As stewards of pesticides, we want to do everything that we can to prevent or mitigate any negative impact our services or treatments may have on the occupants and property of the location we are servicing and the natural environment. There is no more prevalent situation that we are facing right now than the accidental environmental drift of rodent baits that are used to keep disease-spreading rodents out of our food supply, office buildings, and hospitals.
About Rodenticide
Sprague has mounted an effort to reduce our reliance on rodenticide bait. This is a multi-pronged approach utilizing non-chemical approaches in conjunction with a selective use of rodenticides when shown to be necessary. This doesn’t mean that we don’t use the exterior bait stations. In fact, those are just as important as ever as we using this as a delivery for a non-toxic monitoring block, a rodenticide bait, or to hold traps to capture the rats or mice preventing them from ever entering the building.
Rodenticide Reduction Explained
In this approach, we utilize a non-toxic monitoring block to determine if there is rodent activity on the exterior of the building, where those rodents are moving, and how active they are. Once this is determined, an evaluation occurs to determine if a rodenticide is needed, which one would be best for the situation, an where it should be applied.
Efficacy of Rodenticide Reduction
On the surface, this approaches appears to leave “holes” in the rodent protection around a facility. However, if we look closer, it provides the control in a targeted manner applying the interventions where they will be most effective instead a of shotgun approach of applying a pesticide indiscriminately around the exterior of a building regardless if there is a pest present or not. But that also means that reliance on the non-chemical interventions increases and becomes that much more important to prevent a rodent population from being attracted to a facility or becoming established on the exterior trying to gain access to the interior of the building.
Benefits of Rodenticide Reduction
A benefit of this approach is that there is less rodenticide to be accessed by non-targets on the property. It can help reduce the potential for non-target organisms for primary poisoning by consuming the bait from the station. Over all, with less active ingredient on a property, then the potential decreases for exposure. Secondary poisoning is an issue with the use of anticoagulant rodenticides. If these are consumed by the rodent and predator consumes that rodent or a scavenger consumes the carcass, then that non-target has potential to consume some of the active ingredient. Sprague us aware of this and, as part of the rodenticide reduction efforts, in certain cases utilizes rodenticides that do not case this non-target impact.