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What's New This Month
The Washington School IPM Program
PEST2014 - A pesticide
recordkeeping database for Washington public schools and licensed
daycare centers. This is an updated version of PEST2000. New features
of the database include the ability to input tank mixes on one record
and the inclusion of application sites to the annual summary report.
A Classroom
InPESTigation - A life science curriculum for grades 3 to 5. The
curriculum is designed to promote students' use of science skills to
gather knowledge about and address the real-world problem of pests. The
Next Generation Science Standards were used to guide its construction,
and activities were crafted to promote learning through social,
creative, and thoughtful problem solving.
PNW Pest Press
Mosquitoes - Learn about mosquitoes and what you can do to help keep
these blood-thirsty pests away from your school.
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Highlights
May is Asthma Awareness Month!
Asthma Awareness Month (AAM) is right around the corner! How will you raise asthma awareness and action in your school community?
Plan educational events and activities for students, staff and parents using EPA's Asthma Awareness Month Event Planning Kit. Then check out how to effectively engage local media and broaden your school's reach through social media.
Celebrate #AsthmaAwarenessMonth in Your School and Beyond
Social media is a
quick and effective way to reach your target audiences and expand your
marketing efforts. Facebook reaches more than 1 billion active users
monthly, and there are more than 200 million active Twitter users.
Consider using
social media, like Facebook and Twitter, to promote AAM and events at
your school and in your community. Use the sample posts below on your
program's social media pages.
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| Upcoming Events |
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May 18-21, 2014
National Conference on Urban Entomology
San Antonio, TX
August 24-27, 2014
Association of Structural Pest Control Regulatory Officials (ASPCRO) National Meeting
Missoula, MT
More Information
November 16-19, 2014
Entomological Society of America (ESA) National Meting
Portland, OR
More Information
March 24-26, 2015
8th International IPM Symposium
Salt Lake City, UT
More Information |
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| *View this newsletter as a PDF |
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Greetings from School IPM 2015!
Every day, 49 million children attend school in the United States,
served by nearly seven million teachers and staff. But they're not
alone. Schools are also frequented by a number of pests including
cockroaches, mice, dust mites and more. Asthma is epidemic among
children, impacting nearly 6% of school children nationally with rates
as high as 25% in urban centers. House mice and cockroaches are potent
asthma triggers.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a
prevention-based, highly effective approach proven to reduce pest
complaints and pesticide use by up to 90% in schools and other public
buildings. IPM practices such as sanitation and exclusion also improve
food safety, fire safety and energy conservation. Our newsletter
highlights real-life examples of IPM in practice and can help you start
an IPM program in your school district. For more information, visit www.schoolipm2015.com. |
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Look Out for Questing Ticks
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Depending on where
you are located, hungry ticks follow an annual cycle, seeking wildlife,
pet and human hosts as daytime temperatures rise in late winter and
spring. Ticks feed on the blood of their hosts, sometimes transferring
pathogens including Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis and Rocky Mountain
spotted fever, which can have potential lifelong and/or fatal
consequences.
How do these
non-flying arachnids locate hosts? They stand absolutely still with
their first pair of legs outstretched waiting for passers-by, a behavior
called questing. In temperate areas east of the Mississippi, dog ticks (Dermacentor variabillis) typically begin questing in April, peaking between May to July, and declining around August. Lone star ticks (Amblyomma americanum) are active in April, peak between May to July and then suddenly slow at the end of July over much of their range.
Tick populations,
and tick-borne diseases are spreading northward across the US, Canada
and the UK. Scientists believe the expansion is related to changes in
climate, and host population growth including deer and mice.
Tips to Avoid Questing Ticks
- Wear long sleeves and long pants tucked into socks.
- Avoid high-risk areas, especially forest edges, tall grass and weedy forest understory.
- Thoroughly check for ticks after time spent outdoors.
- Make
your yard less tick friendly by mowing your lawn frequently, removing
leaf litter and brush, storing wood piles away from your home and
keeping pets away from heavily infested areas.
What to do if you find a tick?
- Carefully remove the tick with tweezers.
