Bedbugs Booming

  • Complaints to pest control firms about bedbugs have tripled in 4 years. (Photo courtesy of the CDC)

The US is suffering through a
resurgence of bedbugs and the itchy
welts their bites cause. So now,
some health officials are asking
the Federal EPA to bring back an
old pesticide. Bill Cohen reports:

Transcript

The US is suffering through a
resurgence of bedbugs and the itchy
welts their bites cause. So now,
some health officials are asking
the Federal EPA to bring back an
old pesticide. Bill Cohen reports:

Complaints to pest control firms about bedbugs have tripled in 4 years.

Two reasons. More people are scavenging infested mattresses thrown out on the street. Plus, the bugs are getting resistant to current pesticides.

That’s why Ohio is asking the feds to let home exterminators use propoxur. Red tape and questions over possible side effects like nausea shelved the pesticide years ago, but local health official Paul Wenning fears, without it, frustrated itchy homeowners will turn to more dangerous weapons to fight the bugs.

“Our greatest fear is that someone is going to get ahold of some old pesticide – like DDT or something – are going to treat their house, and we’re going to have a lot of very sick and possibly dead people.”

Ohio expects other states will join the drive to bring back propoxur.

For The Environment Report, I’m Bill Cohen.

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Interview: The Incomparable Honey Bee

  • A Honey Bee. (Photo source: Erik Hooymans at Wikimedia Commons)

You could thank a honeybee for the last meal you ate. Bees help produce about one out of every three bites we eat. But worldwide bees are dying at a rate never seen in history. Lester Graham talked with Reese Halter about the decline of the honeybee.
Doctor Halter is a biologist and the author of the book The Incomparable Honeybee and the Economics of Pollination:

Transcript

You could thank a honeybee for the last meal you ate. Bees help produce about one out of every three bites we eat. But worldwide bees are dying at a rate never seen in history. Lester Graham talked with Reese Halter about the decline of the honeybee.
Doctor Halter is a biologist and the author of the book The Incomparable Honeybee and the Economics of Pollination:

Doctor Reese Halter: We do know that we have a problem. 50 billion bees are missing.

Lester Graham: What kind of economic benefit is the bee to food production in, let’s just say, the US?

Halter: Enormous. I’ve given conservative numbers for food, for medicine, for clothing. Directly, the honeybee accounts for, at least, 44 billion per anom. Now, if you go to the cotton growers’ main site, they’ll tell you that, in cotton alone, America does well over 100 billion in commerce. The cotton plant cannot exist without the bee.

Graham: Now, bees have been hurt in the last few decades. We’ve seen a couple of different invasive mites really decimate the bee population, and now we’re seeing this colony collapse disorder. Can you tell us what you think some of the causes might be?

Halter: There’s no one smoking gun. We’ve got a collision of events that have happened. We have insecticided, fumigated, miticided, pesticided ourselves almost right through oblivion. We’ve got electromagnetic radiation coming at them. We truck bees on semi-tractor trailers around our nation – they’re on, like, a Nascar circuit – where we don’t even allow them, for goodness sakes, to eat honey, we stoke them up with high-fructose and corn syrup, because it costs too much to feed them honey, for goodness sakes. And they’re sick. We’re overworking them. We’re losing billions of them. And we’ve reached a point now where there are mites, where there are bacterias and viruses, and, at the end of the day, not dissimilarly to human-beings, the bees’ auto-immune systems are shutting down.

Graham: What can we do about that?

Halter: In a nutshell, I think we need to step back here, and we need to look at all the different problems. And I think where I get really excited, Lester, is corporate America – corporate America – gets this. And they get it with Sam’s Club, they get it with Safeway, because organics – organics – you know, we can grow stuff. We can grow anything without having to nuke the Earth with petro-chemical-derived fertilizers and insecticides. When we ramp the scale of economy up, as we’ve done throughout America, in our supermarkets, and, incidentally, organic foods and organic products are the fastest growing in the United States of America. 24 billion last year. So when it ramps up the price per unit goes down. And there are all these organic bays in almost every food store now. So, please, consider supporting it. Certainly buy organics in season. And, it is very affordable.

