You are allowed to know exactly what went into your house.
Every homeowner asks some version of this and a lot of companies answer it with the word “safe.” That is not an answer. Here is what the material is, where it goes, who needs to be out of the room, and the piece of paper you should be getting afterwards.
Ask for the EPA registration number. Every time, from anyone.
It is the one question that separates a company keeping proper records from one that is not, and you do not need to understand the answer for the question to work.
It is a legal requirement, not a favor
MDARD’s guidance to licensed businesses is explicit: application records are required to list the EPA registration number of the products applied. That record has to exist. Asking for a copy of it costs a licensed company nothing, because they already wrote it down.
With that number you can look up the product label yourself — the full label, with the re-entry interval, the precautions and the environmental hazards on it. That is public information about a substance that is now in your house.
MDARD, Pesticide Application Businesses — compliance reminders. Read the requirements →What you get from us after every visit
- Named
Product, EPA number, and amount
On the invoice, not on request.
- Placed
Exactly where it went
“Kitchen” is not a location. “Gel bait, four placements, hinge side of the sink cabinet” is.
- Timed
The re-entry interval, in plain words
How long before the room is normal again, taken from the label rather than from somebody’s memory.
- Next
What we expect to happen, and by when
So that if it does not happen you have something to hold us to.
Children, pets, fish, bees.
Specifics vary by product and the label always governs. These are the general practices we work to, and we will give you the actual numbers for the actual product before we start.
- Children
Out of the treated room until it is dry, at minimum
Most of what we use indoors is a gel bait in a crack or a void — not a surface a child can reach, which is the whole point of placing it there. Where we do treat a surface, the label sets the interval and we will tell you what it is in hours, not “a while.”
In schools, public buildings and health care facilities Michigan additionally requires applicators to have completed an approved Integrated Pest Management training program and for an IPM program to be in place in that building. It is a good standard for a house as well, and it is the one we work to.
- Cats and dogs
Same rule, plus keep the bowls off the floor
Pick up food and water dishes and bedding before we arrive. Baits go where an animal cannot get at them, and we will show you each placement so you know where they are.
- Fish
Tell us before we arrive. This one is different
Many insecticides are extremely toxic to fish and aquatic invertebrates at very low concentrations. Cover the tank and switch off the air pump — an air pump draws room air through the water. If there is a tank in the room we will usually change the method rather than the precautions.
- Bees
We do not treat honey bees, and we will tell you if that is what you have
A honey bee swarm or an established colony in a wall is a job for a beekeeper, and there are people locally who will come and take it for nothing. Yellowjackets and hornets are a different animal entirely — see the look-alikes page — and those we will deal with.
Where we do treat outdoors we do it at dusk when foragers are not flying, and not on anything in bloom.
- Pregnancy, illness
Tell us, and we will change the approach
You do not have to explain why. There is nearly always a mechanical or bait-only route to the same result, and it is usually what we would have suggested anyway.
The least material that solves it, in the smallest place it can go.
That sentence is what integrated pest management actually means, underneath the acronym. Physical exclusion first, then habitat — moisture, food, clutter — then targeted material, then a broadcast application only if there is a reason.
A perimeter spray is the last tool on that list. In this trade it is usually sold as the first.
What we will not do
Treat without identifying. If we cannot say what it is, we do not know what works on it, and applying something anyway is guessing with a chemical.
Sell a quarterly plan to a house that does not need one.
Fog an occupied dwelling for anything that can be handled with placements.
Tell you a product is “safe.” We will tell you what it is, where it went and how long to stay out, and you can decide what safe means in your own house.