Fumigation Review

John B Mueller 00:00:01 – 00:48:50

This podcast supports fumigators in improving safety, compliance, and solutions. Always follow the federal fumigant label, state, and local laws. Licensed fumigators are legally responsible for their applications. And now, on to all things fumigation. Out here, we don’t just fight pests, we outsmart them. This is All Things Fumigation, where applied science meets real-world grit. I’m John B. Mueller, a fumigator by trade and your guide to the science of fumigation done right. Each month we saddle up with the people, the practices, and the precision it takes to keep facilities safe, compliant, and pest-free. Because when you’re in the trenches of pest control, You don’t need magic. You need science and maybe a little cowboy spirit. Smarter solutions, safer practices, managed costs. Welcome to All Things Fumigation. Welcome to All Things Fumigation. Our next episode is episode 11 in our series, and we’re covering fumigation review. And our theme for this episode is Conspire to Succeed. And we’re going to talk about partnerships and how to be more effective and extend the results of that fumigation over time. So I also want to bring up a viewer input from Alan Siegt from Air Quality Innovations in Australia. And Alan brings up a really good point here around gas monitoring. And it’s around requiring a commitment to the process. These monitors are designed to be very accurate when used properly. And some of the things that impact, negatively impact gas readings or performance or accuracy are issues around air pressure or line pressure. Line length can impact that, high humidity, absence or presence of atmospheric pressure. So many things can impact that. So we have to pay attention and commit to the specifications of the unit. We have to know what that is, what maximum line length is for the pump that’s been set up. These, you know, that can, if we don’t do that, if we run line too long, we can have inaccurate readings. So does your unit manage humidity? All of these things are very, very important. So monitors are tools that must be used within their required parameters is the take-home message of his input, and I appreciated that. We’re gonna get into the episode now, and we’ve talked a lot about the fumigation process. And, you know, as you’re aware, you know, that process is a path that leads to successful treatments, right? Using the most powerful integrated pest management tool in that toolbox. And that process is planning, preparation, setup, application, analysis or monitoring, ventilation clearance. And now we’re going to critically review all of these analytics that we’ve accumulated through this process. And if we do that effectively, we’re going to have a very successful treatment. And that is that success path. Now, fumigation review, I want to sell you on the importance of this, because what I have learned over the years, and in particular, particularly in the last year, as I’ve been called in to kind of autopsy you know, some fumigation frustrations and irritations, failures even. The one thing that I’ve seen is commonly fumigators are doing a pretty good job, and where a lot of the failure comes from is the lack of review or the failure to supply the appropriate paperwork. So think about that, you know, 99% of the work and it’s hard work, is the service itself. And where they’re failing is on the documentation side. And to me, that’s awful because that’s our opportunity to look at what was done wrong and correct it, look at those things that were done effectively and expand on those, and continue to iterate in a more effective way these treatments. So, review is where safety is assured. It’s where risk is managed. It’s where compliance is achieved. It’s where reputation is driven and communicated up through the process. It’s where our customers’ brands are protected. It’s productive collaboration. It expands the fumigation results. And we’re going to show some examples of this. And then more importantly, it really has a lot to do with education, and education is the missing link. Sometimes we assume that the site or our customers understand all of the needs that are required by our fumigations to be successful. You’d be surprised at how little is really understood. And when we are collaborating effectively, when we generate these partnerships, it gives us the opportunity to explain what our needs are, the critical roles that the site plays, and then also some of the nuances of the fumigation. And it allows them to then message up the leadership change, what we have gone through, how we have been affected, and really to To verify the value that’s been delivered. And that supports the spend, which is extremely important. And then I also want to really kind of characterize, as we talk about fumigation review, the post-harvest fumigation kind of segment is broken up. And it’s broken up into fumigation of transportation devices, You know, like land-sea containers and ships and railcars. The next segment would be grain, right? Pretty dynamic. Then food processing operations or processing operations, and then warehousing. So every one of these requires documentation. Every one of these elements requires a critical review of the results of the fumigation, some with more intensity than others. And so we’re