Graham: Reese Halter is the author of ‘The Incomparable Honeybee’ published by Rocky Mountain Press. Thanks for talking with us.

Halter: Thank you, Lester.

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Heading Out on a BioBlitz

  • JP Anderson, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore Park Ranger, at the start of National Geographic and the National Park Service's 2009 BioBlitz at The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. (Photo by Enrique Pulido)

The National Park Service has a slightly embarrassing problem. It manages some of the nation’s most
environmentally valuable land – but it doesn’t have a full account of plant and animal species that live in
the parks. One remedy is the BioBlitz. A BioBlitz is a kind of whirlwind count of all the species in a
specific place. The Park Service has been co-sponsoring BioBlitzes with National Geographic. We sent
Shawn Allee to their latest:

Transcript

The National Park Service has a slightly embarrassing problem. It manages some of the nation’s most
environmentally valuable land – but it doesn’t have a full account of plant and animal species that live in
the parks. One remedy is the BioBlitz. A BioBlitz is a kind of whirlwind count of all the species in a
specific place. The Park Service has been co-sponsoring BioBlitzes with National Geographic. We sent
Shawn Allee to their latest:

The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is spread along Lake Michigan’s southern shoreline.

During this BioBlitz, scientists and volunteers fan out in teams to search the sand dunes, woods, and
grassland around here.

At first, the mood’s high, but then it rains kinda hard.

We’re supposed to be counting species for 24 hours, but at first, we can’t even get out of our cars.

(ring of a phone)

“Hello? Yeah. We’re stuck in traffic, here. We came out here and I thought we were going
out in the wrong direction.”

I hitch a ride with Dr. Patrick Leacock. He’s a mycologist, a kind of mushroom expert.

I’m actually lucky to be on his BioBlitz team, because organizers from National Geographic and the National Park Service want people to count all the species
in the park.

And they mean everything – not just plants and animals that are a cinch to find.

Allee: “Are fungi something you feel that the average person doesn’t think about when it comes
to biodiversity?”

Leacock: “Yeah, there’s people, you tell them you study mushrooms, and they talk about their
athlete’s foot, or they think there’s only six different kinds or something like
that.”

Leacock says, in fact, the Indiana Dunes Lakeshore has at least 600 fungi species. He hopes the
BioBlitz team will add to that list.

Leacock: “Here we are.”

Allee: “I’m hunting mushrooms with three trained mycologists and there are six other volunteers on my team here. One of them is Zachary Benes – he’s just 9 years old. But, I gotta say, Dr. Leacock is pretty lucky
to have Zachary on the team – since he’s found the most mushrooms of anyone on the team.”

Benes: “Is it poisonous?”

Leacock: “Nope. A real mushroom.”

Tang: “Yeah.”

Allee: “Looks like you found another one, too. Where’d you find it?”

Benes: “Over there by the wood.”

Leacock: “This is collybia sub-sulphurea. Do you know what sulfur means?”

Benes: “No.”

Leacock: “It’s a kind of a yellow-orange color. So, this might be a new record for the dunes. So that’s a good one. Was it
just the one?”

Benes: “Yeah. Just the one.”

Leacock: “It’s in good shape.”

Along the trail, I chat with Yaya Tang. She’s one of the other mycologists on the team.

Tang says she’s glad to see BioBlitz volunteers search for elusive species of bats, bugs, and fungi.

“I feel like that’s an issue with biodiversity in general. Where people care about things that are cute or
that they see immediately. Like, there’s insects, too, that don’t get a lot of attention.”

Allee: “Dr. Leacock, we’re pretty much finished here. You got this container of many varieties
of fungi we’ve collected within an hour, would you have been able to get this many
yourself? If you had come out here on your own?”

Leacock: “No. The more people you have searching, that helps a lot. Different people will see
different things, too, I think. So we’ve 14 or 15 things right in my box. We have two that might be new
records for the dunes.”

The BioBlitz at The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore lasts another 20 hours.

