I’m smiling as I write this because the subject is another conference/workshop/meeting.
What can you do? When it rains.
The International Public Health Pesticides Workshop will be held in London on May 19. The organizers are EPA and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (UK).
Its purpose:
The purpose of the meeting is to identify new approaches, processes, and implementation strategies that will lead to development and approval of new public health pest control tools. The outputs of the meeting will complement on-going global public health efforts and include a framework for conducting global reviews of new public health pesticide products.
And why it’s necessary:
From a global perspective, public health programs are faced with a depleting arsenal of safe, efficient and cost-effective insecticides.
The focus of this meeting must be public health pesticides for disease vectors and, ordinarily, we would think bed bugs would be left completely out. And I’m not sure how much they might be in, but notice the familiar photograph on the top right.
A global streamlining process to ensure the pipeline of critical pesticides and tools would necessarily benefit bed bug control in the long run whether bed bugs are the initial focus of such a project or not. And it might prevent other pest outbreaks from catching us as unprepared and unequipped as we have been in the case of bed bugs.
The depleting arsenal. I believe that this is the cause of the bed bug resurgence. I know that people have their own theories and favored explanations, but that’s mine: bed bugs are “back” (they never really left) because the methods used to control them started to fail.
No matter what you believe, bed bugs are not likely to significantly decline until we implement an organized response from all sectors in society. But actually accomplishing the feat of making them “disappear” again will require effective and easily deployable control methods.
These pages may be of related interest:
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I think EPA is poised to address the lack of effective products for bed bugs because earlier this year a bunch of EPA staff in pesticide division met to discuss what is actually available for bed bug control. I was in touch with one of their staff but I didn’t get an update of the outcomes of the meeting. Anyway, globally this is very good news, although the emphasis will likely be on mosquito control technology.
Interesting.
The Gates Foundation is supporting this meeting.
About bed bug control, I think one thing they should do is start with what’s already available and figure out if it works, I’m thinking here of the hormone analogues. Do they or don’t they?
Definitely promising… all of it.