Welcome and thank you for joining today's webinar.
I'm Jeff Jenkins, the director of the National Pesticide Information Center,
a cooperative agreement between the US Environmental Protection Agency and Oregon State University.
For our presentation today I'd like to introduce Amy Hallman, project coordinator at NPIC.
Amy will be discussing communicating with the public about pesticides and risk.
Thanks Jeff.
Just a quick logistic before we get going here today,
we're not going to be taking questions over the audio or speaker today.
We're just going to be taking questions in the chat function.
So if you have questions that you'd like to ask during the webinar,
we'll be recording those and then answering them after the end of the presentation.
We'll do as long as a question and answer session as we can get away with today.
I think that's all the logistics I have to cover.
Everybody can either send your questions to Sean Ross he's one of the panelists today,
or you can also send it to all participants and then that way we'll be able to see it.
If you're sending it to me directly Amy Hallman, then I might not see it during the presentation,
but we'll get to it afterwards.
So with that I'd just like to thank everybody for joining us today
and also thank all of those that were important in putting this presentation together.
Here at the National Pesticide Information Center,
we've been getting a lot of additional inquiries about mosquitoes and mosquito control over the last year and a half to two years.
And our goal today was to reach out to professionals of varied disciplines in mosquito control, health care,
university extension and other state and federal agencies,
to try to share with them our methods of communicating with the public about pesticides and risk.
So that's going to be my main goal today.
So I'll give a brief introduction about NPIC, about our organization, for those of you who aren't already familiar with us.
And then we'll spend most of the time discussing risk and how to discuss risk.
Very quickly we'll go over some tips for reading pesticide labels and cover some of those pesticides that are popular in mosquito control.
Last today, I'd like to look at some of those resources that NPIC has created and put up on our website.
Either for you as a professional to use to learn information or to provide out to the general public,
from either your clients or anyone else asking questions to you.
So who is NPIC?
We are a cooperative agreement that was formed by the US EPA and Oregon State University.
We provide objective, science-based information about pesticides and related topics.
We this through operating a toll-free phone service Monday through Friday 8am to noon.
We are located on Pacific Time, so that's 11 am to 3 pm Eastern Time.
Now our purpose is not to provide expert opinion.
Instead our purpose is to provide the best science available to help others make informed decisions.
That's where we are the experts, is to provide that scientific information in an accessible manner.
We receive between 11,000 and 12,000 questions per year mostly to the hotline,
but we're getting a lot more emails these days as well.
Most of these questions come from the general public,
about 90% of our callers are general public.
Because of that most of the questions they ask are centered around pesticide use in and around the home.
Now besides general public, we also talk to  professional,
we answer questions from health care professionals, in agricultural settings, from pesticide manufactures,
there's a whole host of different members will call our hotline.
So today, one of the things on the forefront of everyone's mind is chemicals that are used in mosquito control.
I think it's very important to first know your audience and know what situation your audience is in.
What I mean by that is that chemical mosquito control is varied.
From vector control, district applications that may be by air, by truck or by hand,
that could potentially affect a large number of people,
and they may have little information about the application.
On the other hand, we could be talking about chemical mosquito control in a residential setting,
either through a do-it-yourself homeowner or a hired professional.
This can get complicated because then there's the matter of landlords and applying pesticides,
or neighbors applying pesticides and the concerned citizen that you're speaking with as a professional,
may not be the one who's actually doing the application.
On the other end of the spectrum, we do have a lot of questions about pesticides used directly on people.
A lot of people don't know that repellents are actually pesticides,
as are materials that are impregnated with ingredients to kill or repel mosquitoes.
So sometimes clothing might have permethrin treated clothing,
that too is going to be considered a pesticide.
We do answer a lot of these questions, it's important to kind of know where your audience is coming from.
So you can best address that and have that conversation.
This is a risk communication checklist that is a framework or guideline that NPIC goes by.
It's not something that we're checking off for every call, but in an ideal situation we would have each of these elements
and we would be able to have a full well-rounded discussion because we had all of these elements.