A few days later, Dr. Leacock writes me.

He tells me volunteers turned up at least one fungi specimen no one had ever seen in the Dunes park.

It’s a small success – enough that National Geographic, the Park Service, and other groups are
planning more BioBlitzes across the country.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Insecticide Chemical Is a Powerful Greenhouse Gas

  • Sulfuryl flouride, a chemical used to fumigate termite-infested buildings, is a potent greenhouse gas (Source: Esculapio at Wikimedia Commons)

The federal government is going to take some significant steps to reduce global warming gases. Carbon dioxide is the main target, but there are other types of greenhouse gases. Lester Graham spoke with one researcher who found a potent greenhouse gas lingers in the atmosphere much longer than previously thought:

Transcript

We hear a lot about carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. But there are other chemicals that trap heat and contribute to global warming. One of them is an insecticide used to fumigate termite-infested buildings. It’s called Sulfuryl fluoride. That insecticide is four-thousand times better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. It’s been estimated that Sulfuryl flouride hangs around in the atmosphere for five years or so… but new research shows that it lasts a lot longer than that:

Mads Sulbaek Anderson is working with other researchers at the University of California-Irvine published a study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

He’s with us now… first, how is this termite insecticide used?

“Well, it’s used in a number of applications. What the fumigators do is, they basically cover the house in a giant tent. And then you fill up the house with this compound, and over the span of a few days, one or two days, this compound acts like a pesticide- it kills all of these bugs. After that time span, you remove the tent, and make sure that all of this compound evaporates and dissipates.”

What did you discover about how long this insecticide actually stays in the atmosphere?

“The usual routes by which pollution is removed from the atmosphere has to do with reactions, and there’s something called an OH radical, a hydroxyl radical in the atmosphere. That’s the usual cleaner of the atmosphere. In this case, this radical didn’t react at all with the compound – we couldn’t detect anything.”

Is this a significant contributor to global warming, or greenhouse gases?

“It’s still a question of how much is actually present in the atmosphere right now. But, we know how much is used every year of this compound. And so this compound, right, it’s 4,000 times more efficient in trapping the heat compared to carbon dioxide. But of course, there’s not much of it out in the atmosphere yet. But it’s more a precautionary tale, because other compounds are being phased out for other reasons and so sulfuryl fluoride could take over for those applications, if we don’t think twice about this. And it stays around for at least a few decades. So, it’s not an enormous problem by itself- we have to focus on the real problem, which of course is due to emissions from burning fossil fuels. But this compound too contributes to the warming of the atmosphere, or could potentially do it.”

Mads Sulbaek Anderson is a researcher at the University of California-Irvine. Thank you.

“You are very much welcome.”

Related Links

Growing a Garden on Your Garage

  • David Lanfear recently ‘installed’ one on his own garage roof, so his neighbors could see the benefits (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)

When most people put a new roof on
their home they usually use standard asphalt
or tile roofing. But other people are going
for something more natural. They’re planting
grass and flowers on their houses. Joyce
Kryszak talked with one builder in
Western New York who planted a green roof on
his garage to show his neighbors how it works:

Transcript

When most people put a new roof on
their home they usually use standard asphalt
or tile roofing. But other people are going
for something more natural. They’re planting
grass and flowers on their houses. Joyce
Kryszak talked with one builder in
Western New York who planted a green roof on
his garage to show his neighbors how it works:

About 90% of all residential roofs are made out of manufactured
asphalt.

But builder David Lanfear knows that nothing tops mother nature.
He makes roofs out of gardens.

Lanfear recently ‘installed’ one on his own garage roof, so his
neighbors could see the benefits. There are beautiful flowering
plants visible over the edge of the flat roof. Lanfear says they’ve got
the whole birds and bees thing going on.

“We’ve noticed a big increase in insects, butterflies, birds all
sorts of new birds that I haven’t ever seen. They’re up there
eating something. Bugs? But its kind of nice to sit on the deck
and watch this nature in the city thing,” said Lanfear.

