have been reviewing the Masterline Bifenthrin label and MSDS, but I am confused. The MSDS states that work clothing is to be laundered separate from nonwork clothing. The label, though, says only to wash CONTAMINATED clothing before reuse. I know the MSDS is written around the concentrated formula, Bifenthrin 7.9. Does the MSDS apply because of the brief mixing period?
The label said a short sleeve shirt is fine for diluted formula though it wants long sleeves for mixing. I can imagine on some days I would really not want to wear long sleeves while spraying, though technically since a long sleeve shirt has been used to mix wouldn’t that make it eligible for laundering according the MSDS? It seems rather silly and wasteful more than likely a safety precaution grounded in much practical preventative logic.

ANSWER:

I guess I’ll start by saying that I did not find the Label statement allowing short-sleeve shirts to be worn when using the diluted material, although that’s a lot of words on the Label and I may have overlooked it. But, in the initial Precautionary Statements it says that all pesticide handlers (including applicators) MUST wear long-sleeved shirt, pants, etc., and in the next line under “after the product is diluted” the statement is only that the applicator must wear “shirt, pants, socks, shoes, gloves”, without the words “short sleeved”.

So, you may have misread this part, but even so long-sleeved shirts will be considered mandatory in pretty much every state. I understand that on hot summer days it would be nice to have a cool breeze on the arms, but I really doubt that any regulatory agency is going to allow this much more skin to be exposed. Let’s just go with the idea that if you are in professional pest management you will be obligated to wear long sleeves and long pants for ANY pesticide application except wear a product label specifically prohibits it. This may be the case with some liquid fumigants, but I haven’t examined those labels for this response.

As far as laundering, I refer to the opinion in California, and that is that ANY clothing worn while applying pesticides should be considered “potentially contaminated”, and it should be washed before wearing it a second day. The actual regulation states that if you use any Category 1 or 2 pesticides (Signal Word Danger or Warning) you MUST launder the clothing before wearing it a second day, but for Cat. 3 or 4 (Caution) you “should” launder it daily. I think in the interest of personal hygiene daily laundering is probably a good idea anyhow.

Again, what you wear as outer clothing while applying any pesticide should be presumed to have gotten some pesticide on it (potentially contaminated), particularly if you applied a liquid spray. The general recommendation is that this contaminated clothing should never be laundered in the same batch as the family clothing. You don’t want to run any risk whatsoever of transferring pesticides from your clothes onto your baby’s pajamas, to use an example. This may be erring on the side of caution, but this is how regulatory folks prefer to be, and maybe that’s not such a bad idea.

This discrepancy in the specific wording on the MSDS versus the Label can be confusing. In general the MSDS recommendations should be followed when dealing with the concentrate, particularly spills and other hazardous situations. The Label should be followed when using the material in the normal manner for application. You may find other contradictory statements, such as the kind of eye protection you have to wear, and the Label recommendation is the one to follow for normal mixing, loading, diluting, and application.

These are really good questions to go over with your local regulatory inspectors, because they are the ones who will cite you if you are not in compliance with the regulations in YOUR state or county. Way back in 1988 California completed revising the “Worker Safety Regulations”, and this really did benefit our industry by providing much more specific requirements regarding these kinds of issues. It is really tough to enforce vague laws, so by making them more clear for us the regulators did us a favor. This includes specific guidelines on TRAINING – what kind, when, by whom, and how documented, and this is a good idea too.

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