- Author: Mike Merchant
What do “pest control” and public health campaigns against SARS Cov-2 have in common? Both activities use pesticides. In the eyes of the law, sanitizer and disinfectant products are considered pesticides. And if you're a little wary of using pesticides, you should exercise the same caution when choosing and using a disinfectant.
Originally posted by Mike Merchant on Insects in the City.
Let's start with some basics. The term ‘pesticide' refers to any substance or mixture of substances used to prevent, destroy, repel or mitigate a pest. All pesticides are regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which gets to decide if, how and where they can be used.
Pesticides that fight microbes are generally called antimicrobials. Antimicrobials that fight germs affecting human health can be further classified as sanitizers, disinfectants, virucides and sterilants. About 275 active ingredients are found in antimicrobials, most of which are considered pesticides and must have an EPA-approved label (a few sanitizer products–such as alcohol gels–for use on skin are considered drugs rather than pesticides, and are regulated as such by the Food and Drug Administration). Most of the effective products that fight the SARS-CoV-2 virus are considered disinfectants or virucides.
Since January we've watched endless news clips of sanitary workers cleaning surfaces, and even entire buildings, with disinfectants. Shopping for groceries has become an adventure in disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer. And the empty shelves in the cleaning supply sections of stores attest to our new obsession with clean, clean, clean!
But how many of us stop to consider the health effects of disinfectants, or to read the labels on these products? If you find yourself using disinfectants, or touching disinfectant-treated surfaces, now's an excellent time to brush up on disinfectant safety. Specifically let's review some of the important things we all need to know about reading and understanding disinfectant labels.
Read the label
- Unlike instructions on a box of mac and cheese, instructions on a disinfectant label are the law, not suggestions. Using even a little more disinfectant than the label allows in a cleaning solution, or failing to wear the proper safety gear specified on the label, to give two examples, is a violation of state and federal pesticide laws.
- Look for an EPA registration number (see label to right). This is a unique number that tells you the product has been reviewed by the EPA and allows you to reference it. For example, the EPA has developed a list of all disinfectants that are believed to be effective against the SARS-CoV-2 virus (List N). If you want to know whether your disinfectant is likely to be effective against coronavirus, you can look it up in this table by its registration number.
- Read the precautionary statements. Precautionary statements include specific requirements on what you must wear when applying the product. If you're an employer or supervisor it's critical you provide training to ensure employees know disinfectant instructions and have the proper safety equipment. In a recent case, employees of a large company were told to switch from mild green-cleaning agents to a powerful disinfectant to deal with the coronavirus emergency. Not used to the new product, janitorial staff became ill and suffered red- itchy skin and burning eyes.
- Pay attention to contact times on the disinfectant label. Many disinfectants must remain wet on surfaces for an extended time (usually 1 to 10 minutes) to effectively kill viruses and bacteria. Don't assume you can immediately wipe down a surface that you treat with a disinfectant.
- When deciding on a safe disinfectant to use in your home or workplace, consider the signal word. The signal word provides a quick reference to the relative hazard associated with using a product. One of three signal words–DANGER, WARNING, or CAUTION must be on the front panel of any disinfectant product. DANGER signals the highest warning. Such products may be highly toxic when ingested, or may induce irreversible eye or skin damage if used without proper protective gear. WARNING labeled products are moderately toxic if ingested or may cause reversible skin or eye irritation. CAUTION labeled products will be the least hazardous, and would be best for home environments, especially where children are present.
- Pay attention to what surfaces the disinfectant is designed to be used on, and what kind of application methods are allowed by the label. If a product is labeled for use on hard, non-porous environmental surfaces, it shouldn't be used on carpet or furniture. Something designed to be applied with a sponge should not be used in a fogger or sprayer.
- Care should be taken with even with the simplest task of removing disinfectant wipes from their plastic tubs. We have reports of people getting disinfectant in their eyes from tiny droplets erupting when towels are pulled too quickly from the container.
Treat all disinfectants with the same respect you would any pesticide. Since coronavirus began its spread, the EPA has been receiving more health-related emergency calls about improper use of disinfectants. One common problem occurs when people use Clorox wipes to wipe their faces–not good. One couple thought they could drink bleach to cure COVID-19. And they are many more cases of people being hurt by mixing chlorine- and ammonia-containing products (resulting in production of the toxic gas, ammonium chloride). None of these are good ideas and none are recommended on the label.