going to kind of talk about a general review of a pretty dynamic fumigation. And then you just have to realize there may be variations from the different segments. Now, when we look at the obligatory documentation that’s required at both a federal, state, and sometimes local level, Let’s just go through this, and then I’m going to get into a little more detail as we do go through it. But I group everything in what I call an opportunity for a post-fumigation report, one document at the end that accommodates all the required documents. And that’s where our critical review comes from. So in the beginning, we’ve got an assessment, right? We give a quote. or we generate the budget for a fumigation. So we assess that fumigation. We’re required by federal law and state law to have a fumigation management plan that has very specific elements. I encourage the identification of roles and responsibilities. We’ll explain that. The usage report for fumigants is quite a bit more intense than the regular insecticide usage report. This one is referred to by most states as a restricted use report or restricted chemical usage report. And then another one is conditions of concern. We’re going to explain that. Yes, it’s an additional document, kind of like roles and responsibilities, but you’re going to see how this starts to lighten your burden with all we have to do on these fumigations. And then there’s a clearance certificate that many people require. And then again, the post-fumigation document. Now, not all of these post-fumigation documents are comprehensive. Sometimes they’re basic information. But what I’m advocating for is a larger document that brings everything together. Now, in a post-fumigation review, we’ve got pretty critical performance indicators that we have to look at. And how did we stack up on the CT? Did we hit our CT? Did we achieve the right concentration? Did we hold it over the right period of time? Was our temperature right? Were we looking at the lowest temperature in that facility like we’ve talked about before? And then what was the pest density? And again, we’ve talked about this Venn diagram and that sweet spot that if we hit everything right, we have a successful fumigation. But you don’t know that in the beginning of the fumigation, right? You’re setting that fumigation up for success, but you don’t know how you aligned until the end. And then you have to look at what prevented you from hitting the marks, from creating that really successful sweet spot where you know you don’t even have to look at verification data or validation data. You should, but you know you’re in a good space based on the analysis. So let’s break that down a little bit. We’re going to show another chart here for those who are viewing. For those who are listening, I’ll explain it to you, but you’ve seen this before if you’ve heard me publicly speak. But temperature, gas, and time. We’re looking at critically, we’re looking at, was our temperature right? Were our gas readings correct? Did we hold the fumigation for the right amount of time? This is really important. This is the time for truth, you know, to really dig in to the post-results of that treatment. And then collecting those analytics, you know, erasing that, that dark phase of application and, and monitoring and starting to look at the linear data that’s generated. And we’re going to start with gas concentration. And when I look at the readings generated from any fumigation, I want to see tight lines. I want to see that these gas concentrations don’t have a great deal of variability between low and high concentrations. And if they do, it means that there was some calculation wrong in the area where those low readings were generated, or it means that there’s leakage. So we’re going to start to pursue that from all the information that we’ve collected. And with each fumigation, we’re going to start to look at tightening those lines. If we’ve got ad gas that was administered, does that mean that we chose the wrong half-loss time? Does half-loss need to be adjusted? Because that will then adjust the dosage rate. So we really can start to hone in on the results of the fumigation from this critical review. And again, if we’ve got tight lines that are running good CTs, that is, we’re creating defensible data. And defensible data is where the value is generated from the fumigations that we’re providing. Now, the next bit of analytics is, and I use weatherunderground.com, I’ll look at the weather and I’ll plot— I’ll go to weatherunderground.com, I’ll plot the location, and then I’ll go into historic data and put in the timeline for the fumigation. And what you look at when you do this is you’re looking at temperature variation, you’re looking at precipitation, because that can have an impact on fumigations. We’re also looking more critically at wind speed, Wind direction and gusts. And if we see some heavy gusting, as an example, and we’re seeing a drop in gas, a sharp drop in gas concentrations in a particular area, that tells me immediately there’s some structural issues. There’s some sealing that’s not being done, that’s being missed. And we can then go to that area. If we notice that that drop on the 4th floor on the south side of the facility— occurred in coordination with winds and gusts, that’s a great indicator of an