[Nhcoll-l] Pesticides in NH Collections

[Bryant, James]

Brian:

Just to take a few points a little further, roaches are like all other critters: they need food, water and shelter. In my experience, roaches are not so much a collections pest as a general nuisance, and indicators of other issues. Since they are strongly attracted to vegetable matter (even the starchy glues in corrugated cardboard), I'd guess they are getting something other than vertebrate collections for food. In any interior space, they tend to be very attracted to moisture (drippy sink faucets and floor drains, for instance), so there must be a source somewhere. They don't like well-lit open space, so they are getting into dark crevices and perhaps even your walls for shelter, so there are probably structural issues.

Judging by the aerial view, Nash Hall is a large and complex building. There could be a store of material somewhere else that attracts roaches and your area is getting the "overflow". (Is there a food service of any kind in the building?) The campus is also a crowded and complex landscape. Here in Riverside, our downtown, under-street infrastructure shelters a lot of roaches from our generally dry weather; when it gets very hot in summer, roaches come into our building to escape the heat and aridity. We've used Tempo as an exterior barrier to keep roaches out, so I'd suspect that using it indoors would accomplish little.

As John says, you need to get to the nub of the problem, and trap monitoring is a good direction to go. The good news is that if you solve the roach problem you'll probably also solve a number of other problems.

James M. Bryant
Curator of Natural History
Museum Department, City of Riverside
3580 Mission Inn Avenue
Riverside, CA 92501
(951) 826-5273
(951) 369-4970 FAX
jbryant at riversideca.gov

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From: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of John E Simmons
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2012 2:46 PM
To: Brian Sidlauskas
Cc: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Pesticides in NH Collections

Brian,
When you say "a bit of a cockroach problem," what do you mean?  Do you see the cockroaches daily?  Have they been eating things in your collection?  Have you done sticky trapping to gauge their density and areas of concentration?  Does your museum have an integrated pest management plan?

The pesticides recommended may be useful if you are in a situation where you need to knock back a large population in order to gain control of it, but there are other solutions to your problem.  I have attached an MSDS for each product--as you can see, they are not without human health risks.  Both chemicals are designed to linger in the environment for long-term control, which is usually considered unacceptable in a museum situation.  With all due respect to pest control professionals, their methodology is usually oriented towards home, office, and warehouse control by repeated application of chemicals; few have museum working around scientific collections.

If you are not over-run by cockroaches (overrun meaning that you see cockroaches everyday and find fresh frass each morning) then you might consider instead a program of sticky trapping to determine where the cockroaches refuge and using boric acid powder selectively in those areas.  At the same time, you need to figure out why the cockroaches are in your building (it usually indicates you have a humidity problem or a cleanliness problem).

Cockroaches are serious collection pests and people can develop allergies to their frass, but you should exhaust non-chemical means of control before using chemicals, and then try using milder chemicals before moving on to the two recommended to you unless the building has a very large large cockroach problem.

--John

John E. Simmons
Museologica
128 E. Burnside Street
Bellefonte, Pennsylvania 16823-2010
simmons.johne at gmail.com
303-681-5708
www.museologica.com
and
Adjunct Curator of Collections
Earth and Mineral Science Museum & Art Gallery
Penn State University
University Park, Pennsylvania
and
Lecturer in Art
Juniata College
Huntingdon, Pennsylvania
On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 4:32 PM, Brian Sidlauskas <brian.sidlauskas at oregonstate.edu> wrote:
Dear NHCOLL Braintrust,

We're having a bit of a cockroach problem in the academic building that
houses most of Oregon State's vertebrate collections. The pest control
people want to spray " Tempo SC Ultra" and "Suspend SC" along the
baseboards in rooms that contain fluid collections as well as preserved
skins and skeletal materials. Is there anything that I need to be
worried about before I tell them to go ahead?

Thanks,

-- Brian

--

***************************************

Brian Sidlauskas
Assistant Professor
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife
104 Nash Hall
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331-3803

Voice: 541-737-1939
Fax: 541-737-3590
Email: brian.sidlauskas at oregonstate.edu
Web: http://people.oregonstate.edu/~sidlausb/

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