So rather than giving a one sentence quick response,  we want to listen to the concerns of our callers
and ask questions to try to paint a better picture of exactly what their situation is like.
Then repeat that back to them or paraphrase what they're saying,
so that in an ideal situation they would have the same idea of what their environment and surrounding are as we would have.
So that we're working on even playing field.
Now next we want to respond to their questions, even if they're asking about whether or not something is safe.
We want to respond to those questions in terms of risk.
We'll talk in length about what that means.
It would be very useful to have toxicity information about the pesticide, what being used.
But that's not always available and that's okay.
You can still have a very full, well-rounded conversation without talking about toxicity.
What can be often just as important is exposure information.
We're going to talk a little bit about ways to discuss exposure, minimizing exposure,
and some of those action items that a member of the general public might be able to perform for themselves
to reduce their potential for exposure.
Last but not least, it's important to identify that we are not the experts in everything.
Knowing your boundaries and knowing where to find appropriate information if you can't answer that question is a very important step.
So we offer a lot of tools on our website and we're aware of a lot of places where someone else might be better to answer their questions.
Before we talk about what risk actually is, let's talk about the perception of risk.
This is how someone is perceiving or what they believe their own risks to be,
regardless of what the actual risk is in a scenario.
We'll go over a series of points that can influence someone's perception of their own risk.
Now really risk perception can be determined based on if they've had certain experiences in the past
or their own set of values and it's impossible to match your own values to the person you're speaking with.
So really you and they are going to have a different perception of risk.
Lets talk about some of those factors.
On the right hand side these are the factors that will influence someone to perceive their risk as high
or higher than maybe what it actually is.
On the left hand side these are factors that are going to influence a person to believe their risk is lower maybe than it actually is.
So imagine a scenario where you have a vector control district applying a pesticide for mosquitoes aerially.
Maybe this is something that's imposed or they perceive it to be out of their control,
those two factors are automatically going to make them perceive the risk in a situation a higher regardless of what it actually is.
Maybe this concerned citizen doesn't have any areas on their property where there's standing water,
but maybe someone down the street does and so they perceive that some else is benefiting
and they're not necessarily benefitting as much.
Again they're going to perceive their risk is higher even though it may not be.
If something is natural versus man-made, that can influence their perception of risk.
I always like to point out here that snake venom is natural and so is poison oak and poison ivy,
and I react quite badly to those.
So natural doesn't always mean less toxic.
Toxicity is one very important point of risk.
They can also believe that something that can affect children,
rather than only affecting adults that might be perceived as higher risk.
If it's new to them or exotic or if it's coming from an untrusted entity,
these are all factors that might influence how someone is going to think about their own risk.
Now that we've talked about what risk you believe you have, lets talk about actual risk.
This is made up of two very important points.
Number one is toxicity and that's how toxic is the product and number two is exposure.
Now if e're talking about a human's risk, an individual's risk,
we might talk about exposure routes,
such as how they're exposed to it, which parts of their body, how long their exposed to it.
But if the concern is not for a person and maybe for the environment,
the exposure can come into play here with the chemical properties.
Maybe it's environmental fate, how it is broken down, how mobile it is potentially in that environmental setting.
So these are all important factors.
What kind of brings it all together is that too much of either toxicity to exposure means that you have a high risk situation.
Consider a product that maybe is very, very low in toxicity.
Something ever as simple as salt or water.
With too high of a dose and too high of an exposure, you have a very high risk situation.
On the flip side of that is maybe you have a very toxic product,
but if you have absolutely no exposure to that product either through ingestion, inhalation,
touch or any of the ways you could be exposed.
Then in that situation the risk is negligible because you don't have an exposure.
This conversation that seems vague because you can't use specifics as often.
But it ends up being a very powerful equation or a very powerful conversation to have with every one of our callers.
It helps them to remember that despite maybe not having any control over the toxicity of the product,
they can control their exposure and then they too have an ability to reduce their risk.