opportunity to improve that fumigation. And I’m really paying attention to wind direction and wind changes and how those impacts are impeding the linear data from the gas monitoring. Very, very important. And it takes 5 minutes. That’s the important thing. You can do this very quickly, and the more you do it, the more efficient you are, the faster you are with it. And I also pull that data to the report. From a time standpoint, what I really want to— I’m always looking for delays, right? Who generated the delay? If that fumigation needed to be 32 hours, Or 24 hours, whatever that— the plan was, did it fall short? This is probably the most underestimated hindrance to successful fumigations. And they many times become excuses, right? The customer delays, you know, the back end— excuse me, the customer delays without back end adjustments. So we plotted a 24-hour treatment. They didn’t deliver the building to us. You know, until, um, you know, it was supposed to deliver it to us at 8 and they gave it to us at midnight. You know, 4 hours is a big difference. And if you’re not adjusting, if you’re not extending that fumigation 4 hours on the other end, um, you’ve got an issue. That’s where we start to see egg survival and things like that. Um, and then I’ve also seen even the fumigator in charge cut fumigations short because they hit their CT. Well, that’s fine. And generally you’re hitting your CT in the open space. But what about those structural flaws, those wall voids that have pest activity in it, or statically dense material where the pests are? You know, did, did you hit your CT at that time? And what’s wrong with going ahead and extending that fumigation out a little longer? If you’re planning for it, use it. Extending the fumigation usually is the least expensive way to improve a fumigation. Weather delays. And this is where partnership comes in, right? You can’t control the weather. So I’ve learned over the years not to bulldog a job and say, we’re dropping gas at 8 o’clock no matter what. When in fact you’ve got a storm coming through, you’ve got headwinds, and from the very beginning you put your gas in right about the time the headwinds hit, and suddenly you lose a significant amount of gas in the first 1 or 2 hours of the fumigation. And if you do the calculations, if you would’ve waited that 1 or 2 hours, it would have a significant— Significantly positive impact. On the early analytics of that fumigation. And this is where you communicate back to the customer saying, you know, look, we need to hold off a couple of hours here. I need a couple hours on the backside, and we just wanna do a good job for you, and we want this to be an effective treatment. And these are the conversations you have to be willing to lean into. And then again, proper characterization of fumigation hold time. Right. You know, the open space, again, it doesn’t really matter. It’s really about the statically dense area and where that last, you know, efficacious gas concentration is observed. And that’s the start of the fumigation. All right, we’d like to take a minute here to ask you to like us on the streaming network you’re using, share this podcast out to some of your other cohorts. And definitely a like would definitely help our podcast. We appreciate it. And also give us your feedback on this episode and suggestions for future programming. You see how we use it on each episode. It doesn’t have to be a question. It can be input and experience. So we can all learn from those. So thank you. We’re going to get in now to the other component of that kind of successful Venn diagram, and that’s pest density. And what’s really interesting is assessing pest density on the front end is sometimes very difficult. We didn’t— we haven’t talked about that at all. What we see when we come in to assess a fumigation Even what we see when we’re preparing for the fumigation and sealing and things like that, we many times realize that there’s elevated activity. One of the indicators for me was always when we got to a facility and I would talk to the person in charge of the site and they would say, hey, we’re really ready for this fumigation. At that point, I knew They had some pain points. And where you really learn about the pest intensity is at the end of the fumigation when you have fallout. And you learn so much from where the primary, secondary, tertiary activity is. You’ll notice where insects come out of structural flaws. come out of pieces of equipment that had been missed from their cleaning processes. And this is where the results of a fumigation can really extend for the customer, where value can be driven. It’s very important to communicate these findings. It’s going to help future fumigations significantly. It’s also going to help the customer from a processing standpoint as well. And they are always extremely appreciative of help here. And just like I’ve mentioned recently, most of these quality fumigation management facets that I’m talking about, they take 5 minutes here or there. This is one that takes very, very little time, but you’ve got to communicate these findings. We see them, but how do you get them to the customer? Telling them is one way. It’s not the best way. Showing them demonstratively so that they can sell it up through their ranks is another way. And it really shows value