As people become more aware of the environment around them. The demand for safer pest control products has risen. What has risen alongside it is a lot of confusion about what is and isn’t safe. Other rising considerations include the topic of organic pest control and how toxic the product is.

Do you want something that kills bugs?  If the answer is yes, then the product will most likely be toxic. It is important to distinguish between toxic and natural. A pyrethrin (bug killer) can be totally natural and still be toxic. There are many natural substances that are toxic or downright poisonous (rhubarb leaves for example - quite natural, quite deadly).

It is possible to get deterrent only sprays or a spray that includes nothing toxic. These can be limited in the success that results.

What is organic? This is mostly thought of in reference to the food chain (are these tomatoes organic?) but there is demand for sprays to be organic. Organic refers to the standards to which the product has been made to and the exclusion of synthetic materials in production. Here in NZ we suppliers can go through a process with Asurequality to gain one of their levels of organic certification.

It is important to distinguish here that in terms of having your house sprayed, organic does not automatically mean better for you. An organic spray can be just as toxic as a synthetic one. Most people are concerned about sprays on there apples because they eat them - but we don’t eat the walls after our house is sprayed. This said, there is certainly still very valid concern about what is sprayed in our houses and there are products that should be avoided.

Instead of asking a person before having you house sprayed “is it organic”, a good question to ask would be “what are you going to use”? Once you know this you can look up the material safety data sheets on the internet and immediately you are more informed. If you want to be cheeky you could then ask “why”? At the risk of the person hanging up, if they can explain why they are going to use this product as opposed to other products on the market - you are probably well on your way to finding a well informed provider who has come armed with knowledge of his/her products.

Another trap to fall into when deciding  who to use for a spray is accepting the answer - we use pyrethrin or we use natural pyrethrin. Firstly pyrethrin doesn’t tell you that much (is it natural or synthetic)? Also remember that natural pyrethrin can be augmented with synthetic products to make them more effective.  What matters most here is what is not being said, and that is not what the active ingredient is but in what formulation will it be used in, in your house. Will it be in the form of an emulsifiable concentrate, a wettable powder, a suspension concentrate? This really matters and would be a great question to ask whoever you are considering using. If they don’t know - its a really bad sign.

For more information on organic pest control treatments (commercial and domestic) in the greater Auckland region, feel free to e-mail enquiry@pestcontrol.net.nz The company - Abolish pest control - now has a range of organic treatments to cater for most pest problems.