Exterminators make gains with pesticides panel

WATERVILLE – Pesticide control applicators and the Maine Board of Pesticides Control seemed to be moving closer to consensus Friday when the state regulation panel held its third round of public hearings on proposed pesticide application regulations.

The board members have been charged by the Legislature with developing regulations designed to reduce the unnecessary use of pesticides in restaurants, hotels, grocery stores and other buildings used by the public with the exception of K-12 schools. The panel has pursued a philosophy that sanctions the use of pesticides to eradicate infestations only after nonchemical methods, such as traps, have failed.

The board also has demonstrated considerable concern for members of the public and employees who may wish to be notified before a potentially hazardous chemical is applied in their apartment building or workplace.

Numerous questions were raised during the board’s October meeting about how notification should take place and who should be assigned responsibility for notifying employees or tenants of a pending pest control treatment. When the board reconvened Friday’s meeting, staff analysts had rewritten a portion of the rule that had formerly required two stages of notification. It now requires just one notice conspicuously posted at the premises 24 hours prior to a pesticide application. The board’s latest draft of the regulations also designated the pesticide applicator as the responsible party for providing the notification.

Additional changes to the draft policy included:

. Eliminating a requirement that most applications would take place on nights or weekends when people would not be present.

. Delaying implementation of the rule for 60 days after adoption to familiarize all parties with the policy.

. Creating a single official format for notification poster.

Despite the proposed changes, some of the applicators still had concerns over aspects of the policy, including notification requirements and proposed restrictions on a specific pesticide treatment to cracks and crevices within a building. Richard Stevenson Sr. of Modern Pest Services based in Brunswick, said if the intent of the new rules was to restrict the use of pesticides to an absolute minimum, the 24-hour notification requirement would probably be enough to convince a business owner or landlord to resolve his own pest problems by purchasing pesticides at a local hardware store.

“[The rule] prevents us from responding to a pest problem promptly,” he said. “People will be encouraged to do pest control themselves using far more pesticide than is necessary and doing so haphazardly. The board should be encouraging professional use, not discouraging it.”

Ralph Blumenthal of Atlantic Pest Solutions in Arundel commended the board for working with applicators to resolve their concerns over the new policies, but he felt the panel was heading in the wrong direction on assigning responsibility to the applicator for notifying employees and tenants of an impending pest control treatment.

“We believe that notification, if it is necessary, should be done by the recipient of the service – not the pest management provider,” he said. “We notify those people now, and we feel it’s their responsibility to let their tenants or occupants know about the services that are going to be provided.”

Several of the applicators also said they would like to have more flexibility than the proposed policies offer for crack and crevice treatments. The applications have been discouraged by the panel because of the potential volatility of the particular pesticides typically used in such cases and the difficulty such treatments pose in terms of containment. Stevenson suggested applicators could effectively target a specified area for treatment by using a spaghetti tube applicator, which would inject the pesticide directly into a crack or crevice and not produce any spillover that could leach into an undesired area.

Alice Percy, chairman of the Public Policy Committee for the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, urged the committee not to make the cracks and crevices policy any less restrictive than is currently proposed.

“We’re afraid that things that you put behind baseboards don’t necessarily stay behind baseboards, so we would continue to see you require notification for crack and crevice treatments,” she said.

The board has set a deadline for submitting written comments on its proposed rule changes for 4 p.m. Friday, March 10, and could take further action on the revisions at its next meeting tentatively planned for March 31.

Further information on the board’s proposed revisions can be found on the Internet at www.maine.gov/agriculture/pesticides/laws/rulemaking.htm.