So let's consider a situation where a client or someone else is asking the question, "is it safe?"
If the professional were to respond with it's so safe you can drink it, it's safe trust me, it's non-toxic, all natural.
Then what that does is it only gives a one sentence response.
It doesn't fulfill the conversation there and it leads to the ability for the the person asking is it safe to make their own conclusions.
They can make any hostess conclusions like oh maybe no precautions are necessary,
or maybe I don't need to do anything, or maybe just natural products can't hurt me.
It doesn't provide that well-rounded conversation that's really necessary in order to effectively answer their question.
So why do we talk about risk rather than safety?
With safety it can be a yes or no response, which is easy to explain but then it can imply that no precautions are necessary
and that safety is the same for every person.
Instead when we talk about risk we understand it's a sliding scale.
There's a whole host of factors that go into determining what the risk is.
Some factors may make it more risky, others may make it less risky.
This is a little bit more difficult to explain but part of this important conversation
is to always discuss precautions that can reduce risk.
These are usually optional precautions.
But it gets the person thinking about how they may be exposed, how they could be vulnerable,
and that they too have the power to reduce their risk in a situation.
It goes without saying that different people will have different risk.
Lets talk about behaviorally, we've got a toddler maybe that has a lot of hand-to-mouth activity.
If their near in a treatment area or in a treatment area that has been treated before
and their putting their hands into their mouth after touching treated surfaces,
their risk is going to be higher than an adult who's just walking through the area because they don't have the same behaviors.
This is very important to remember about the conversation is that it is different for different people.
Going back to why we don't want to talk about safety,
if we give the impression of safety it can lead to careless behaviors, lack of vigilance,
and the careless behaviors can in turn increase their risk.
So by always talking about precautions and always talking about minimizing exposure,
we prevent hopefully that increased risk or increased exposure.
Now I'd like to talk about some of those factors that can help us in our conversation.
We're going to be pulling in a lot of different things when we have a conversation about risk.
One of the first things in that equation was toxicity.
So when you're looking at a pesticide label one of the few things you can pick out is the active ingredient and the concentration.
Those can be picked out very quickly because they're oftentimes on the front and very conspicuous.
It may be important to know the active ingredient and concentration,
if you can then go to look up the toxicity of that active ingredient.
What's even easier is to look up the signal word.
Now the signal word is going to not indicate the active ingredients toxicity.
Instead the signal word is going to tell you what the product formulated in front of you,
how toxic that one is.
So 100% ingredients that includes the other ingredients and as you're picking it up off the shelf.
This is an infographic that NPIC has created and it's a simplified version of reading a label.
A lot of pesticide labels have smaller text, there might be a lot more text and it could be difficult the find the information you're looking for.
So let's say you're a professional that uses pesticides all the time, then it's second nature to you.
But lets say your a professional, maybe a physician who doesn't pour over pesticide labels all the time.
You're trying to look through this label to pick out important pieces of information and you're trying to do it quickly.
You could also look at precautionary statements on the back.
But on of the quickest pieces of information is actually the signal word caution, warning or danger.
Caution is low in toxicity, warning is moderate in toxicity and danger is high in toxicity.
Again that's for the whole product, it doesn't take into account dilution.
So if this is a concentrate that's going to later get diluted,
the signal word is only talking about the concentrate that you purchase off the shelf.
So again with caution, warning and danger, we have low, moderate and high toxicity.
We have here an example label of just a random flying insect fogger.
You can see all in capital letters, in the lower left hand corner it says caution.
So that means that this product as is formulated is going to be low in toxicity by all routes of exposure.
That last part is very important so we'll talk a little bit more about it.
A signal word is established by looking at all routes of exposure
and then picking out which of those routes is the most toxic.
Take for example a product that has corrosivity for skin irritation, thats in the lower left hand corner.
But maybe for all the other routes of exposure for ingestion, for inhalation,
for dermal or eye irritation, maybe it's considered low or very low in toxicity.
You'll see all of those routes on the left hand side.
