Successful PP beetle eradication from lumber

interesting chance for a study

David Weaver

it would be interesting to do a few versions of this. I mentioned in your original post that we had PPB in our porch posts, but not a terrible infestation. Enough that there were carcases here and there and some frass piles once in a while. The porch woodwork was stained red and only the post had issues (the rest of the porch was old growth redwood and was unaffected).

I coated the wood with borate, and every crack and seam I could find, the same. It left some white residue. Though this may not do anything, I also pulled borate solution in and around any area that frass appeared.

Within a fairly short period of time, I didn't see another PPB or frass ever again.

It would've been interesting if you'd have been able to split off some of the wood for borate only and some for malathion only.

Borate is supposedly only effective on the surface and I may have benefited from lucky circumstances (a colony that was already on the outs, etc).

Re: Successful PP beetle eradication from lumber

Barry Irby

Interesting. I have some lumber that has PPB's. Some of it I have sprayed with BoraCare. According to Nissus, the manufacturer of Boracare, it should get them.

I think it has reduced the activity dramatically but I am not positive it is 100% effective. It may kill them on the way out, preventing re-infestations.

In the bad old days, houses that were infested were treated with Methyl Bromide or Viacane. A tent was built over the house and it was gassed. The stuff was deadly. Killed the house plants, fish or anything left in the house and sometimes killed the foundation plantings and the occasional nearby tree.

We used it on the farm to gas and sterilize the land for tobacco plant beds. My Dad is long gone, but I wish I could ask him for details on how to use the gas.

how borate works

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I screws up the critters ability to digest cellulose. They starve.

Mine died from the Neurotoxin malathion. It inhibited the choline esterase reaction necessary for nerves to function. Nerves fire but don't recover. Same a nerve gas, but less potent to humans.

Re: how borate works

Dick Coers

What happens to eggs in the lumber? Toxin kills them too?

Re: interesting chance for a study

C Pearson

It is my understanding that borate kills PBB by making wood indigestible to the beetle. I think the confusion is that there are two different products that are commonly sold. Tim-Bor treats the outside of lumber and prevents infestations, but will not kill an established infestation. Bora-Care has a glycol base that carries the borate solution deep into a board and will kill any bugs that eat that wood. Both of these products are sold by a company called Nisus.

How deeply the borate solution is carried into the wood impacts how effective it is against an established infestation. If memory serves Bora-Care is diluted with water before application. The more the glycol solution is diluted, the less deeply it penetrates (and carries the borate with it). For example, 4/4 lumber can be treated with a more diluted solution than 8/4 lumber.

Re: Successful PP beetle eradication from lumber

John K Jordan

To anyone trying this my comment is to exercise suitable caution when using malathion. Wear good cartridge respirators. Malathion can result in respiratory, gastrointestinal, and neurological effects. The last time I used it (about 30 years ago) I felt queasy for hours afterwards, sort of felt like my insides were loose or dissolving.

As for penetration of fumes consider that ash wood has large earlywood pores. For a more complete test compare other species with small pores, perhaps maple. Should record the temperature inside the bag too. And the species of PPB.

If the vapor is penetrating the wood, an interesting variation would be with the wood in a pressurized chamber.

I've observed a similar result of hundreds of PPBs dead in the bottom of a lidded tub full of PPB infested maple turning blanks, no chemicals, no heat. The lid was not air tight but sealed fairly well.

As an aside, a few weeks ago I watched PPBs bore into the end grain of what I think is a sourwood log, freshly cut. The next day there were dozens of PPB-sized stacks of self-supporting frass sticking straight out horizontally from the end grain of each end of the log, each stack about 1" or longer. These frass "sticks" persisted until the first good rain. (I missed my chance at an interesting photo.) I'll gladly donate the log to any credentialed PPB scientist or wannabe.

JKJ

toxic fears

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Borate is used in laundry detergent. My wife has two boxes and she adds a table spoon full for undies and the like. Look for it in the laundry section. I add it around my apple trees to compensate for a boron deficiency in my soil. There is no risk from using it on lumber or on your undies.

Malathion is widely used as an insecticide. Most of the fruit and vegetables you have eaten were sprayed with it (less common now to be replaced by other stuff). It was widely used by exterminating companies for indoor pests. I buy it by the gallon here on the farm, 50% concentration. It decomposes to other stuff. When the stink is gone the malathion is gone. Its volatility is why I thought to use it for fumigating. The decomposition products were often found on carpet samples that were analyzed for various customer complaints.

