[00:00:00] John B. Mueller: This podcast supports fumigants in improving safety, compliance and solutions. Always follow the federal fumigant label. State and local laws. Licensed fumigants are legally responsible for their applications. And now on to all things fumigation mitigation.

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 fumigated 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 [00:01:00] 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. Hey, science Cowboys. Welcome to the next episode of All Things Fumigation. This is the third episode in our series, and the title of this is The Battle is Won before It has Fought. This is a quote from a sixth century warlord and philosopher Sun Zoo from the writings of The Art of War, and it might seem a little strange that we’re choosing.

You know, a war, but

[00:01:49] Insect Battle Strategy

[00:01:49] John B. Mueller: we are at battle with insects. Insects are just trying to stay alive, and if we approach this battle as just a job or a task. The [00:02:00] vagus odds will be on the insect. So we’ve gotta buckle down and we’ve gotta try harder. We wanna get into the process of fumigation to understand what we need to do to prepare for success.

So if you look at this, the steps in fumigation or plan, prepare, set up, apply or application, we monitor and analyze. We ventilate and clear, and then we review those steps and hopefully in time and in series, and if everything is done right, that focuses then on success and improved success over time. Now, we’re not going to be able to address all of these points.

We’re going to focus today, just like Sun Zu said on planning. When we think about fumigation and planning, when I go into a facility for the [00:03:00] first time, the, the, the, my main focal point at that, at that point is temperature.

[00:03:06] Fumigation Analysis: Temperature’s Crucial Role

[00:03:06] John B. Mueller: What is the temperature of the facility and what is the temperature of the commodity?

So that then determines concentration and time. We also have buttons and levers that we can draw on. Once we understand that, that base foundation of temperature, now if you look at at this and understand the environmental condition that we’re we’re dealing with, we know the higher the concentration, the higher the temperature, the higher the time or the longer the time, the more successful we’ll be we’re.

We don’t always get to choose that, and even when we can, we need a little help. Temperature is the foundation. It determines concentration and time. Now, with Fumigants, we know they’re CT products, right? Concentration and time are important. Let’s, let’s take an example of methyl [00:04:00] bromide, which not all of us use it.

Still use is used every day in the United States for import export purposes, but with regard to methyl bromide, concentration and time relationships are equal, so you can double the concentration. And have the time and, and it works. Following the label, obviously that’s a pure CT relationship. Now with the other few immigrant like Phosphine and Sulur fluoride.

It’s not a pure relationship. I think of Phosphine as an example, as little C and a Big T. Both concentration and time are important, but time is critically important. And think about it for a second. How long are these Phosphine Fumigations? They are three to 10 days long. Timing is brutally important, but concentration can’t be doubled to decrease time.

It doesn’t work that way. And then transversely with self, [00:05:00] with sulur fluoride, I’ve had instances where I tried to recover a fumigation in the back half of a sulfural fluoride treatment, and for whatever reason, weather or building condition, and we didn’t have success even though we hit our ct, we, we did not have the punch on the front end of the fumigation.

So you’ve gotta hit it early and quick. Again, you see that as we build these foundations, as we build these strategies of success, uh, it’s very, very important to start with temperature, maximize temperature temperatures, um, and then that sets the stage for the rest. Now, one thing that I do not like is when people say, well, this fumigation fum again, or that fum again is better in colder temperatures.

This is a biological reaction by the insects. It’s just more universal. In my opinion, above 80 degrees is optimal. From [00:06:00] 70 to 80 degrees, we start to lose efficacy rate. On the egg side and below 60 degrees, you are going to have serious efficacy challenges on the egg stage. Keep in mind that in most of these dosage ranges, the active stages, egg and lar, excuse me, adult and larvae are annihilated.

Our focal point really needs to be the egg.

[00:06:22] Deeper Analysis

[00:06:22] John B. Mueller: Now that we’ve talked about the environmental conditions and setting fumigations up for success, we wanna get a little deeper into the analysis. You know, what are we monitoring? What are we taking temperature readings from? I was recently toping a failed fumigation.

It was a warehouse with commodity and it was a kind of a defensive situation where the fufu, the customer was blaming the fumigation. The fumigator was blaming the fumigant on failure, and we sat down and the first question I asked was, what [00:07:00] was the temperature? Of the treatment. And immediately they were proud and they said, you know, we warmed this up like the fumigate said to 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

And then my next question was, well, what was the commodity temperature? And in a very irritating way, they said, well, commodity temperature doesn’t matter. It’s the temperature of the air, right? The, the, the gas is getting into those, into that commodity. And I said, no, the, the insects are in the commodity.

So we need to monitor. We need to know the temperature where the bi bio biological reaction occurs. So right away, you, you saw the, the, the facial expressions of, of the customer start to, to weigh a little bit, and that was it. The commodity temperature was 55 degrees and they chose the convenient temperature to set them, the dosage range and, and really not where the impact of the treatment was.

So we not only need to [00:08:00] understand the temperature of the lowest point we’re looking for worst case scenario. And, and that is our standard. What’s the temperature of the commodity? And then what is the concentration within that commodity? We need to be monitoring our gas concentrations, not in the open air, not where it’s easy to achieve good concentration, but.

In those hard and difficult areas where the insects are. So, I mean, look at this relationship, the relationship between the fum, ator and the customer, or the fumigated and the site manager. This has to become a partnership. The fumigated can’t just do this alone. They need this, this, the facility cooperation to, to develop these environmental conditions that put us at an advantage.

And they need to be educated, explain and start to develop that partnership and collaboration because there’s more through this process where we’re gonna lean on that customer and, and we wanna identify roles and [00:09:00] responsibilities, what they can be doing. The week or weeks in advance for a fumigation to start to bring that temperature up, bring that commodity temperature up, start to to do other things that we’re gonna get into a little later into this podcast.