Our office provides training throughout the year to folks in the pest control, public health and outdoor landscape maintenance industries. One of the things we drill into our students is the importance of reading the label for safety and legal purposes. All of us need to exercise the same caution when using disinfectant products. They are, after all, pesticides.
Originally posted by Mike Merchant on Insects in the City.
/h4>- Author: Ben Faber
The recent Huanglongbing Conference in Orlando, FL was chock full of people and ideas. Some of the ideas were still in the fermentation state and some were in practice on farm. One of the ideas that has been put into practice is the use of antibiotics, such as tetracycline and streptomycin to control the bacteria, Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas), which causes HLB or citrus greening. This is somewhat disturbing since the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria which affects humans has been affected by the wide-spread use in animal production facilities. This has led to some food companies to discontinue the sourcing of meat from animals treated with antibiotics for non-health reasons.
Antibiotics are molecules that limit the growth or reproduction of bacteria. They come under the umbrella of bactericides which include antibiotics, but also disinfectants like bleach and copper sulfate and antiseptics like peroxide, iodine and alcohol. Antibiotics when properly used will not harm human tissue and can be derived from bacteria, fungi and synthetically and will often act directly on the bacteria that is causing the disease. Some of these molecules can be simple assemblages of amino acids called peptides (etymology “to digest”) or strings of peptides called proteins. And sometimes they do not work on the bacteria itself, but on steps that lead up to processes that make the bacteria effective at its job.
At the conference, several papers were presented that illustrated this type of antibiotic effect. One of these papers was presented by Robert Shatters for his group. The peptide they are looking at actually inhibits the movement of the CLas bacteria in the gut of the insect, reducing or possibly preventing the transmission of the bacteria to the host plant – citrus.
The following is an abstract from the paper.
Identification of gut epithelium binding peptides that reduce systemic movement of ‘Candidatus' Liberibacter asiaticus within the Asian citrus psyllid vector
Robert G. Shatters, Jr1, Dov Borovsky1, El-Desouky Ammar1, David Hall1, Kasie Sturgeon2, EricaRose Warwick2, Marc Giulianotti3, Radleigh G Santos3 and Clemencia Pinilla4
1USDA, ARS, USHRL, Fort Pierce, FL USA; 2University of Florida, CREC, Lake Alfred, FL USA; 3Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies, Port St Lucie, FL USA; Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies, San Diego, CA USA.
Non-Technical summary: The Asian citrus psyllid is the only known vector of the bacteriumthat causes citrus greening disease. This insect acquires CLas from an infected citrus tree while feeding as a nymph. Transmission to uninfected trees occurs when infected adults emerge and fly off and feed on uninfected trees. Our current understanding of the CLas-psyllid interaction suggests that adults become competent for transmission only after the bacterium moves from the insect gut into the hemolymph and then to the salivary glands. We have identified a set of small peptides that when fed to the psyllid, bind the gut membranes and reduce the ability of the citrus greening bacterium to move from the gut to the salivary glands. These peptides are now being tested to determine if they can be used as an effective way of reducing the spread of citrus greening disease.
This and other paper abstracts will soon be available at: http://irchlb.org/files/33373ab0-7df3-4117-9.pdf
photo: HLB Symptoms
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
When the United Nations meets Sept. 21 in New York, they want the UN to reframe its action on the global antimicrobial drug resistance (AMR) crisis.
It's crucial. How crucial is it?
Antimicrobial drug resistance threatens both personal and planetary health and the issue is as crucial as the global threat of climate change, Carroll says.
In a paper titled “Use Antimicrobials Wisely,” published in the current edition of Nature, a nine-member international research team, including Carroll, explained their advocacy.
“We're concerned about what will happen if the proposed UN solutions focus mainly on incentives for new drug development, at a time when the drug industry itself is abandoning those efforts against infectious disease due to AMR,” said Carroll, who co-leads the international group on resistance to pesticides and antimicrobial drugs. He founded and directs the Institute for Contemporary Evolution, Davis, and is affiliated with the Sharon Lawler lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
The paper, published in the Comment section, is the first product from a two-year working group sponsored by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center in Annapolis, Md. “We are taking a similar socio-environmental approach in our concurrent work on pesticide stewardship,” Carroll said.
“While new drugs have a role, we think it's more important for society to learn how to steward pathogen susceptibility, so we develop that theme in the paper,” Carroll said. “And because we also depend on microbes for digestion, immunity, and general health, and microbes support ecosystem functioning through nutrient cycles and the maintenance of soil and water quality, we further argue that our AM drug habits and waste streams threaten both personal and planetary health. “
Lead authors of the paper are Peter Jorgensen of Stockholm, Sweden, and Didier Wernli of Geneva Switzerland. Jørgensen, who spent part of his Danish graduate program working with Carroll in Davis, is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, Stockholm.