Now this product, because it has in one category high toxicity its going to have signal word of danger.
That's because it's the most toxic route.
I have here an example, product A, it's just a short exercise.
Looking at the inhalation toxicity it's moderate or category 2.
Acute, oral, dermal and primary eye irritation all fall into the low toxicity category, category 3.
Then primary skin irritation falls into the lowest category, category 4.
You'll see these roman numerals used 1 through 4,
1 indicates high toxicity and 4 indicates very low toxicity.
So just take a guess to yourselves and think which one of these is going to the signal word assigned to the product.
If you guessed or determined warning then you'd be correct.
This is going to have a signal word of warning because through inhalation is the most toxic route.
Again I think it's worth reiterating that if you're looking up information about the toxicity of an active ingredient,
it's not the same thing as the toxicity of the product.
The signal word will indicate how toxic the product is.
Now I'd like to spend just a little bit of time looking at some of those pesticides that are used in mosquito control
for adulticides, larvicides, synergists and repellents.
These adulticides that I listed here, it's not an exhaustive list,
but they're all effectively working the same way, they're working on contact.
These in the list I've provided are targeting the nervous system.
They include pyrethrins, various pyrethroids, named and malathion.
This is a comparative chart that shows all of those active ingredients on the left hand side
and now the routes of exposure are on the top row of this chart, it's flipped a little bit from what we were looking at before.
Just as a point of comparison, remember we're looking at active ingredients and this is toxicity to mammals,
so not toxicity to insects.
A lot of times they're performing studies looking at these ingredients and laboratory rodents, but not always.
You can compare any of the columns.
In the acute oral category it says there are some that are moderate, some that are low,
and some that are very low in toxicity.
I'm going to go through these fairly quickly because the whole purpose of this is not to memorize or dig into the toxicity.
Instead the point of this is to show you what's available.
Then at the end I'll show you where you can go for more information if you want to learn about it yourself too.
A few popular larvicides, popular larvicides include Bacillus thuringiensis and that's a bacteria with subspecies israelensis.
This one is is going to target mosquitoes specifically and after it's ingested it's going to break down the mosquito gut.
Two other ingredients are Methoprene and Pyriproxyfen.
These are both insect growth regulators, they'll work via contact or via ingestion.
Their purpose is to disrupt the life cycle of the mosquito.
So it's not targeting the adults, it's not direct toxicity.
Instead what's happening is it's preventing eggs from hatching,
preventing young stages from maturing into adults and preventing adults from being able to lay eggs that are viable.
And again a very short comparison chart here, I looked at oral acute, oral toxicity,
but we could look at any of the categories.
Synergists are added to other active ingredients to help those other active ingredients be more effective.
If it was in a product by itself its toxicity wouldn't be targeting the insect,
instead what happens is it interferes with the insect's ability to metabolize or to break down some other active ingredient.
So if a pyrethrin product was applied to an insect or an insect was exposed to it,
then it could potentially break down those pyrethrins or metabolize them.
So the Piperonyl Butoxide and the MGK 264, they prevent that metabolism
so that the other active ingredient can be more effective.
Here looking at primary eye irritation, we have low and very low toxicity.
I put up a chart with repellents, these four repellents are the four repellents are recommended by
the Center for Disease Control and Prevention for mosquito control.
I thought it was very interesting to look at the primary eye irritation category,
because oil of lemon eucalyptus has a 1 or corrosive rating here.
That's very interesting because I then looked up all of those products that are actively registered
with oil of lemon eucalyptus, those end-use products that you could purchase at a store
and none of them had a signal word of danger.
This is again highlighting the difference between signal word and active ingredient toxicity.
All of these formulated products were either caution or warning products.
I was able to look those up in a database that I'm going to just briefly talk about a little bit later.
So if you'd like the ability to search for products and research between them I can show you where to do that.
We created a web page that lists various databases for finding specific chemical information.
If you're not going to be discussing with the public any of those active ingredients we just looked at,
it's handy to have a place where you can go to look up information for yourself.