Re: toxic fears

Brad Chenoweth

The street that the machine shop I work in is located on is residential on one side of the street. About 25 or so years ago, an older fellow from the neighborhood, which was/is somewhat depressed, was just trying to help out his neighbors. He sprayed the interiors of several houses just across the street from us with some concentration of malathion to kill pests. The local authorities somehow got wind of it. Hazmat teams showed up. An investigation ensued, charges were filed, and the old fellow was sent to prison, where he died. The houses were declared hazardous sites by the EPA. The residents were moved out and the homes razed.

Fast forward to about 10 years ago, and Habitat For Humanity acquired the properties and built new homes on the sites, which are occupied today. Go figure...

I don't know what they use these days, but for decades the county sprayed with malathion at night during the warmer months to combat mosquitoes.

I do not believe this story, and a funny story

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I know for a fact that exterminating companies sprayed this stuff inside residential houses. How I know for sure is that certain carpets discolored from contact with it. I was involved in proving malathion had been sprayed. It was easy to detect a decomposition product but not the malathion itself.

Someone moved a small refrigerator into an office space. The frig had been stored. It had a family of snakes in residence. Upon starting the frig the snakes came out. Extermination was called by someone. The exterminator arrived about the time I arrived. He began spraying the perimeter of the room with malathion. The odor is characteristic. Curious I asked why he were spraying. "Snakes" was the reply. Some quick conferring and then negations with the extermination worker resulted in the office occupants swearing that they would report the office had been treated to their satisfaction if the worker would just leave with his stinky spray. The snakes were caught and released except for the one inadvertently flattened by a chair roller.

Re: I do not believe this story, and a funny story

Brad Chenoweth

My mistake, Bill. I looked up the case in the EPA archives. I had the wrong chemical. It was methyl parathion, not malathion. Faulty memory...

Re: toxic fears

Johanna Johanson

Years ago I decided that I really did not want to have pesticides in my house or yard or on my food. I just don't think that products that kill insects are likely to be safe for people. My garden thrives without pesticides and we are much healthier than most people in their 80s. Our dogs live to be 15 or 16 years old and do not die of cancer - just plain old age.

There are so many ways to deal with insect pests that do not involve poisons. Seems better to me.

That be BAD stuff, close to military nerve gas

where do you live?

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Obviously not in TN. Potato beetles eat potatoes, bean beetles eat beans, corn borers corn ears, cabbage worms eat cabbage, Jap beetles eat everything, everything eats peaches and apples, there are aphids, white flies, etc. Fungus attacks almost everything as soon as it gets warm. Without chemical warfare you would not have a productive garden or orchard here. This time of year the orchard is sprayed every 2nd week or I would not harvest any fruit. Other stuff as necessary.

The hazards of pesticides and fungicides can be assessed and ones provided that present no risk when used according to label. Others don't trust the data and taylor what they grow, where they live, to what survives there. The rest they buy that succeeds with the necessity of chemical warfare. Organic is a recent phenomena; somehow people thrived before it was available.

spraying chemicals

John K Jordan

I try to spray as little as possible, but when I do I wear a full face respirator with cartridge filters, gloves, and long sleeves.

I have a couple of these, one with P100 filters for dust and one with cartridges made for chemicals.

I rarely spray the fruit trees but when I do I also wear tyvec coveralls with a hood.

No fear, just caution.

It's hard...

David Weaver

..to put a material affect or causation on anything like that.

My grandparents were farmers and lived through the non-license and highly toxic era of pesticide application. They averaged age 86 at death. Two from cancer, two not (hard to attribute a whole lot to metastatic cancer detected at age 88).

My mother's dogs live on a property that is close to chemical free (thrift), and the last two have gotten cancer late in life (one with a slightly shortened lifetime). what caused their cancer? Who knows. It could be a genetic bloodline issue, but it is very unlikely that it was pesticides.

I have a small garden - it's only about 200 square feet. At some point, the bug damage becomes bad in it. I usually just give up on whatever we're eating at that point, but I did use sevin dust about a decade ago (per label instructions - not following the instructions can be bad) and it solved an outbreak.

For commercial production around here, the CSAs that cost about double the grocery store rate for food cannot manage to produce food without pesticides. Things that work in 200 square feet (picking pests off and squashing them, etc) don't work even at a local level with 50 or 60 acres.

Knowing what i know about mortality, it's difficult to have a phobia of some sort and have it be likely that what you're afraid of would shorten your life, and that your actions have prevented it.

I can tell you this. Heart disease death rates have declined steeply for the last 40 years or so and are kind of at a standstill. The biggest attribute driving this is the decline in smoking.

