What’s New in School IPM?

Newest report on pest management practices in California schools.

Click here to see report (PDF, 2.3 mb)

New regulatory status feature for School IPM HELPR (August 15, 2003)

Finding information on least-hazardous pest management options just got easier. DPR has just added a regulatory status page to the School IPM HELPR (Health and Environmental Impacts Lookup Resource), which allows users to see at a glance whether specific pesticide active ingredients are on various regulatory lists. By clicking on the “status” button, you can tell whether a chemical is listed as a Proposition 65 carcinogen or reproductive toxicant, a U.S. EPA biopesticide, or a U.S. EPA “minimum risk” ingredient. Click here to see an example, or here to use School IPM HELPR.

This enhancement makes the HELPR pages a seamless, one-stop resource for pest managers. Starting with a specific pest problem—chosen from a list of 11 common urban pests—users can:

• Read management practices recommended by the University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UCIPM), including preventive practices,
• compare environmental and health impacts of those practices, including information on toxicity and potential exposure,
• see whether recommended pesticide active ingredients are listed on various regulatory lists (new feature),
• generate a list of products currently available for each practice,
• view the search criteria used to assemble this product list (new feature), and
• view detailed information on each individual product (new feature).

DPR’s California School IPM Program teamed up with UCIPM two years ago to create School IPM HELPR, and unveiled the first version last year. Since that time, DPR has steadily added pests and features to the HELPR pages. To see for yourself, go to www.cdpr.ca.gov/schoolipm/health_issues/main.cfm#usehelper and click on a “HELPR” button.

DPR has now directly linked its "School IPM HELPR" (Health and Environmental Impacts Lookup Resource) product pages to detailed reports on registered pesticide products. These reports give the complete rundown on each product: formulation, environmental hazards, re-entry intervals, other ingredients, and more. To access a report, simply click on the product name. For an example, click here , then click a product. In addition, users can now view the criteria used to assemble each product list. This can be found on the same page by clicking the "click here to view specific search criteria" link.

DPR's California School IPM Program teamed up with the University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UCIPM) two years ago to create School IPM HELPR. The first version was unveiled last year. Since that time, DPR and UCIPM have steadily added pests and features to the HELPR pages. To see for yourself, click here , then click on a "HELPR" button.

Reprinted with permission from the Bakersfield Californian

Schools Learn to Bug their Pests Better

Mitchell Perez remembers a time 18 years ago when diesel fuel was sprayed liberally on school grounds as a weed killer.

He also remembers watching students walk through a fog of Diquat, a powerful herbicide, as it was sprayed along walkways at 8 a.m. when the morning school bells rang.

Perez was a grounds worker for the Kern High School District then, and those types of practices were common.

"I just thought, ’There's got to be something better than this,‘" he said. "There was no control."

Today, Perez is the district's grounds equipment superintendent, overseeing 16 grounds workers, and there is control.

In October, the district received an award from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation for developing a model program to minimize pesticide use on school grounds. The Integrated Pest Management Innovator Award recognized the district's effort and its work to share this knowledge with other school districts.

Of the four awards given statewide this year, two went to Kern County agencies. The other is Self-Insured Schools of California, a Bakersfield-based risk management agency, which developed a program to help its 130 member school districts in 13 counties reduce their use of pesticides.

Glenn Brank, spokesman for the Department of Pesticide Regulation, called the awards especially significant because the two entities worked so hard to help other schools. Kern High School District is the largest high school district in the state, so its efforts make the job look easier to others.

"Many of the things they have done have actually served as models for school systems all over the state," Brank said. "It's not just lip service. They're really doing stuff."

Integrated pest management, or IPM, is a fancy term for pest control that aims to be comprehensive and low-risk. In the old days, when ants, roaches or weeds appeared, someone like Perez would simply unleash whatever poisonous potion was close at hand. Perez called this the "glug-glug theory," and it was bad for the environment and public health.

Today, the IPM approach first asks why there is a pest, and then looks for solutions.

In the case of weeds, it may be that ornamental landscaping isn't vigorous enough to crowd out unwanted plants. For bothersome insects and rodents, the real problem is often sanitation. Initial tasks address these issues, and chemicals are applied only if these efforts fail. Then, only the least toxic materials are used, in the least amount necessary, and only when student exposure can be minimized.

For example, instead of tenting and gassing a whole building to kill termites, Perez now uses concentrated heat in specific locations to bake the bugs to death. Instead of spraying Raid to kill ants and roaches, he sprays a product called Victor Poison Free that is mostly cedar oil.

Instead of marking sports-field lines by killing strips of grass with Roundup, Perez dyes the grass. And whenever possible, chemicals are applied only before or after school hours to limit student and staff exposure.

"Now there are alternatives that seem much more environmentally friendly, and it seems like that’s absolutely the right direction," said John Gibson, principal at East Bakersfield High School, who praised the approach Perez initiated. "Our campus looks as wonderful as it’s ever looked. We’re happy, and if the kids are safer and the place still looks good, I’m thinking we’re on the right track."

