Steve Tvedten of Get Set, Inc.'s email to Lyndon Hawkins of the California Department of Pesticide Regulation .

Questions have been asked of the California Department of Pesticide Control since Fontana Unified School District declined to consider a pesticide free IPM program because of the Department of Agriculture's opinion about only utilizing registered pesticides to eliminate pests.  The California Department of Pesticide Regulation has remained silent and not responded to these issues that are pointing out ever increasing scientific and medical information on the damages done by pesticides:

Subject: Another unregistered "pesticide"---------------
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 08:45:10 -0400
From: StephenTvedten <stvedten@earthlink.net>
Reply-To: steve@getipm.com
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Lyndon Hawkins <hawkins@empm.cdpr.ca.gov>
 

 Lyndon, when are you going to arrest/investigate everyone in California that uses (unregistered) catnip to control thier roach problems?  An article entitled Catnip found to be purr-fect repellent for cockroaches -  was written by Douglas Birch , The Baltimore Sun.  When are you going to investigate all of the California sellers of this unregistered "pesticide".  Or do you only selectively enforce your "codes"?

The stuff in catnip that intoxicates cats repels cockroaches 100 times better than a powerful insect repellent, scientists said  yesterday.

The discovery could lead to new, nontoxic methods for curbing these tenacious insects, which are more than just a nuisance. Roach infestations have been linked to rising rates of asthma among children in inner cities.

"We've been chasing cockroach treatments for three years," said Dr. Peyton Eggleston, professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Children's Center. "If you could do it with a repellent, that would be great."

Chris Peterson and Joel Coats of Iowa State University told a meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans yesterday that they had isolated a chemical that roaches find repulsive.

Now the scientists hope that a chemical manufacturer will use their findings.

"There are plenty of things that kill cockroaches," Peterson said in a telephone interview. "But currently there are no ("registered") cockroach  repellents on the market."

Peterson and Coats began studying catnip a few years ago, when a summer intern told them the plant was resistant to insects.

"We decided to look at the chemical basis of that resistance," Peterson said.

So they boiled catnip leaves and distilled the active ingredient, a chemical called nepetalactone. Then they teased the most abundant form of nepetalactone from another, more elusive form with a slightly different atomic structure.

"The chemistry of catnip has been known for a while, but we're the first to separate the different forms of the same chemical,"  Peterson said.

They discovered that this rare, more potent form of nepetalactone killed flies. But the work might have ended there if another intern, Leah Nemetz, hadn't told Peterson and Coats that some people  put catnip in planter boxes to keep insects away. She decided to study it as a repellent.

Nemetz soaked half of a piece of filter paper in the chemical and left the other half dry. Then she put the paper and some German cockroaches - a common species of the insect - in a dish and watched them scuttle away from the treated side.

Scientists tested their discovery against a widely used repellent, called DEET. Their catnip-derived chemical worked at doses only 1 percent as high.

Iowa researchers have not tested the effectiveness of simply spreading natural catnip leaves around the house. It might require so much of the stuff as to be impractical, Peterson said. And, of course, it might attract a lot of cats.

The two scientists, both entomologists, have also tested the Osage orange or "hedge apple," an inedible fruit common in the Midwest, long believed to repel any number of pests. They have not yet isolated the active ingredients.

Allergy to roach excrement is thought to be a major cause of asthma in children. Nationwide, asthma rates rose 75 percent in all groups, and by 160 percent among infants to 4-year-olds, between 1980 and 1994.

The rate of illness among black children is estimated to be 40 percent to 50 percent higher than among whites. Black children are hospitalized with the disease three to five times more frequently than whites, and their death rates are three times higher.

Copyright © 1999 Seattle Times Company .

Lyndon, I have advocated using solar brewed catnip tea for many years as a repellant and unregistered "pesticide".  A vacuum and a red light one hour after dark - works far better to control roaches than catnip tea however.

Respectfully,  Stephen L. Tvedten.