and reputation on your side. We’re walking around these facilities, we see waste outside. This is something to me, this is a condition of concern, right? So I’m going to note if I’m seeing material outside, especially when there’s insects on it, right? This is a point of reintroduction of pests post-fumigation. Another instance was the customer had communicated to us that they weren’t sure where a cigarette beetle issue was coming from. I’ll give you one case example here. And so we had let the sealing crew and the team all know That, hey, look out for cigarette beetle. If you see it, let me know. Tell me where that is. And we were able to find that activity in a roof vent, and it was on the adhesive material and the tape. And we reported that out through the post-fumigation report, and the customer was elated. It had been troubling them for months where the source of this was. I always wanted the diagram so we could then make notes and adjustments on the things that we did. And then also we’d have a clean copy. And when we would walk around at the end of the fumigation for final clearance and we would see fallout, we would mark it. We’d have a highlighter, the CAD diagram, and we would then highlight where that fallout was. And we’d make some notes where some of the more significant— fallout was. And then if the customer allows you to use cameras, you can take pictures of them, never with any kind of branding or anything in the background or company names. But if they allow you to do it, then you can mark those as well and correlate those pictures to the geography of where that occurred in the facility. And, you know, a picture is 1,000 words. And combining these 2 in a very formal post-fumigation report Is just a very powerful document. And again, it takes very little time to do this, but the level of appreciation that these facilities have is— it really starts to make the spend more fulfilling and very important. I know one notable situation that we had was on finished product, on a finished product transfer bin. And it had a pressure relief gate, a valve on the top, and it was a vacuum pressure relief, vacuum relief. And there was— once we took the shroud off to do some sealing and to open that vessel up for the fumigation, we noticed a tremendous amount of insect activity on the top of that plate under the shroud. Now, everything else had been cleaned, but they weren’t taking that shroud off and cleaning. And that finished product transfer bin had been sucking insects in that were living under that shroud and crawling around on the top of it. And that was the source of significant consumer complaints. And it had perplexed the facility. When you walked around that facility, it was clean as could be. But it was that, again, it was that 1 to 5% that’s generating 80% of the problem. And in this case, it was, it was creating 100% of the problem. So, so again, to, to overlook these kinds of things is just a tremendous lost opportunity to come in and really show value and drive reputation. If I don’t have, or if they, if they don’t have a CAD diagram to give me, a lot of times I will pull up the facility on Google Earth, and I will outline that facility myself. And a lot of times when you look at that operation, you can see the roof lines and you can see the firewalls and things like that. And you know where the partitions are just from a roof view. And I’ll just use a drawing tool to outline the facility. There’s even measurement tools on Google Earth where I can get general measurements and get at least the square footage of that facility. And if it’s a multi-story facility, then the only thing I have to do is hit roof heights to get the cubic footage. I always measure myself. And it really is, is a great way, a great document to add to a site assessment. You know, when you first get there. And that document then can be improved once you get the job. The other thing that I’ll do is I’ll use Google Earth ahead of the visit, look at where the vents are. You know, what are the vents? What are the types of vents on the roof? I’ll do Street View to look at, you know, where equipment doors are and side vents and if I need a lift or something like that. You really get a great view for what it’s going to take, and you can get ahead of a lot of what you’re going to learn on site and be very specific. Just because there’s a vent there, how do I get to that vent? In this case that I’m showing right now, there’s a large electrical transformer in the way and some safety concerns. So you can really start to form-specific things that you need to look for prior to getting there. And again, I also will take that document and start to lay in where shoot lines go based on the logic of some of the insect activity that I see. Where do monitoring lines go? I want them a lot of times away from where the application lines are, right? I want to, I want to see where the gas concentration lags, not, you know, not surges in the beginning. I can put fans based on the circulation needs of a facility. I can plot all that in this document. And then, and this is, this then goes to how to tighten the lines. If, if I don’t have enough application lines in a given area. Because there’s some lagging readings, I can add to that, right? So all of this is tied in to the analytics that we’re observing