The new methods have some drawbacks, but that’s hardly the point, said Catherine Jones of Self-Insured Schools of California. The safer chemicals tend to work slower, so more staff time is required for monitoring and follow-up. As a result, the new ways aren’t necessarily cheaper.

"In some cases, it has not made their lives easier, better or cheaper," Jones, the group’s director of safety and loss control, said of her member schools. "What you’re doing with IPM is you’re trading the immediate for the long term. If you just make a little bit of effort on the front end, it will help you on the back end."

Handling of pesticides has also changed. Once upon a time, each school site ordered and stored its own chemicals, and there was little tracking of how much was applied. Now all pesticides in the Kern High School District are ordered by Perez and stored in a single location.

Perez recently showed off the tidy 8- by 12-foot room at the district’s warehouse on East Belle Terrace Avenue where the pesticides are stored.

For a district with 26 school sites to maintain, it’s a surprisingly small amount of stuff. Two metal shelving units of five shelves each hold bug and rodent killers, herbicides and dyes. A single pallet of Roundup serves the district for a full year, and it’s a new powdered variety that is easy to clean up in case of a spill.

Perez started learning more about pesticide control as a way to advance his career. He figured more training would lead to more pay and advancement opportunities. So he got licensed by the state Department of Agriculture to apply pesticides, even though that wasn’t required for school districts.

"We were exempt, and I said to myself, ’why can’t I?‘ So I developed my own program," Perez said.

He began holding pesticide-handling seminars for district employees. Word spread to other local districts, so he offered regional training. Self-Insured Schools of California heard about his work and became interested, Jones said.

"We got involved with Mitchell and Kern High School District to sort of spread the training around," she said. "Mitchell really has such a good program and such a good framework already in place, so why reinvent the wheel?"

Jones’ group expanded that work by researching new methods and finding schools to conduct trial programs before subjecting all its members to something untested. For example, Fruitvale School District in Bakersfield proved the effectiveness of a mint-oil insecticide now widely used by the group.

"We’ve always looked at schools as being a real challenge for the concept of IPM," Brank said. "If schools can make the grade with IPM, then that sets an incredible standard for other segments of the community."

School IPM HELPR serves as a one-stop information resource for anyone involved in school IPM. School administrators, for example, can use HELPR to answer questions on the safety of specific pesticides used in their schools. Parents can get a clearer view of the tradeoff between using pesticides and leaving pest problems untreated. School IPM coordinators, maintenance staff, or contractors can check to make sure they are using the least hazardous approach possible. Since pest prevention is the key to successful IPM programs, preventive tactics are always presented first on the HELPR pages.

As the primary regulator of pesticides in California, DPR maintains extensive public databases on pesticide products, product labels, and active ingredients. UCIPM is widely recognized as the authoritative source of pest management information in California: Its Pest Notes series summarizes the latest, peer-reviewed information on identification, biology, prevention, and treatment for many common home and landscape pests.

DPR and UCIPM staff created School IPM HELPR to meet specific mandates of the Healthy Schools Act of 2000 (HSA). School IPM HELPR automatically searches DPR’s databases, using UCIPM’s information to frame the search. For some items, such as toxicological fact sheets, HELPR links the user to authoritative resources elsewhere. Other information, such as U.S. EPA signal words or restricted use status, is drawn directly from DPR sources. To generate product lists, the particular combination of active ingredients, formulations, application methods, and target pest are used to generate a list of registered pesticide products from DPR’s product-label databases. The list is further narrowed down by allowing only certain "site codes," that is, allowable uses for a product, such as "landscape," "rights of way," or "ornamental woody shrubs." Of course, these lists do not substitute for a careful reading of the product label.
Click here for a full explanation of the data sources behind HELPR. (Click here to go to a sample School IPM HELPR page)

The California School IPM Program has released a checklist of pest prevention tactics specifically designed for schools. Entitled Pest Prevention: Maintenance Practices and Facility Design, the new resource lists techniques that school pest managers, staff, and contractors should understand and practice. The list is divided into facility design and maintenance practices, and individual techniques are grouped into categories of exclusion, sanitation, moisture management, and maintenance of plant health in turf and landscaped areas. You will find more than 150 practices listed here, with links to other references containing many additional suggestions.

Prevention is the key to effective, least-hazardous pest management programs in the school environment. If the conditions that attract and support pests are not eliminated, other control tactics are likely to prove ineffective or temporary. Control strategies covered in this resource address the "big four" prevention issues: food, water, harborage, and access required by pests. Specific structural and procedural modifications that reduce food, water, harborage, and access are listed in an easily accessible format.

As characterized in the Healthy Schools Act of 2000, integrated pest management (IPM) is a strategy that focuses on long-term prevention of pest problems through a combination of techniques such as monitoring for pest presence and establishing treatment threshold levels, using non-chemical practices to make the habitat less conducive to pest development, improving sanitation, and employing mechanical and physical controls. Lasting solutions to pest problems usually depend on coordinated management initiatives to upgrade sanitation, housekeeping, repair and good occupant operating practices. A successful prevention program should include everyone involved in management and maintenance, as well as other school staff, teachers, and students.
Click here to see Pest Prevention: Maintenance Practices and Facility Design.