But the living roof isn’t a novelty. Lanfear says the roofs are more
eco-friendly. He says a living roof provides a whole cascade of
environmental benefits.

“Especially in a downtown when you get a hard rainfall the water
washes off all at once. There’s nothing to absorb it. If you had
a roof like this it absorbs the water and let’s it off slowly. So, it
not only slows the runoff, it cools the water and it starts to filter
the water. It filters some of the atmospheric crud out.
Otherwise, you get super heated water rushing off into the storm
sewer, and then out into the river or the lake and effecting the
environment there,” said Lanfear.

Once his neighbors understood the concept, they stopped thinking
Lanfear was crazy. A few even offered to give him a hand planting
his roof.

First the roof was reinforced with used lumber. Next are the
waterproof barriers – a rubber membrane, a root barrier made out of
old billboards and some old carpeting. Finally, recycled, crushed
concrete is shoveled on to be used as soil for the plants to grow in.

It’s all sustainable. And the native plants require very little water or
maintenance.

Neighbor Deborah Bach loves to garden. So, she was happy to
pitch in. Bach says the concrete soil needs to be doctored to enrich
it. But they have a reuse idea for that too.

“My son works at Starbucks and they give out free grounds for
gardens. So, we’re going to try doing that to try to balance this
out. You know, using recycled materials and things that have
already been used,” said Bach.

Another neighbor stopped by to help. Alex Sowyrda is a high school
technology teacher who’s interested in the science of green roofs.
He plans to share what he learns with his students.

“I try to bring it into my curriculum at school and, hopefully, the
kids graduating high school now take this knowledge with them
and are able to make responsible choices in the way they build
and the way they design in the future,” said Sowyrda.

The living roof builder David Lanfear says it’s a concept that can grow
on anyone. Even people who grew up with more traditional roofs. He
says to start small – with a garage roof – or maybe even smaller.

“We all have little expanses of roof in front of windows. And in
the summer you might notice that when the window is open the
hot air blows in, a lot of that heat comes from that little bit of
roof. If we could just put sections one square yard of living roof
outside of our windows on the porch roof, that would make a
drastic difference in cooling our house – simple,” said Lanfear.

And pretty cheap. Lanfear says the cost of materials is about the
same as an asphalt roof. But he says there’s savings in the long run
because the green roof can last three times as long.

And he says it’s a whole lot nicer to look at.

For The Environment Report, I’m Joyce Kryszak.

Related Links

On the Lookout for Fireflies

  • Researchers have started a project to document firefly sightings (Photo by Don Salvatore, courtesy of Museum of Science, Boston)

Scientists want your help counting
fireflies. Mark Brush reports researchers
hope to answer a commonly asked question:

Transcript

Scientists want your help counting
fireflies. Mark Brush reports researchers
hope to answer a commonly asked question:

People often ask, ‘Why don’t we see as many fireflies anymore?’

Don Salvatore is an educator at Boston’s Museum of Science. He says he and other
researchers don’t have a good answer. They don’t even know whether there are fewer
fireflies or not.

So Salvatore and a few bug scientists started up the Firefly Watch Project. They’re
asking people to help them out by spending a few minutes in their backyard.

“So what we want them to do is to go outside at night and then for a ten second period
count the number of fireflies they see. As well as that we ask them to just key in on a
couple of fireflies and give us just a little information.”

Salvatore says they hope to discover whether thinks like frequent lawn mowing, light
pollution, and pesticides are harming firefly numbers.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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West Nile Virus Here to Stay

  • USGS Wildlife Veterinarian testing an American crow for previous exposure to the West Nile Virus (Photo courtesy of US Geological Survey)

We’re heading into West Nile virus season.
Rebecca Williams reports experts say it’s now a
seasonal epidemic:

Transcript

We’re heading into West Nile virus season.
Rebecca Williams reports experts say it’s now a
seasonal epidemic:

West Nile virus is at its peak between mid-July and mid-September.

You can get infected from a single mosquito bite.

Most people who get infected won’t get a serious case of it. But people
over 50 have a higher risk of getting really sick. The virus can cause
high fever, paralysis and even death.

