NJPMA's Douglen Defends Pesticide Use in Schools

Editor's note: Leonard Douglen, director of the New Jersey Pest Management Association, issued the following statement in response to recent activist efforts to stop pesticide use in schools:

JAMA analysis of pesticide use is refuted

“Which should parents fear most?” asks Leonard Douglen, Executive Director of the New Jersey Pest Management Association, “Pests that spread disease or the pesticides used to eliminate that threat?”

In July, a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association claimed that an analysis of the use of pesticides to protect schools against insect and rodent infestations from 1998 to 2002 revealed a high level of illnesses per million children. “It has since been revealed that this report’s analysis was dubious at best, and fraudulent at worst,” says Douglen.

“What the New Jersey parents of school children need to know is that the New Jersey Pest Management Association, working closely with representatives of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, years ago developed a protocol for treating schools that has been widely adopted by pest management professionals throughout the nation.”

“The program we developed,” says Douglen, “insures both the highest levels of protection against insect and rodent infestations in our State’s schools, along with the lowest levels of any possible exposure to the pesticides. Moreover, we mandated that no school be treated during the hours of school attendance except in the event of an extremely serious threat to the health of students.”

In August, writing for the Internet site of the Fox News Channel, science writer Steven Milloy, examined the JAMA claims along with school injury rates. “According to an analysis of school injuries published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine (April 2001), there were 43,881 school injuries that required emergency department or hospital admission for the years 1992-1996 and that was just in one state, Utah. That equates to an injury rate of about 3,300 per million children, about 445 times greater than the alleged rate for pesticide incidents.”

Milloy went on to note “The reported 1,972 cases of children made ill by pesticides are, in fact, largely unsubstantiated.” Even the JAMA report backs off its claims, noting that “Given both the nonspecificity of the clinical findings of pesticide poisoning and the lack of a standard diagnostic test, some illnesses temporarily related to pesticide exposures may be coincidental and not caused by these exposures.”

“This is academic jargon,” says Douglen, “that admits the JAMA analysis, while evoking the media coverage that opponents of any use of pesticides anywhere always seek, is probably inaccurate, even by its authors own admission.”

“Forgotten in all the efforts to discredit the proper application of pesticides,” says Douglen, “is the fact that members of the pest control profession are parents too. Trained, licensed and certified annually by the NJDEP in the use of EPA registered pesticides, they are the last people to misuse pesticides in schools.”

“The question parents must ask themselves,” says Douglen, “is whether to put a higher priority on having their children protected against the West Nile Virus or an outbreak of Salmonella, food poisoning, than the extremely unlikely exposure to any pesticide used to eliminate mosquitoes, cockroaches, fire ants, bees, wasps, rats or mice, among the many creatures that can harm the health of their children.”

“Schools in New Jersey are not subject to the widespread use of pesticides,” says Douglen. “Just the opposite. The Association’s protocol utilizes Integrated Pest Management techniques that put a priority on methods to prevent access by insect or rodent species to school facilities. Pest control professionals work closely with school administrators to insure that structural deterrents are implemented, but when an infestation is found, the application of pesticides is undertaken with the emphasis on insuring the least possible exposure to students.”

With a national level of 3.7 million school injuries per year, “parents,” says Douglen, “have plenty to worry about without being misled to believe that any and all use of pesticides poses a threat. The widespread use of mind-altering drugs like Ritalin to control the behavior of students in the schoolroom poses a far greater problem in the view of many medical professionals.” 
 
Leonard Douglen (NJPCAssoc@aol.com)
Executive Director
New Jersey Pest Management Assn.
PO Box 25
Livingston, NJ   07039
Phone : 1-800-524-9942
www.njpestcontrol.com/nj/