This is our database, this is our chemical information page, I've highlighted our website address in the red box.
It will list websites that are useful for finding human health symptoms,
chemical properties like environmental properties, various properties like that.
Now let's talk about risk reduction, which is a very important part of the conservation.
Obviously half of the risk conversation is exposure.
Again if we give the impression of safety that can lead to careless behaviors and lack of vigilance,
which can increase risk.
We like to discuss ways to minimize exposures at NPIC.
What that means is we provide additional precautions and these are optional precautions.
Sometimes they might think of them as common sense,
like closing windows if there's a spray outside, waiting to return to an area until after it has dried thoroughly,
but not everybody thinks of those.
So having that full conversation means pointing out some of those areas around the house or where they could be vulnerable.
I have a sample conversation here of what it might be like if somebody called in to our hotline and had questions.
In this scenario, a homeowner has questions about safety regarding a future treatment of her yard for mosquitoes,
she's pregnant and she has young children.
Lets talk about some of those factors we would try to collect in order for us to paint a picture that's complete.
Then have that conversation with them.
It would be really useful if we knew which product was being applied.
We could talk about the concentration, whether or not it's going to be diluted, its overall toxicity, maybe signal word.
That's not always available, but that's okay.
If we did know the active ingredient we might want to talk about its environmental fate,
how quickly it's breaking down.
It would be important to ask where it's being applied, how it's being applied,
if it's going to be a granular application versus a liquid application.
Well depends on how they're targeting the mosquitoes,
they might be doing dunks instead of a spray.
That's going to change how someone comes in contact with a pesticide.
Also what the weather is like, maybe what the topography in the yard is like.
In this situation she's more concerned about the fact that she's pregnant and she has children.
But if they have environmental concerns maybe a pond,
knowing whether or not the application is occurring uphill and then knowing whether or not
the environmental fate of that pesticide can allow for it the move.
Those are all important features.
Then talking about how someone could be exposed and if there's an exposure,
how to stop an ongoing exposure to prevent longer duration.
The conversation might follow this way, did you have concerns from a previous treatment?
Is this is this new or was there something that happened in the past?
Next I might want to ask what kinds of toys do you have in the yard? Do you have any tows in the yard?
Maybe play structures?
Is there a garden that you're particularly concerned about? Is there something else that pops into your mind?
Lets paint a picture so I can see your yard without actually being there.
Then I might actually have that conversation about risk and talk about how risk is made up of two things.
We think about toxicity first but exposure is also a very important part of that conversation.
If we can we talk about the toxicity of the active ingredient.
But then we can also talk about potential for exposures and ways to minimize those exposures,
such as staying off the lawn until it's dry, maybe removing toys before the treatment
or covering play structures.
Again they're optional, but it depends on how hyper-viligant the family wants to be,
because their perception of risk is going to affect their behavior and what precautions they'd like to take.
It may also be important to provide other referrals in this case.
Maybe she has questions that are medical questions.
We're not medically trained so I may discuss the option of talking to a physician,
or calling poison control in a non-emergency fashion and those would all be options.
Again bringing it all together into a complete picture.
Listening and asking questions and repeating back to them what they've said,
so you can understand it as they are.
Framing it as risk rather than safety, gathering toxicity information if available,
but if not still being able to talk about the potential for exposures and those actions the person can take to prevent exposures.
Then last but not least, where to get more information if I'm not the best resource.
Very briefly I'd like to talk about some of the resources we've created on our website.
We have an extensive website of over 700 pages in English and Spanish.
Aside from web pages with great content, we've created fact sheets about active ingredients and topics.
We have videos, podcasts and we also have some infographics and other outreach materials.
The idea here is that we wanted to create enough materials so that different learning styles would have options.
So if somebody wants to read they can read, if somebody wants to watch a video
or just listen to something they have that option to.
Some of our web content includes these fact sheets, which might look familiar,
because most of these active ingredients were discussed earlier in the webinar.
We also have some videos that are specific to mosquito control and a few podcasts.
