Bug Busters Poison-Free Pest Controls for Your House & Garden Bernice Lifton

ISBN: 0-7570-0095-9 Length: 304 Pages Size: 6 X 9-inch Format: Quality Paperback Category: House & Home / Gardening / Pest Control Price: $14.95 US Availability: In Print Click below for: Synopsis • Contents Introduction • Reviews

Synopsis

Are bugs and rodents becoming a real problem in your home and garden? Wouldn’t it be great if you could find a way to get rid of those pesky critters without endangering your health and that of your family and pets through the use of chemical pesticides?

Well, now you can. Bug Busters was specially designed to offer sensible solutions for people who want better alternatives. Now in its third edition, Bug Busters provides dozens of easy, environmentally safe methods--using inexpensive equipment and supplies commonly found in most homes--for keeping your household free of pests.

Written in easy-to-understand language, this book combines traditional time-proven pest controls with the latest findings of the National Centers for Disease Control, university research, and the U.S. Government. Also included are some new and innovative techniques for safely eradicating vermin. The ecologically sound methods described are more effective than chemical pesticides in the long run because they kill or repel only the pest they are designed to work against--leaving natural predators unharmed--and because insects cannot build up an immunity to them.

Even when a chemical pesticide or exterminator may be your only recourse, as with termite infestation, Bug Busters tells you how to find a competent professional and how to properly handle and dispose of chemical pesticides. At a time when literally thousands of adults and children are treated yearly for pesticide mishaps, Bug Busters provides important information for those individuals concerned with safe and intelligent pest control.

Bernice Lifton is a professional writer-editor-researcher. She is a graduate of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. As a journalist, her articles have appeared in numerous national magazines, including Parents and This Week. As an editor, she has developed, rewritten, and edited several dozen college textbooks. For the last fifteen years, Ms. Lifton has studied and researched environmentally safe and effective methods of pest control. She and her husband currently live in Pasadena, California.

Contents

Foreword
Preface
How to Use This Book

Part 1: No Pests, No Poisons
1. Controls, Not Chemicals
2. Is Your Problem Really Insect Pests?

Part 2: Pests of Food
3. Outsmarting the Cagey Cockroach
4. Critters in the Crackers, Pests in the Pantry
5. Rats and Mice: There’s No Pied Piper
6. The Fearsome Fly

Part 3: Pests of the Body
7. The Mosquito--A Deadly Nuisance
8. The Mighty Flea, the Insidious Tick
9. Lice and Bedbugs: The Unmentionables

Part 4: Pests of Property
10. Clothes Moths, Carpet Beetles, Silverfish, Firebrats, and Crickets
11. Termites and Carpenter Ants: The Hidden Vandals
12. Garden Pests--Part of the Landscape

Part 5: Controlling the Controllers
13. Ants, Spiders, and Wasps--Useful but Unwelcome
14. Pesticides: Only as a Last Resort

References
Index

Introduction

Bug Busters has been organized in such a way as to help you understand pest control and the problems you will encounter in coping with specific pests. The book is divided into five parts. Part One describes overall strategies that, if consistently followed, will make your home less attractive to insects and rodents. It also discusses the possibility that your real problem may not be pests at all. Parts Two through Five deal with the most common household pests, detailing controls for those most apt to invade your home.

Part Two, Pests of Food, discusses cockroaches, pantry pests, rats, mice, and flies. Part Three explains how to control Pests of the Body--mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, lice, and bedbugs. Not only are all of the pests mentioned in Parts Two and Three unpleasant, but they also can carry serious diseases. (By the way, all can be controlled without chemicals.) Part Four describes Pests of Property--clothes moths, carpet beetles, silverfish, crickets, termites, and carpenter ants. The section concludes with a look at garden pests. Part Five, Controlling the Controllers, details ways to of suppressing ants, spiders, and wasps. All of these creatures actually help to control true pests--even though most of us we don’t want them to come too close. Included in this last section is a chapter on the safe use of chemical pesticides. I firmly believe that sound home construction and maintenance, coupled with reasonably careful housekeeping, makes the use of household pesticides almost completely unnecessary. However, I also know that we are all human and likely to let household chores slide at times and the structure of our homes deteriorate. In addition, seasonal surges in pest populations can bring what seems like an army of insects into your home. If a pest is a known carrier of disease or is especially destructive of property, you will want to bring it under control quickly. Under such circumstances, you may feel an urgent need to use a chemical pesticide. Most pesticide poisonings in the home are caused by the misuse of these poisons or careless storage or disposal of them. Therefore, it is essential to pay close attention and take care if you must resort to using them. Careful reading of this chapter could save you from grief.

There are two toxic substances that I feel can be used safely in the home: Boric acid, an “old reliable,” and hydramethylnon, a relative newcomer. Both are among the least toxic antipest chemicals we have, and both are effective against cockroaches. Because those ubiquitous pests are so hardy and persistent, the measures I recommend for most pest infestations--shutting them out, starving them out, and trapping them--may not be enough to get rid of them completely. Both boric acid and hydramethylnon can be placed in out-of-the-way locations where they are no threat to children or pets.

In the chapter on mosquitoes, I also recommend the repellent N-N-diethyl-m-toluamide (DEET). If misused, DEET is dangerous. However, the risk of a deadly or disabling mosquitoborne disease such as malaria, dengue fever, or encephalitis is much greater than any risk from the correct use of DEET.

Discussions of poisons fall into three categories. Some poisons--for instance, warfarin, a rodenticide--are mentioned simply to let you know that they are commonly used against a particular pest. Others--such as phosphorus, which is sometimes used illegally against rats--are mentioned as being especially dangerous, and I warn you never to try them. The third group includes substances that, like boric acid, are the least toxic control available for a stubborn infestations. Throughout chapters 1 through 13, the discussions of toxins in this last category have been to alert you to the fact that, although the use of a given substance is sometimes warranted, that substance is nevertheless a poison and should be used with caution. It should be noted that toxins in this category have been screened only when the substance is suitable for the average reader to use. Those substances and procedures that should be used only by a professional pest control operator have not been marked with a screen; in such cases, it is the pest control operator who will assume responsibility for proper use of the pesticide. (Information on choosing a qualified pest control operator is provided in Chapter 000.) In addition, in the interest of practicality, those substances mentioned in Chapter 000, Pesticides: The Last Resort also are not printed with the gray screen, since this entire chapter deals with substances that fall into this third category.

Individual chapters follow a general pattern. The introductory portions about the pest or pests discussed in each chapter (cockroaches, or ants, or whatever) describe the appearance, nature, and habits of the animals. The portions of the chapter devoted to ways to control the pests are generally divided into a number of sections, among them the following:

• Shut Them Out, which details measures for preventing the pest’s intrusion. In nearly all cases, keeping the pest from getting in is the safest control, your first line of defense.

• Starve Them Out, which tells you which types of foods and other substances attract the animal. By making your home an inhospitable environment, you can eliminate a great many of various types of pests

• Wipe Them Out, which tells you how to eliminate the survivors.

Not every chapter has information in each category--for example, in Chapter 12, Garden Pests, most of the above measures are not applicable, so the emphasis is on control.

I hope that this organizational structure will make Bug Busters truly helpful, a source book of environmentally sound pest control methods that you can refer to repeatedly over the years and that will make your home a safer place.

Reviews

"Dozens of environmentally safe, easy methods are provided."

--The Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 2, 2005

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