- Preserve the tick so it can be identified and tested if necessary.
- If you identify a blacklegged tick (Ioxodes scapularis), submit it to a lab to test it for pathogens.
- Visit your doctor to get tested for tick-borne diseases,
especially if you think a tick was allowed to feed for more than 24
hours, a requirement for transmission of some pathogens.
- Send a picture to TickSpotters.
Tick experts the University of Rhode Island will return an
identification in exchange for the location information, which allows
them to track distribution and incidence data nationally.
Other Resources
TickEncounter, funded and managed by the University of Rhode Island Center for Vector-Borne Disease, is
a comprehensive, user-friendly resource for managing ticks across the
US. Information is seasonally and regionally relevant, important because
ticks behave differently in different parts of the US. The tick identification webpage ranks
the most common ticks in a region and describes seasonal activities,
diseases vectored, and pictures engorged ticks which can look quite
different from their unfed state.
The Public/Private Tick IPM Working Group
was launched last October, amid rising concerns over the spread of
ticks and tick-borne diseases. More than fifty individuals from federal,
state and local governments, Land Grant Universities, non-governmental
organizations and others participate in this forum for communication,
networking and collaboration. The Working Group hosts conference calls
on the second Wednesday of each month and maintains a listserv. The
group is currently completing a priority ranking survey before it moves
forward with concrete projects and deliverables. If you are interested
in learning more about the Group, contact Jane Petzoldt. The Group is funded by a grant from the USDA North Central IPM Working Group.
The Pest Management Strategic Plan posted at School IPM 2015 also includes a section on ticks, including best practices for tick management on school grounds.
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| School IPM 2015 Updated Priorities |
The goal of the School IPM 2015 Strategic Plan
is to assess the current status of pest management in our school
systems, identify priorities for management, education, research and
regulation, compile our current understanding of best practices and set
out a plan of action to achieve full implementation of IPM in all of our
schools by 2015. The first plan was released in 2009.
Strategic plan
priorities were recently updated through a ranking survey completed by
all four regional School IPM working groups (Northeastern, North Central , Western and Southern).
Priorities were ranked according to the number of votes each priority
received during the ranking process, 51 working group members voted. The
updated strategic plan will be available at the School IPM 2015 website later this year. Below are the top five ranked priorities for each section.
Management Priorities
- Track adoption of IPM practices in schools and disseminate
economic, environmental and/or health impacts of IPM. Educate policy
makers about the needs and benefits of IPM in terms of dollars, health,
environmental and academic performance.
- Identify
and piggyback with ongoing environmental health efforts and coordinate
with partners in promoting IPM to help schools and child care facilities
to meet healthy, high performance and safety, economic and energy
efficiency goals.
- Create job-specific IPM guidelines for roles within schools.
- Develop IPM decision-making tools.
- Identify, educate and activate appropriate school-related organizations to embed IPM into the organizational culture.
Regulatory Priorities
- Establish IPM policies in school systems to institutionalize the commitment to IPM.
- Identify
and promote interagency cooperation among regulatory, environmental,
health, insurance, education, State and Federal, Cooperative Extension
and other agencies.
- Create and mandate minimum
standards for school IPM at federal level established through high level
IPM training/licensing for pest management professionals.
- Implement and enforce existing IPM laws and policies at the highest level of economic and regulatory accountability.
- Work to incorporate IPM strategies into building codes.
Research Priorities
- Identify effective least-risk products and tools to manage pests and measure IPM continual improvement.
- Research
the cost of IPM, including: implementation and education versus
conventional pest management. Conduct a cost analysis for misapplication
of pesticides (indoor and outdoor), calculate the cost savings of
exclusion practices, research effectiveness of pesticides/pest
treatments.
- Research the impact IPM has on indoor
and outdoor school environmental health, e.g., school well water, school
gardens, use of adjacent properties, children's health, (asthma,
allergies, absenteeism, grades, ADHA), academic performance and safety
factors.
- Research and evaluate outreach methods to determine most effective methods of school/community audiences.
- Evaluate building design, construction, renovation, and maintenance criteria.