and these adjustments that we can make to really drive improvement on these treatments. Now, I mentioned a document that a lot of people aren’t aware of and its roles and responsibilities. We have a tremendous amount of work that we do on these fumigations and usually in a very tight timeline. But there are definitely roles and responsibilities for the customer. And again, an opportunity to educate and to drive partnership is to start to dole out. It’s the site that impacts temperature. It’s the site that impacts preparing a sanitary facility for the treatment, right? Removing statically dense material, reducing the product volume inside bins and tanks and transfers and things like that, cleaning out equipment, cleaning the exterior, really preparing the fumigation to put that tool in a successful position and identifying those roles and responsibilities. And then it also destresses the job for you. They start to understand the importance and the consequences of things like temperature. I’ll give you one example, an experience that I came across time and time again is, you know, we would always come in and pre-seal, and we’d start to shut a facility up. We would explain that, look, this helps to warm the facility up. We always tried to be conscious of not getting it too hot, right? People are still in there cleaning and things, in the case of milling and food processing operations and warehouses. And then, you know, we would leave during the day, 5 o’clock and second shift would come in, third shift would come in, and they would get frustrated and they would start pulling seals off and opening windows and now cooling the facility down, which is counterintuitive to what we need for successful fumigation. We want that fumigate to be above 82 degrees Fahrenheit as a hard lower deck. That’s optimal, right? So look at what the consequences of that are. So we need their management to help communicate to the team that’s there cleaning of the importance of keeping these seals shut and getting that temperature elevated. You know, one of the things that I learned after having to reseal over and over again, which is just a downer to our crew, is we’re putting fans out, you know, to circulate. And as part of the label, many times just put them out in advance. You might have to lock them up, but, but get those fans out so it can help. provide a cool station for people working in that area and do something for them, show a compromise. So I found that to be really, really beneficial. So, you know, some of this— another aspect of roles and responsibilities is reducing our liability too. We’ve got some liability based on performance, and if they’re enhancements can help us deliver a better value, then that’s a positive one as well. Now, part of the review is going to be reviewing the fumigation management plan. And one of the shoutouts I wanted to make to Cardinal Professional Products here is they, on their website, they have a phenomenal Fumigation Management Plan. It is extremely detailed. And as long as you’re committed to filling this out and using this effectively, this is a great document to follow. Now, it’s— if you’re just going through checking boxes and you’re not paying attention and correlating the condition to the facility, it can become a liability. So you have to really pay attention and make sure that what you’re saying in this document is being delivered. But, you know, what I like about it, too, is it’s constantly referring to consulting with the site management, which is stated over and over again by EPA’s requirement for an FMP. Now, now think about that. This, this whole function of fumigation review that I’ve talked to you about and how we’re conspiring to succeed and how we’re developing partnerships with the site and the customer. It all correlates as a requirement by EPA to the fumigation management plan. This is required. Let’s just do it in a more substantive way, a more impactful way. So keep in mind that these meetings and this direct discussion on preparing for the fumigation and review of the results is really part of the FMP. Now, a big part of conversations in these partnership environments is conditions of concern, right? So with a roles and responsibilities document and separating those roles and responsibilities between the site and the fumigator, Anything that you see that’s not been fulfilled on those roles and responsibilities can be captured on a conditions of concern document. Again, neither one of these are, you know, 800-pound gorillas. They’re pretty— they’re rinse and repeat documents. And you can cut— you need to customize them a little bit, but that’s relatively easy. But if you see sanitation issues that you’re concerned about, If you see temperature issues that you’re concerned about, you need to call that out ahead of time. If you don’t and they’re brought up afterwards, it’s an irritating excuse. On the front end, it’s accountability and adjustments can be made. Give them the opportunity to correct or at the very least have a discussion, even if they can’t do anything about it. Don’t assume they can’t. It needs to be brought to their attention, and it is an educational moment. On the front end, it’s a factor. On the back end, it’s an excuse. So you, you see all kinds of situations with grain, you know, high moisture