Carroll described AMR as more than a medical dilemma—it's a socio-ecological problem. “The vulnerability of pathogens to antimicrobial drugs is a communal resource, readily threatened by overuse, to be lost as a classic 'tragedy of the commons.' There is a lot of contemporary theory for social resilience in the face of socio-ecological challenges, and– linking to entomology– the early success of the pioneering management of Bt crop pest resistance evolution is an encouraging precedent.”
In its planetary health approach, the group seeks to be “more cognizant not only of preserving drug susceptibility in pathogenic microbes, but also protecting from wholesale destruction the community of microbes on which we depend for life,” Carroll said.
In the paper, the scientists pointed out that “Resistance affects animal and environmental health as well as human health, and so requires coordinated action across economic sectors. No single concern exemplifies this better than the high rate of antibiotic use in agriculture (largely as growth promoters or disease prevention).” They wrote that in the United States, 70 to 80 percent of all anti-microbials consumed are given to livestock.
An example of antimicrobial resistance involves the malaria mosquito, Anopheles gambiae. The World Health Organization (WHO) in a document, "Global Action Plan on Anti-Microbial Resistance," wrote:
"Antimicrobial resistance can affect all patients and families. Some of the commonest childhood diseases in developing countries – malaria, pneumonia, other respiratory infections, and dysentery – can no longer be cured with many older antibiotics or medicines. In lower- income countries, effective and accessible antibiotics are crucial for saving the lives of children who have those diseases, as well as other conditions such as bacterial blood infections. In all countries, some routine surgical operations and cancer chemotherapy will become less safe without effective antibiotics to protect against infections."
Expect to hear more about this alarming crisis--the global antimicrobial drug resistance crisis. Meanwhile, read the WHO Global Action Plan.
- Author: Cheryl Reynolds
School is already back in session for many children in districts throughout California, and several others will be starting back to school in the next couple of weeks. While students and teachers were enjoying summer break, an amendment to the Healthy Schools Act (HSA) went into effect on July 1st. It requires teachers, custodians, administrators, other staff or volunteers, and licensed pest management professionals applying any pesticide (this includes disinfectants and antimicrobials) at a school site to take an annual training course covering school integrated pest management (IPM). The training course must be approved by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR).
An online course, Providing Integrated Pest Management Services in Schools and Child Care Settings, developed by the UC Statewide IPM Program and the Center for Environmental Research and Children's Health (CERCH), has recently been approved by DPR to satisfy the annual training requirement of the HSA. Although this course was designed for licensed pest management professionals, anyone applying any type of pesticide in schools or child care centers will benefit from the course.
IPM is a strategy that focuses on long-term prevention of pests through a combination of techniques such as monitoring for pest presence, cleaning up food sources, sealing up cracks, and excluding pests with screens. Effective pesticides that pose the least possible hazard and that minimize harm to people, property, and the environment are used only after careful monitoring indicates they are needed.
Prior to July 1st, schools were already required to do the following:
- Designate an IPM coordinator at the school or district level to make sure the requirements of the HSA are met
- Create an IPM plan
- Provide annual written notification to all parents and staff of pesticide products intended for use at the school site during the year and allow the opportunity for them to be notified before certain applications
- Post warning signs where certain pesticides are applied
- Keep records of pesticide applications
- Send pesticide use reports to DPR annually
Some pesticide products are exempt from the IPM plan, notification, posting, recordkeeping, and reporting* requirements of the HSA at school sites. These are reduced-risk pesticide products, and their use is encouraged at schools if pesticides are deemed necessary. These include:
- Self-contained baits or traps
- Gels or pastes used indoors in cracks and crevices
- Antimicrobials, including sanitizers and disinfectants
- Pesticides exempt from registration, such as food grade oils
However, these products are NOT exempt from the Healthy Schools Act annual training requirement that went into effect July 1st. Anyone who uses these products—a licensed professional, school staff or child care staff—is still required to take the HSA annual training course.
To satisfy this annual training requirement, take the free UC IPM online course by visiting the UC IPM online training webpage. For more on school and child care IPM and other courses that satisfy the Healthy Schools Act training requirement, visit the DPR website.
*Licensed pest management professionals hired to apply pesticides at schools or licensed child care centers must continue to submit their regular pesticide reports of ALL registered pesticides to DPR annually and to the county monthly.
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