Dr. Lyle Petersen is with the Centers for Disease Control. He says West
Nile Virus is here to stay. And he says even if your area hasn’t had an
outbreak recently, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

“We really can’t predict exactly when and where these outbreaks are
going to occur so everybody needs to take precautions.”

He says you should use insect repellants, repair window screens, and
drain standing water around your house.

For The Environment Report I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Testing a Better Bug Spray

  • The USDA is testing a new bug spray to ward off mosquitos and other pests (Photo by Lester Graham)

Researchers are working on new chemicals
to keep mosquitoes from biting. The Environment
Report’s Mark Brush reports they might have found
a better alternative to DEET:

Transcript

Researchers are working on new chemicals
to keep mosquitoes from biting. The Environment
Report’s Mark Brush reports they might have found
a better alternative to DEET:

The EPA says DEET is safe to use on your skin. But the repellent’s smell and stickiness
turns some people off. And spraying DEET on your skin won’t protect you from all types
of mosquitoes.

So researchers are working on alternatives.

Uli Bernier is research chemist with the USDA. He says their research team is looking
for a compound that will work against some of the most dangerous mosquitoes.

“DEET works against a great variety of insects, but not against all of them. And in
particular some of the malaria transmitting mosquitoes will bite through DEET without
difficulty.”

Bernier says their research has turned up some chemicals that do a better job than DEET.
The chemicals keep mosquitoes from biting for up to three times longer. Bernier says their
next step will be to test the chemicals for possible human health effects and for their
effectiveness on other insects.

(mosquito buzzing sound)

For The Environment Report (sound of swat) – gotcha – I’m Mark Brush.

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Insect Death Match

  • Researchers want to bring in parasitic wasps from China to kill the emerald ash borer (pictured) to slow the beetle's spread. (Photo courtesy of the USFS)

The federal government wants to import insect parasites from China into
the US. Rebecca Williams reports officials are hoping parasitic wasps
will control a pest that’s been killing millions of trees:

Transcript

The federal government wants to import insect parasites from China into
the US. Rebecca Williams reports officials are hoping parasitic wasps
will control a pest that’s been killing millions of trees:


The emerald ash borer has already killed 20 million ash trees.
Scientists think the ash borer got into North America in cargo from
China. It came over without any of the parasites that normally keep it
in check.


Researchers want to bring in some of those parasitic wasps from China
to try to kill the ash borer beetles.


Juli Gould is with the US Department of Agriculture. She’s been
studying the parasitic wasps. She says the ash borer can’t be
eradicated, but the parasites might slow the beetle’s spread:


“The population is very widespread right now and we need another tool
in the toolbox to help control it.”


Gould says they’ve been running tests to make sure the parasitic wasps
won’t kill insects other than the ash borer. She says in her lab
tests, the parasites appear to much prefer ash borers over the other
insects they tested.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Wasp Kills Pines

  • The Sirex woodwasp is killing pinetrees in New York, Pennsylvania and parts of Ontario and seems to be spreading. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Foresters are worried about a wasp that’s killing pine trees. The insect is
spreading through pine forests in northern states. Steve Carmody reports:

Transcript

Foresters are worried about a wasp that’s killing pine trees. The insect is
spreading through pine forests in northern states. Steve Carmody reports:


The female Sirex woodwasp injects a combination of a toxic mucus and a
fungus while laying her eggs in pine trees. The mixture feeds the eggs, but
kills tree cells, often further weakening stressed pines.


In the three years since it first appeared in upstate New York, the Sirex
woodwasp has spread to 25 New York counties, and two counties in
Pennsylvania and part of Ontario.


Bob Heyd, with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, says the Sirex
woodwasp is spreading:


“The wasp is actually very strong fliers. They can fly 70 or 100 miles, so what it
is here… it will disperse very quickly.”


In other countries, forestry officials have found an imported predatory
nematode from the wasp’s home range in Europe has been an effective
biological control. It’s unclear if officials in the US will try the same
tactic.


For the Environment Report, I’m Steve Carmody.

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