condition— conditions. Um, the 3— if you see— if you’re fumigating a grain facility and you see a high presence of flat grain beetle, foreign grain beetle, Or hairy fungus beetle, you know, there are moisture issues. Now, these fumigants that we’re using are not water soluble or have very low water solubility. So we’ve got a real problem with penetrating moist moisture barriers. We’ve talked about temperature issues. I want to look at a grain operation, I want to see if they’ve got temperature cables in there, I want to see what those temperatures are, those low temperatures are. Um, you know, external sanitary issues, uh, is a killer in some of these grain operations. I’ve seen spillage right by aeration fans, and you can’t ignore these things because the insects that are in that material after the fumigation is over are going to go right back into that bin through the aeration fans at ground level. And then pest density is another really, really important one. It is phenomenal the number of insects that can be in some of these grain storages. And then structures are the same thing, you know, similar temperature, dense material becomes more of an issue. Sanitation is a really big issue. And the other thing that I do is, as we walk around, you know, these facilities modify, right? They bring in new equipment, they modify some of the areas, and the FMP is really required to capture these changes from year to year and show, you know, look for any kind of risk. I was in one situation where in an RTE area, they put in a very large cooler. I mean, a very large cooler. And, you know, we weren’t made aware of this and that cooler was going to hold gas and we needed to account for that from a safety standpoint. How are we going to clear it? How long is it going to take to clear? You know, what are we going to do about that? And let’s get that added to our document for next fumigation for planning purposes, right? That it’s in that, that statement of work that we generate from an assessment. And that we’re managing the safety attributes of this. As we know, coolers are tough sometimes to ventilate and a real serious safety concern. I also have always been really big in these assessments on what I call the million-dollar vent. There was one situation where a new system had been put in where finished product had been augered over to a loadout to railcars. And so we had to stuff that auger end or that spout. And that was really the only way to seal it was to stuff it with plastic. Well, if that was not unsealed, if it was missed and that system started up, it would chew up that plastic and put it into finished product. And that would then be the million-dollar vent, right? In terms of a product or a claim, an insurance claim. So, and I was always very big on whoever seals it unseals it, period. And to add that to your statement of work or your assessment and to make sure that those are— And we would always have a document that That checked that it was sealed, that double-checked that it was sealed, that checked that it was removed, and double-checked that it was removed. And one person would be assigned to that in terms of the sealing and the unsealing. The double-checking on each of them would be the fumigator in charge. And, you know, something like this, you know, takes 30 seconds. I take a picture of it after it’s been sealed, and then I text that to the team. I think you’re starting to see the value of these documentations. Again, takes 30 seconds and it saves an insurance claim. And then transferring all that to that, that fumigation organizer, whatever you, you use, whether it’s an SOP, statement of work, whether you integrate it into your FMP, these things have to move into a document that’s that you can capture from one treatment to the other. And then, you know, the post-fumigation report, you just take all of this data, right? You take the graphs from your connected device, you take your data from your temperature monitoring. Some of these facilities have monitors, temperature monitoring in them, where you can pull the linear data off and add it to your document, which makes it really nice. You can put your, your, your weather data in there and have a really nice report. And, you know, you’re going to have a template for this. So it’s a matter of just dropping some of these things in and, and adding some content, sometimes some pictures. But once you get this down, once you do this on a regular basis, this does not take very long. But the perceived value of the site management and site leadership and the people approving these, these elevating dollars for fumigation. This is where value is verified, validated, and critically important. All right. I want to take a moment again to ask you for a like on this episode and to share this out. And I want to remind you again, nudge you to Give us some of your feedback and suggestions for future programming. Again, we really appreciate it. We’re going to kind of summarize here this episode and this building partnerships, this conspiring to succeed is what I’ve found to be a really, really important attribute or segment of any fumigation. And who I try to include in this is the quality assurance manager, sanitation manager, safety manager, maintenance, warehouse, warehousing, security even. They may not be your biggest asset, but they can