[Nhcoll-l] Pesticides in NH Collections

Wed Oct 3 11:30:35 EDT 2012

Hi Brian,

My sympathies! We have cockroaches in many buildings at the University of Iowa, mostly travelling between buildings via steam tunnels, I believe. Our main collections storage area is not affected. It's in a cool (<68F) room two floors above the basement where the cockroaches seem to be prevalent. No food or drink is allowed and certainly no food waste in the trash. Our fossil plant collection storage is a completely different case and has a chronic cockroach infestation that was not detected until the pests soiled specimens and damaged specimen trays and labels, including labels on the cabinet doors. The collection is in a damp basement with student offices, a gym and restrooms nearby. A steam tunnel entry hatch is in one of the neighboring rooms along with jumbles of cardboard boxes storing former faculty papers. I now monitor cockroach activity with sticky traps in each room and in cabinets. Our pest control contractor supplies the traps free of charge (to me) and  puts bait in specific areas when we see an increase in cockroaches. In the meantime, we have tried to block as many entry points as possible (e.g., pipe conduits, holes in masonry). Pest-proof cabinets would be a great improvement. The current wooden cabinets are not sealed and the doors do not shut properly. I've heard that cockroaches don't like air movement so I may experiment next with running fans in this collection area.  

Museumpests.net is a good resource! I have lots of photos of cockroach damage if you want to see them. I would suggest that if you are unsure whether your collection is affected, you monitor with traps first to determine if spraying in the collection area is even needed.  As James suggested below, it might be better to create a chemical barrier around the building or collection area, rather than in it, if chemical spray has to be used at all. 

Good luck!

Tiffany

Tiffany Adrain
Collections Manager, Paleontology Repository
Instructor, Museum Studies
Department of Geoscience
The University of Iowa
121 Trowbridge Hall
Iowa City, IA 52242

phone: 319 335 1822
fax: 319 335 1821
website: http://geoscience.clas.uiowa.edu/paleo/

-----Original Message-----
From: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Dietrich, Elizabeth
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2012 7:24 AM
To: 'Bryant, James'; John E Simmons; Brian Sidlauskas
Cc: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Pesticides in NH Collections

What temperature is your collection area?  With fluid collections it should be on the lower side which should make the area unattractive for roaches.  What is the humidity?  Higher humidity and warm would be quite attractive.  See if you can keep the room at 65 degrees or closer to that then to 70 degrees F and you can improve fire safety as well as your pest situation.

Do your fluid collections have exterior labels?  Are the skeletal and skin materials stored in trays that are glued together?  Are they in closed cabinets?  You may have sources of starch if there are paper products and glue available to the roaches.

-----Original Message-----
From: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Bryant, James
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2012 7:04 PM
To: John E Simmons; Brian Sidlauskas
Cc: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Pesticides in NH Collections

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

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

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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