My name is Jeff White and I'm a research entomologist
for Bed Bug Central and the host of Bed Bug
TV bedbugcentral.com.
I have no idea how I got into bugs and bed
bugs and here I am six years later and having
a lot of fun working with bed bugs and I'll
be talking to you about pest control.
You found some pest in your house and you're
looking for the right way to get rid of them.
Well what is a pest and what is a pesticide?
Is the pest the inlaws that are visiting for
the week?
I hope that's not what you find is a pest,
but you never know.
Is it the mouse that you just saw run across
the kitchen?
Both could be defined as a pest because a
pest is something you don't want in a situation.
Many people don't think of a ladybug as a
pest.
You know they think of it walking around something
like a flower, something cute, a sticker you
put on your car of a ladybug.
But if you home is being infested by hundreds
and thousands of ladybugs in the fall because
they're looking to hide in your house for
the winter, you may quicker find yourself
considering ladybugs a pest.
And so the definition of a pest is something
in the situation that is unwanted and then
a pesticide is something that you're going
to use to get rid of that problem.
And in terms of a pesticide, a lot of people
don't consider say bleach as a pesticide.
But if I have some ants say walking around
on a counter inside my kitchen, and I take
say bleach and spray those ants with that
bleach, that bleach went from being a cleaning
agent to a pesticide because I used it to
get rid of the pests that were walking around
on the counter top.
And that's the difference between a pest and
what a pesticide is.
Now an insecticide is just something that
you're going to use to get rid of an insect
and so a spray that you buy in a local store
that you spray in a wasp's nest is an insecticide.
Something you use to get rid of an insect
that you didn't want.
A rodenticide is something you use to get
rid of rodents.
An herbicide is something you use to get rid
of weeds, or herbs.
And so those are just smaller groups of what
we define as pesticides.
Things to get rid of something in an unwanted
situation whether it's ladybugs, wasps, or
in laws.
Actually no you don't want to get rid of those
but maybe you do but we'll talk about that
in a different episode.
But that's the difference between a pesticide
and an insecticide.
