Pest Control

A government test has determined that a red dye used in many lipsticks is a powerful herbicide capable of killing marijuana plants, prompting some Bush Administration officials to propose using the dye in an airborne offensive against domestic marijuana cultivation.

In the market for a hot-water-dispensing refrigerator? That was just one of the innovative and unusual products on display this week at the International Builders' Show in Las Vegas. The annual event, put on by the National Assn. of Home Builders, serves as a massive showcase for new ideas and technology for the home. Here's a roundup of some that are vying for “how did we ever live without it” distinction: In one of the notable kitchen offerings, General Electric Co. brings hot water to the refrigerator door.

Monthly preventive sprayings and dustings for cockroaches and ants are among the pest control industry's biggest businesses. Experts agree that ridding homes and restaurants of cockroaches would cut down the incidence of food poisoning. "If (cockroaches) were to walk over a sewer or over a dead animal, and they were to walk into your house, they would carry certain organisms" on their feet, said Frank Hall, a vermin expert with the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

It started when an El Monte woman called to report an unusual pest: tiny mosquitoes that she said were biting her in the middle of the day. The complaint last week raised red flags for technicians at the San Gabriel Valley Mosquito & Vector Control District, who know that common mosquitoes typically attack during morning and evening hours. When a worker arrived at Dodson Street, one of the insects landed on his partner, so he trapped it in a plastic jar. "He took a close look at it, and he realized we might have a problem," said Kelly Middleton, a district spokeswoman.

About 2,300 companies are registered and 22,000 individuals are licensed to perform pest control in California, according to the Structural Pest Control Board in Sacramento. The board, which keeps records of consumer complaints against pest-control companies, receives about 1,200 complaints a year, most related to "undercalling" (missing an infestation). In 1997 and 1998, 46 licenses were revoked, mainly for undercalling and pesticide misapplication.

Many thanks for publishing Mary Fisher's fine article about my book, "Bugbusters: Getting Rid of Household Pests Without Dangerous Chemicals," on Oct. 4. It was a significant contribution to home safety. May I clarify one point? I would be very careful when putting boric acid in a cupboard. It should never be in contact with food or dishes and utensils. The safest way is to drill holes about six or eight inches apart in the kick plate of your kitchen or bathroom cabinets and blow the powder into that dead space.

Sharon Whatley likes to know what her family is eating. And it's not always easy to find out. "There is no way to tell what is sprayed on vegetables and fruit before they get to the supermarket, and I wanted to have control over that," said the Tustin resident. She started a garden in her back yard six years ago to ensure that her family ate only naturally grown, chemical-free produce. Then the bugs invaded her pure environment.

Question: I'm a new home gardener trying to maintain a pest-free environment to the extent possible for my plants and shrubs. Besides chemical applications, what recommendations can you make to help me achieve this objective? J.B., ORANGE Answer: The notion of pest control through pest eradication has largely been replaced in recent years by a multi-pronged ecological approach called integrated pest management (IPM).

The operator of a Granada Hills pest-control business was sentenced Friday to five years' probation and four days in County Jail after pleading no contest to 10 misdemeanor counts stemming from an incident last summer that caused the hospitalization of seven employees of a Beverly Hills department store.

Thomas R. Odhiambo, the Kenyan scientist who founded an international insect research center renowned for giving African farmers low-cost solutions for pest control, has died. He was 72. Odhiambo's physician, G.B.A. Okelo, said he was hospitalized three weeks ago, feeling tired and weak, and then diagnosed with liver cancer. He died Monday. "Before that, he was perfect. No complaints of any sort," Okelo said.

Creative-writing instructor Dick Wimmer's best lesson for would-be authors may have had more to do with persistence than prose. His first novel, the well-reviewed "Irish Wine," was published in 1989 after being turned down by publishers and agents 162 times over more than 25 years. He once laid claim to being history's most-rejected published novelist. At the time, his closest official competition was Steven Goldberg's "The Inevitability of Patriarchy," which sold after 69 rejections, the Guinness Book of World Records told The Times in 1989.

Another season, another press release from a pest-control association warning us that bedbugs are baaack in the United States! (We can’t think what they have to stand to gain by reminding us of this.)  Bedbugs are more common than they used to be: Read this L.A. Times article about bedbugs   from 2007, for example. That article quotes a fellow from the National Pest Management Assn., the same organization that just saw fit to alert the press today. And here’s another article we ran on the topic, last year—about bedbug-sniffing dogs , of all things.

If you're even slightly concerned about the privacy of your personal information, Jim Stickley is your worst nightmare. The chief technology officer of TraceSecurity, a risk management firm based in Louisiana, breaks into banks and steals their customers' most confidential information such as Social Security numbers and the details of their banking transactions. He could take your cash too, but says you probably have less money in your account than he could get by starting new credit in your name.

They're not as menacing as Burmese pythons proliferating in the Everglades, but giant African snails are targets of the government too. The invasive mollusks are considered a major plant pest and a potential public health threat because they can spread diseases, including meningitis. Now federal and state authorities are seeking to prevent the large, slimy, shell-toting snails from reestablishing themselves in Florida. Once established, agricultural officials said, the mollusks "can create a giant swath of destruction."

Bangkok's pigeons are little winged street toughs, nurtured on dust, dirt and noise. So, the local government, out of the goodness of its heart (or maybe after a look in its pocket), has decided they need a little "holiday" in the country. We're sending them to the forest, officials said recently, to live a life of luxury, clean air and food aplenty. "It's friendlier in the forest," said Teerachon Manomaiphibul, deputy governor of Bangkok, and pigeon relocator in chief.

More evidence emerged Tuesday to suggest that the voracious Asian carp is threatening to reach the Great Lakes, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported for the first time finding DNA samples of the carp beyond the locks in the Chicago area. The news came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene and issue an emergency order closing off all the locks that connect Illinois' rivers with Lake Michigan. "We have one sample positive in the Calumet Harbor above the breakwater, so that is in Lake Michigan," Maj. Gen. John Peabody said in a conference call with reporters.

With killer bees swarming for an invasion from Arizona and rats a persistent problem, the last thing county vector control manager Gil Challet expected was an old-fashioned revolt propagated by humans. Every day for a few weeks, letters have been streaming into his Garden Grove office from angry residents protesting a proposed $2 increase in annual pest control fees.

Libby Ouellette poked delicately at a cobweb covered with clumps resembling bird droppings. Nearby, hundreds of furry white larvae wiggled along a moldy-looking plant stalk. With a cheerful grin, she scooped up a mature red and black ladybug and deposited it in a ventilated test tube. One down, 300 million to go.

With the U.S. Supreme Court poised to act on a lawsuit seeking to prevent Asian carp from infiltrating Lake Michigan, defendants said Tuesday that hysteria over questionable DNA research is whipping Upper Midwest states into a frenzy that could devastate Illinois' shipping industry. Michigan took the lawsuit to the Supreme Court last month, asking for an injunction to force Illinois to close two Chicago-area navigational locks to prevent the carp's spread into the Great Lakes. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio and New York have joined the suit.

The fight to keep invasive Asian carp out of the Great Lakes reached the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, as Michigan's attorney general filed a lawsuit seeking closure of two shipping locks near Chicago. Claiming Illinois officials have been lax, Michigan Atty. Gen. Mike Cox asked justices for immediate action to seal off the most direct route for fish entering Lake Michigan, in hopes of protecting the region's $7-billion fishing industry. "We don't want to have to look back years later . . . and say, 'What was the matter with us?