So if you haven't had a chance to check out our website, please do so.
Now as we get more questions from the public over our hotline,
we use that to influence the next materials we develop.
Recently we've developed two new pesticide FAQ's,
one called "How can I avoid mosquito bites?" and one called "Do I need to spray for mosquitos at home?"
Again this is based on popularity, so if we're getting a lot of calls, a lot of questions about a specific topic,
We're going to want to create something so that it's available online when we're not there to answer the phones.
Other resources we have include a local contacts function.
This has all 50 states and there's a list on the left-hand side the of extension services,
looking for your Mosquito/Vector Control District, maybe you want to talk to you health department in your state.
You can use this feature to select your state and then find a local contact,
it's thousands and thousands of contacts, it's extensive.
We also have a pesticide product research tool called NPRO,
this is what I briefly alluded to earlier.
It's free and open to the public, accessible via our website and you can look up federal pesticide products.
You can even look at PDFs of their labels, maybe you're trying to compare a couple products.
You can look them up based on if you have the EPA registration number of a product.
That EPA registration number is like a social security number,
it's going to positively identify one product from the next.
These are just two very useful tools that we have.
Then last but not least, how to reach us.
We talked about communicating risk and I understand that some of you may be uncomfortable with communicating risk.
So if you would like to call our hotline to ask questions where to find resources, what's available to you,
or if instead you'd like to refer your clients or your patients to us to ask these questions,
we're happy to talk to them.
You can have them call us at 1-800-858-7378, 8 to Noon Pacific Time.
Our web address is NPIC.orst.edu and they can also email at NPIC@ace.orst.edu.
We're also very active on social media, so we get a lot of questions coming from all angles.
With that I'd like to talk about some of the questions that have come into the chat feature
and invite any of you that haven't asked questions yet to go ahead and start.
We have one question that asks,
how many of your enquiries are related to minimum risk pesticide repellent 25b?
Oh that's a great question.
These are going to be pesticide products.
25b products are exempt from registration and that's because they're considered very low in toxicity
and they meet a series of other requirements.
We do receive a lot of calls about them,
unfortunately some of those can be very difficult conversations because we don't have the EPA
registration number to look up the products online.
Sometimes they won't have the product with them and even if they do some of those active ingredients
don't have as much toxicity information or study information as some of the other ones.
But I don't know that I'm going to be able to provide an actual estimate of how many, but it is very common.
I hope that answers your question.
Okay so here's another question that says,
how are you preparing for public inquiries into new and evolving mosquito control techniques,
like GMO, wolbachia, etc.?
How are we preparing?
Well 25% of pesticide specialists' job description is continuing education.
So although I don't have a specific response about GMOs or wolbachia,
I do know that we are keeping current on the best science available.
As new things come up in the news we are made aware of them.
Once we start receiving questions about them, then we might see what the need is to create more material.
Okay, Im going to check to see if I have any questions that came in to me personally,
because those were the only two that were sent to all participants or to Sean Ross.
I'll just take a minute here.
So here's a question that says, the signal word danger doesn't necessarily mean the product is highly toxic does it?
Danger poison means its highly toxic. There are a number of products with the danger signal word because they are corrosive to the eyes.
Danger is used for highly toxic products, the same as danger poison would be used.
I don't know if you're referring to highly toxic or just referring to oral toxicity,
because remember there were 1 to 4 in those Roman numerals and 1 was the highest category for toxicity
and that is corrosivity to the eyes.
So it would be given danger, the same as it could be given danger poison.
I'm going to look and see what other questions we have.
More fact sheets coming?
Yes, we do have more fact sheets coming.
We're constantly developing fact sheets.
I don't know that I have anything more specific than that, other than we are releasing a fact sheet about sulfur
and we are releasing a fact sheet about pesticide binding affinity.
So that's going to be a topic fact sheet to help if somebody wants to know about the environmental fate of an active ingredient.
That's going to help them understand how it may stick or bind to soil.