Now, before we do that, we want to take a quick break. We’d like for you to take a few seconds here and follow us on your podcast platform. We’d like you to leave us a rating. Tell your friends, follow us on LinkedIn. There’s a lot of chatter regarding Fumigation on LinkedIn, and I find it to be a really good conversational platform for us.

And then if you want to dig a little deeper on the Fumigation Company, you can go to the fume co.com. That’s T-H-E-F-U-M-E-C o.com. So we talked a little bit about environmental conditions and how that. Guides us from a concentration choice or or a dosing choice to the duration that we set [00:10:00] for the fumigation treatment.

[00:10:02] Population Density

[00:10:02] John B. Mueller: There’s another environmental condition that’s not talked about very much, but is critical to the success of a fumigation, and that’s population density. The number of insects that we find when we come into some of these facilities, really, let’s be honest, can be overwhelming. Do you ever wonder what the impact of these large numbers are to these, these field or fumigations that we, that we, we provide?

You know, when I walk into a facility, I wonder that a lot and, and I look at it this way. If as I’m walking around and, and doing some preparation for a treatment and I’m seeing hundreds or thousands of adult beetles, let’s say, walking around. How does that equate to the entire metamorphic process that we have at this facility?

So if you’re seeing hundreds or thousands of adults walking around, what about [00:11:00] how many are the eggs are there, how many larva, how many pupa? And let’s, this is exponential to what you’re visually seeing in a short period of time. So what are those numbers? Can they be. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions.

The answer is absolutely yes. And if our attitude is sea bug kill, that’s with there. We failed right there. We have to understand what our efficiencies are. So our efficiencies start with managing environmental conditions, raising the temperature, choosing the proper dosage rate, choosing the proper duration.

But what are those efficiencies now? Most fumigations and most fumigants can agree that 90 to 98% efficiency is what is the best we can do in the field. There are too many variables out there that generate [00:12:00] survival, and like I said earlier. We’re annihilating the active stages, the adults, and the larvae.

It’s the egg that’s the problem. So when we talk about survival, it’s generally in those very young eggs that have just been dropped, and that’s where our mortality slip occurs. Now, if we’ve got 10,000 bios. In that fumigated space, and we’re 94% effective, that’s 600 eggs that will merge after that fumigation.

Now, if you’re seeing adults after a fumigation, that’s a, that’s a dismal failure of a fumigation. Adults should be, should be dead within, within hours of, of, uh, gas release. So we are focused on eggs. So 10,000 bios. 600 survivors. But if we’ve got a hundred thousand [00:13:00] insects in there and we’re 94% effective, that’s 6,000.

That’s not what, what the customer wants to see. It’s not what we want to see.

[00:13:09] Fumigation Challenges and Solutions

[00:13:09] John B. Mueller: And if we’ve got a million insects, that’s 60,000 survivors after that treat. So now we can start to form a real vision of what the impact of population density is coming into a fumigation. And this is the Fumigation’s opportunity to again, educate the customer or the site manager on how to set these fumigations up for success.

What causes high population density, lack of effective cleaning, failed IPM programs, sometimes we get infestation straight outta the fields, depending on the commodity and the, and the, the geography that we’re, that we’re dealing with universally. It’s waiting too long to fumigate. [00:14:00] It’s. It’s saying, Hey, we don’t have time to do this right now.

We need this downtime for something else. We’ll push it to the next holiday or grain merchandisers that say, Hey, look, we don’t know what we’re gonna do. Let’s just wait a couple of months before we, we treat this, this commodity. Well, waiting is the opportunity for the pest, and it’s also a formula for failure.

Structural harbor Bridges are another point to be made. And then ingredient suppliers, this is, I’ve seen beautiful facilities that were completely adulterated by ingredient that came in infested. These are the considerations. This is what we’re looking for. This is, these are the discussions that we’re having with these customers as we educate them to what impacts population density and how we can lower that pressure.

And this is a great example of not only the importance of managing population density, but also us as [00:15:00] fumigators driving. Fumigation performance. We talked about 94% efficacy, but as we drive that improved performance, look at what happens with a 98% efficacy. This is what they’re expecting to see in, in best case scenario.

If you think about it, waiting too long to fumigate will breed fumigation dependence. It’s going to drive higher treatment costs, greater risk to reputation. These are all customer impact, but from a fumigate standpoint of driving performance, you know, not managing environmental conditions have the same impact as the above.

So, waiting too long, you know, again. Breeds independent fumigation dependence, higher treatment costs, and greater risk to reputation. So th again, this is why we’re talking about partnerships.

[00:15:56] Plan Ahead for Successful Fumigation

[00:15:56] John B. Mueller: So the message that I’d like for you to take from this [00:16:00] podcast is plan. And plan as far ahead as you can. One of the most difficult fumigations I ever experienced in my life.

We started planning four months in advance and every time I got nervous, uh, about this, this job ahead of us, I went back into planning. And kind of vented my nervous energy towards that. And it, we had a fantastic outcome and, and I worked with the team too. They ever, we all had roles and responsibilities as part of that planning process.

And then partnering with the site. In that instance, we had a fantastic partner. They listened to what we needed. They did it. It was a good cooperation, and together we drove an unbelievable effectiveness beyond what they imagined as reasonable. We know fumigation is applied science. We want you to be a science cowboy, apply the science and protect your product.

[00:17:00] If you’re listening to us on your favorite podcast app, remember that you can watch us on YouTube. You can also follow us on LinkedIn where we’ve got some great conversations going on around the science of Fumigation. And if you wanna get into deep discussions around fumigation, go to the fume code.com, tell your friends and coworkers, and please leave us a rating.

Until next time, science Cowboys. I am John B. Mueller and this is All Things Fumigation.