When people think about pests, their first thoughts are about the insects that destroy crops and cause property damage. However, there are other kinds of pests-roaches, termites, rodents, or bedbugs, for instance.
Pest control is the business of exterminating pests. This could involve everything from trapping them in a sticky substance to fumigating an area. In addition, it can include killing by direct methods such as poisoning or less natural methods such as steam treatments to kill eggs and larvae.
Pest control is more than just killing pests. It includes procedures such as cleaning and sanitizing, preventing entry of pests into a property, and avoiding further infestation by eradicating the pest’s eggs and larvae, so they don’t hatch in your property again.
To make the common terms more precise, we at Pestcom Pest Management have compiled an essential glossary for your convenience. If you are ever confused about the information we relate, we encourage you to ask questions for clarification.
Pest Control Definitions
Pest control is a process where you apply pesticides to get rid of pests. This can be used to protect commercial crops, eliminate disease-carrying insects, or get rid of garden pests or even house pests. The method may use a chemical pesticide applied directly onto the food, plants, or weeds you wish to protect. Still, it also includes other measures such as protective coverings and decoy plants that repel insects from other food sources.
Listed below are the most common terms and definitions of Pest Control industry.
Action Threshold: The action needed to prevent further damage from climbing over tolerable levels because of the number of pests or the level of pest damage.
Bait: A specially constructed insecticide featuring delayed toxicity. Baits consist of 2 primary essential functions; a captivating enticement and a slow-acting toxin.
Biological Pesticide: Designed for pest control, a chemical derived from plants, fungi, bacteria, or other non-man-made syntheses.
Conventional Pesticide: To create pesticides, these chemicals are made from manmade chemical origins.
Harborage: Commonly used types of clutter, stacks of newspapers, cardboard boxes, and other natural places that can shelter pests.
Insecticide: To control or kill insects, an insecticide is a chemical agent made from pesticides.
IPM: IPM is an approach to maintain nematode, weed, insect, mite, disease, or vertebrate pests at tolerable levels by implementing long-term, minimal-risk solutions by using biological knowledge of pests and pest behavior. To avoid the need to take action, strategies are applied to resolve the factors that contribute to pest problems. The optimal solution used is the one that prevents damage from pests and is the least risk to humans or other non-pests organisms.
Key Pest: Frequently resulting in unacceptable damage that requires control action, a key pest nematode, an insect, mite, disease, or weed.
Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS): A detailed list of the hazards associated with chemicals and information on their safe uses and is available for all certified pesticides.
Monitoring: Determining the types of infestation levels and the specific pests at each site and checking on regular and ongoing site inspections along with trapping is one of several steps in an effective IPM plan.
Pest: Causing problems to humans, a nuisance is a term applied to organisms such as a microbe, insect, mite, disease, weeds, vertebrate, nematode, and so on.
Pesticide: A chemical substance used to kill and/or control pests.
Pesticide Residue: Following the application of the pesticides, a film exists from that pesticide left on the plants, soil, containers, equipment, handlers, and so on.
Residual Insecticides: Insecticides that continually remain active on a surface over time.
Rodenticide: A toxic chemical specifically designed to target rodents.
Sanitation: The routine maintenance, removal of clutter, and harborage as well as cleaning and is a form of pest control, one of several steps in an effective IPM plan.
Professional Pest Control Services
We at Pestcom Pest Management hope this helps you better understand the terms frequently used in our industry. If you are dealing with a pest infestation or simply want to take advantage of our resources to hinder pests from coming into your home or business, call us today to schedule your appointment! Our staff is highly trained to serve your needs with top-of-the-line products for pest control.