So we're prioritizing the topics that we cover in these fact sheets based on the perceived need.
So we kind of have a running list and as new, more important things come into view,
we kind of change that list up.
So we're going to continue to develop those fact sheets based on what we're hearing from our callers.
Okay, another question asks, do you provide information about mosquito traps?
I think they would often be safer and more effective than chemical pesticides for a homeowner use.
That's a fantastic question, we didn't even touch upon the topic of IPM today.
Integrate Pest Management, non-pesticide options for controlling pests.
We're not going to provide any recommendation.
So really it all depends on the questions from the caller.
If someone has a question about mosquito traps, then we can find a reputable resource.
We'll have that discussion.
If they're trying to compare multiple methods, maybe they're comparing mosquito traps versus a spray,
versus a dunk, versus all of these different methods.
Then we can go through all those methods informationally.
But we're never going to be recommending any one of them specifically.
That's a great question.
Okay, so we have a new question that came in that asked,
how about naled use in the US, any concerns similar to Puerto Rico?
Okay, he's following up.
So the original question is, how are you preparing for public enquiries into new and evolving mosquito control techniques?
And then how about naled use in the US, any concerns similar to Puerto Rico?
Again we're developing materials based on interest.
So if naled becomes something that we're hearing more and more about,
then we would have interest, we would be open to creating materials that are informative about naled.
So I hope that answers the question.
Yeah and just that we do have staff constantly monitory the news,
we pay attention to trends and we have continuing education for all the staff.
Exactly, we do have ongoing continuing education so that we can monitor what's out there and what's in the news.
Another question asks, do you have a fact sheet on bed bugs and the toxicity or risk of bed bug products?
We don't have a fact sheet about bed bugs, but we do have an extensive series of web pages about bug bugs.
They're just not available in a PDF format, essentially what that's going to mean.
It's all available on our website.
We don't necessarily talk about the toxicity of bed bug products specifically,
but what we may talk about is how there are non-toxic options or integrated pest management options for bed bugs,
that may or may not in the end use pesticides in combination.
But we don't have a list of pesticide products specifically for bed bugs because that could amount to recommending something.
We wouldn't want an individual to visit our website and then look at something we listed and think it was a recommendation.
But we do get a lot of questions about bed bugs, that's a great question.
So we're just at the ending time of our webinar. We're happy to stay if there are additional questions.
It looks like there are still a couple coming in, but if some of you have to leave I would like to thank you for joining us today.
Feel free to call our hotline or send us an email if you have additional questions.
We will be recording and posting this webinar as soon as we can.
So I'll continue answering questions and when the questions stop then I'll stop.
This one asks, when communities spray either fog or trucks or aerial,
how can community members assess their risk, especially when active ingredients are unknown?
That's fantastic.
One of the things that is important is the timing of the application,
because they can determine if somebody is going to be indoors or outdoors.
Really the risk is unknown if you don't know anything about the toxicity of the product.
What you do know is that the product was approved for that use and you have every reason to believe that
it's being used according to the label instructions.
Now with those two things being assumptions, you would then assume that it would still be a low risk situation,
barring any unforeseen exposures.
That's what you would assume is that it's being applied correctly,
it's a registered product, it's approved for that use.
That's the type of conversation we would have with somebody.
It's unfortunate that we don't know exactly what being used,
but these are steps that you can take to further reduce your chance of ever coming into contact with it.
If you're not smelling anything, if you're not feeling any mist on your skin,
if you're not seeing any effects to any health effects or any affects to plants or something to that effect.
Then by taking reasonable steps to reduce your exposure, your risks are very low.
We have a couple more questions.
So we're doing our best to catch all the questions, I'm sorry we missed these initially.
Lets see this one says, is the DEET infographic available in Spanish?
Yes it is. It's not a DEET infographic it's just reading pesticide labels infographic.
I think that's what you're referring to, the orange one.
Yes it is available in both English and Spanish.
Lets see, will the webinar be archived for future viewing?