definitely be a difficult detriment, and it is a safety feature to have a good relationship with security. If there are significant contractors in there, they’re important to have sometimes in these meetings. And then specifically within maintenance, you always want to have your HVAC person in these reviews. Generally, a lot of your findings are going to come down to, to these situations. And having a larger collaborative environment is very, very positive to expand the results of that fumigation. And, you know, what we’re doing in these partnership meetings is, you know, we’re reviewing the FMP, we’re looking at how safety is baked into that, compliance is fulfilled, and then driving performance. We’re making sure that they understand that they’ve got that restricted chemical usage report, because if they’re audited, they have to have that. You’re letting everybody know that they have it, which is very purposeful. You know, we are consulting with the site management at that point, which is part of that FMP requirement. We’re going to review those roles and responsibilities very intently. And make adjustments that really kind of help both of us. We’re going to spend a lot of time on conditions of concern. It’s not going to be perfect in early days of starting a process like that, but it will show significant improvement in the results of the fumigation over time. And again, these are collaborative reviews. You really want to pull out dialogue from each of these components. So it’s been a— these have been very, very good experiences. When we can get a facility to collaborate like this, the expanded results of the fumigation are significant. And we’re going to have a segment coming up on fumigation quality management, so I’m not going to dig too deeply into this. But I believe that fumigation and pheromone monitoring really go hand in hand. And the reason is, is, you know, we talk about the importance of gas monitoring when fumigating, but before and after a fumigation, what are indicators that a fumigation is needed? How bad is the situation? And then after the fumigation, what does the recovery look like? I’m constantly being asked, you know, how long should a fumigation protect us? And there’s no way to answer that because the things that impact the performance or the post-treatment pest population is, is your insect activity coming from a vendor? Is it coming from a structural flaw? Is it coming from poor performance on the fumigation? You don’t really know that. So what pheromone— effective pheromone monitoring program gives you is it shows the recovery time, and it also allows you to react quickly to any presence. Now, insect presence. Now, I’m showing a graph here, and I’ll describe it to listeners. It shows 23 days after a fumigation, there was a hard spike in, in, uh, in adult insects going into pheromone traps, and almost to pre-fumigation levels. What that tells me is 23 days— I have to look at temperature, but in this case, there was a sublethal fumigation rendered on that fumigation. They did not kill, they didn’t have good efficacy on the egg stage at all. They caught no adults for 23 days. And at 20— at the 23rd day, they had a huge spike. That’s that recovery of insects that went through the metamorphic process. They hatched, they survived the fumigation, they hatched, they went through 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th instar larva stage, they pupated, and they turned into a breeding adult looking for that pheromone. And I always encourage these collaborative meetings to occur After about 3 weeks after the treatment. Now most people want to press these and do them the week after or 2 weeks after. That, to me, that’s too early. You need to give it a little time to see what happens in the— with the pheromone monitoring data, and that’s going to tell us a lot. You know, if traps are catching insects, where is it specifically? Go to that area, look at it, You know, is it— can you determine, is it inbound from a vendor, an ingredient vendor? Is it structural or was it a lapse in fumigation performance? This right here has such beneficial review to a facility, you know, or overview. It is a very, very significant event and one One worthwhile and one worth waiting that 3 or 4 week timeframe to do your critical review of the fumigation. So in summary, I think we’ve hit pretty hard on the benefits of post-fumigation review and meetings. We want to collect that data within documents and then review those documents. Post those for historic review. We want to look at those documents before the next fumigation. We want it to be very accurate. We want to develop and maintain that partnership within the facility. It’s a very functional partnership. And then we all together, if formed properly, we’re going to deliver a stored product pest sanitation break. And that’s where value is driven in these fumigations. And as we know, the cost of these fumigations are going up and up every year, and we have to show that value. With that, we’ll wrap up episode 11 of All Things Fumigation. I want to remind you to be a science cowboy and apply the science and protect your product. And again, give us a like. Give us some suggestions. I am John B. Mueller, fumigator by trade and your guide to the science of fumigation done right. | 00:00:01.434 – 00:48:50.720