Education Priorities
- Develop and utilize educational methods to provide
education and hands-on training for custodial, maintenance, kitchen and
grounds staff, school nurses, facility directors, administrators,
teachers and IPM coordinators.
- Partner with pest
management professionals (PMPs) and organizations to create and
implement effective, economical IPM service relationships.
- Create
best management practice for schools to use with vendors of pest
management services, design and construction services, custodial
services, food and drink product service providers, etc.
- Improve
superintendents, principals and teacher pre-service training courses
and develop curricula for training Extension, state legislators and
other change agents.
- Create multi-state coordinated train the trainer programs on School IPM, e.g., resources for peer-to-peer training.
Several Current Projects Addressing Priorities
The North Central School IPM Working Group, the University of
Arizona and other individuals from federal, state and local governments,
Cooperative Extension, non-governmental and non-profit organizations
are currently working on Stop School Pests - A National Standard IPM
Training Program. This project addresses the priority for educational,
hands-on training for school staff roles and is funded by the North
Central IPM Center and the Environmental Protection Agency. To learn
more about the Stop School Pests training program, check out the March School IPM 2015 eNewsletter article.
Texas A&M
University, Salt Lake City School District and Colorado State University
are currently addressing the priority to develop IPM decision-making
tools through their work on iPEST, SchoolDude and the IPM Calculator, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency. The North Central School IPM Working Group is currently developing the Illinois IPM Association,
which addresses the priority to identify, educate and activate
appropriate school-related organizations to embed IPM into the
organizational culture, funded by the North Central IPM Center.
Northeastern IPM Center funded Expanding School IPM Implementation within the Northeastern United States: a Best Management Practices (BMP) Approach, addressing
the priority to provide succinct guidance documents and training aid
for practitioners to use with vendors of pest management services,
design and construction services, custodial services, food and drink
product service providers and other vendors. To learn more about this
project, check out the article below.
The regional
working groups continue to address the priority to identify and promote
interagency cooperation among regulatory, environmental, health,
insurance, education, State and Federal, Cooperative Extension and other
agencies.
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Best Management Practices for School IPM
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In 2013 the
Northeastern IPM Center funded Expanding School IPM Implementation
within the Northeastern United States: a Best Management Practices (BMP)
Approach, led by Lynn Braband of Cornell University. This project
evaluated, incorporated, and augmented existing resources in the
development of a school IPM best management practices (BMP) website.
They piloted the website in train-the-trainer events in three states and
systematically evaluated the website through surveys, focus groups, and
training events.
The project has
led to improved resources and training which should increase the number
of schools practicing high-level IPM, thereby safeguarding human health
and the environment. The resources created are available on the website.
Topics include:
- IPM basics, why is IPM so important to schools?
- How can your school benefit from using IPM?
- Use of pesticides on school property
- IPM policies and protocols
- Common IPM terms
- Pesticide use and IPM laws by states in the Northeast
- IPM websites and other resources
Site-specific
practices address both indoor and outdoor areas: cafeterias, kitchens,
storage areas, classrooms, offices, staff lounges, hallways, locker
rooms, gyms, pools, mechanical rooms, crawlspaces, walls, windows,
roofs, eaves, athletic fields, fence lines, parking lots and sidewalks,
low-maintenance turf and planting beds and gardens.
The project team
encourages schools to utilize pest prevention and pest monitoring tools
to reduce reliance on pesticides and to select least-risk control
methods to minimize risks of human exposure to pests and pesticides.
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Lice
have three pairs of legs and are grayish-white in color. Nits are oval
white cylinders that are about a sixteenth of an inch long. Lice prefer
to lay their eggs near the ears and the back of the head.
The adult German cockroach is typically one-half to five-eighths of an
inch long and is light brown in color. They are best identified by their
small size and two dark parallel lines that run from the back of the
head to the wings. Although their wings are fully developed, unlike the
American cockroach, they cannot fly. The German cockroach is usually
found in kitchens near dishwashers, stoves or sinks, preferring to hide
in cracks and dark places where it is warm and humid.