We're going to be posting it both to our website and to our YouTube page,
so you can access access it in both of those locations.
Will just be posting it as soon as we can.
Are the slides available?
If you would like to send us an email to the NPIC email account,
I would be more than willing to discuss the slides to you.
Okay, so we've caught up on questions we think now.
Oh one more that came into the chat box.
How would you assess risk for long term use of products,
like daily use of mosquito spray or permethrin over a long period, 2-3 years of daily application?
So you're referring to potentially a situation where there could be chronic exposure.
The question is, how would I assess the risk?
Well first I would ask about exposure.
So how is the person applying it?
Are they coming into contact with it when they're using it on a regular basis?
Are they taking all of the precautions to try to prevent exposure?
Those are all very important.
Then also what their specific concern is, are they calling in just because they're wondering?
Or are they calling in because they've had some type of health incident?
That can be important too.
One piece of information we might look up is if there are chronic studies for that active ingredient or those active ingredients in the product.
If there are chronic studies, I would ask if that individual wants to talk about that.
If it's chronic health, maybe their main interest is potential for cancer.
Carcinogenicity is such a difficult topic to discuss it's important to have a full conversation around it,
because you can have one exposure or you could have many exposure and neither of of those situations means that you're going to have cancer.
So those can be more difficult conversations,
but helping them to understand how to minimize their exposure and how to minimize their risk.
So far we've covered all of the questions we think.
If not please send it through the chat function to all participants and I'll try to cover that now.
Here's another one, any thoughts on how to talk to the public about risk trade-offs between pesticides or repellents and mosquito bites?
Especially in areas where mosquitoes carry Zika or the diseases, likewise talking to the public about genetically modified mosquitos.
I'll try to address that first question.
As far as trade-offs, because we're not recommending anything we have to know who the best resource is for recommendation.
So in this situation it may be their physician, it may be CDC.
So one thing we can talk about is what CDC has for recommendations.
So like if they have a travel warning out and then
Then we can talk about how when used appropriately, when reapplied appropriately and washed off appropriately,
with all those precautions it's a fairly low risk situation for using the repellent.
Ultimately that conversation is going to come down to the comfort level of the caller.
It's going to come down to them making that decision.
I can tell you this as a fact, we are asked almost every single day to make a decision for someone.
And that's just not going to happen, we're going to have to rely on them to be able to make the best decision for them and their families.
And just talking about the pesticide side of things first.
Oh and the the second part of the question was talking to the public about genetically modified mosquitoes.
Because we're relying on the best science that's available, it will exactly depend on what science is available.
So at one point in time the risk surrounding genetically modified mosquitoes maybe different in another point in time.
Just because there's more research done, more studies done.
So we would really just discuss what those studies say and we would say it in a very accessible manner
because we know that not everyone is trained to understand science jargon, it's nonsense sometimes.
Here's another question, how do you get to the fact sheet or infographics?
Okay so our website is fantastic because we have a search bar where you can just type in fact sheets.
If you scroll down past the large photograph or pictures that are on our website, that banner there,
you'll see fact sheets in a short list of different types of materials that we provide.
The infographics are actually housed under outreach materials.
We've got other infographics about disinfectants and pesticides in school settings
and how to determine what is a pesticide.
So those will be under outreach materials.
But if you can't find them by navigating you can just go up to the search bar and type in infographic
or reading pesticide labels or something to that effect.
Yeah or call us and we can send it to you via email or we can walk you through it, that's a great point.
You know we love to hear from everyone.
It looks like there's still a large number of individuals in the webinar right now.
I'm getting a lot of thanks, but not a lot of questions.
So if we've missed something I would love to have you speak up now and if not then we might be reaching the end of our webinar.
We're recording the webinar today so all of these questions will be included.
We'll be posting that to our YouTube page and you can get to that through our website as well.
So if you have any questions call in to our hotline, we're happy to answer for you.
Other than that I'd like to say thank you everybody for being so patient and for being such good participants.
This was a fantastic webinar.
Have a nice day, thank you so much.