Cancer mortality rates (e.g., the chance at any given age that cancer will kill you) have been steadily dropping over that period of time, too. Despite the fact that reading about this or that cause will lead you to believe that more and more people are dying of cancer each year. that may be true nominally - people are living longer, living after heart disease, etc, living with comorbidities like diabetes. If you're doing what makes you comfortable and what makes you feel safer, that's good. If you're concluding too much more than that (person X did Y and died of A, and you did Z and did not), then the outcome is known, but the cause guessed is probably inaccurate.

Re: Long rant!

Larry Clinton At Frankfort, (Central) Indiana

Well, I'm 79 years old, worked with and around chemicals most of my life. I was an Engineer at an Emerson Electric company (Mallory Controls) for 39 years. We used Triclorathane 111, Trichloroethylene, Acetone etc. in huge quantities (large underground storage tanks). Handled a LOT of various epoxies in 5 gal. bucket quantities.

I also remember as a youth using a lot of DDT spraying for flies. I worked in Gas stations as a second job in my younger days - repaired a lot of leaking brake wheel cylinders, often this required cleaning the brake shoes (asbestos linings) by use of a wire wheel on a grinder until all glaze was removed. I also used flexible rolls of asbestos to coat furnace chimney pipes & seal chimneys for several years, had a "paste I mixed as an adhesive".

When I was about 20 I worked at a electric motor repair shop, we repaired large motors and manual motor starters, often changing the PCB laden oil in the starters. We kept a bucket of it and washed our hands in in to remove grease!

I and my wife raised 6 children (his / hers and ours) so had a large garden, I used Sevin often to kill pests - remember using some other pesticides but can't recall their names. At the same time I used quite a bit of Roundup and equivalent to kill grass and weeds in and around our gravel driveway.

As a lad I can remember saving Mercury in a bottle and coating pennies with it as well as holding it in my hand!

During all the above I never owned or used any kind of protection - guess I was just lucky as I am still fairly healthy!

Can't say I would recommend anyone doing any of the above today, but sure do think some of the "scare tactics" lawyers are using today are way overblown!

mercury

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I had about a cup sized bottle of it. It was fun to mess with and as you say not the deadly threat it is made out to be today. However, my dad worked at Hooker in pipe fitting and died from what appears by today's knowledge to have been exposure to Mirex and similar chlorinated pesticides. Toxicity is all in the dose.

Re: Another Long Rant!

William Duffield

Parathion is very nasty stuff. My dad was a greenskeeper, and was poisoned by it, and it took him a long time to recover, but it was probably tobacco that eventually killed him.

Malathion, OTOH, is a relatively safe and effective insecticide. IIRC, when sprayed on the environment, it usually completely breaks down in about a week in the applications where I have used it, mostly for killing scale insects. Read and follow the instructions. It's petroleum based carriers, however, can stay around for years, e.g., in the floor of my garden shed.

I have friends who grew ornamentals commercially, They had a dog (a littermate of one of my Goldens) who died of paw cancer caused by one or more of the pesticides they sprayed in their greenhouses. You just couldn't convince him that he needed to wear his Tyvek booties, any more than you can convince a lot of people nowadays to wear their COVID-19 masks.

Something even scarier: Borax used to sponsor a radio and TV show called "DEATH Valley Days." Curiously, all the former Death Valley Days hosts have died. That may have something to do with the twenty GMO equines they were exposed to. When it comes right down to it, the only issue is the definition of "modified" in vivo or in vitro.

While my friends were putting together models of such things as T. rex, a YF12A, nuclear powered aircraft carriers' and other WMDs, my favorite was a 20 Mule Team (regrettably, only a scale model, in polystyrene ).

If you are looking for some real Borax Wagon woodworking content, try Engel's Coach Shop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq41lsw_GLY&list=PL3Qu3GIvx73EgVa8dYcN_e9ps2BDMO9j3

Re: Another Long Rant!

paul in AZ

" Curiously, all the former Death Valley Days hosts have died. That may have something to do with the twenty GMO equines "

Whats curious about this? The radio show died 70 years ago and the TV series died 50 years ago. Anyone on those shows would be quite old now [if alive].

borax wagon

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Re: Another Long Rant!

William Duffield

Sorry, I thought that part of my post had "sarcasm" written all over it. I intended only to mock some of the more radical conspiracy theorists…none of those around here, or course. I also intended to include a link to the Wikipedia entry on Death Valley Days. I don't know how I missed that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Valley_Days

To answer Jim: Yes, Reagan was host and starred in some episodes; Ward Bond was never a host.

Re: borax wagon

William Duffield

Those look like they've led a hard life, but perhaps not unreasonable for a century in Death Valley, but I'll bet it doesn't include powderpost beetle damage.