Fumigation Setup

John B. Mueller [00:00:01] – [00:40:47]:
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, 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. Thank you for joining us. This is episode number seven, and we’re following our fumigation process, getting back on track with that. And the theme of this one is will your balloon fly? We always try to come up with kind of an identifiable theme. And relating a hot air balloon with containing the gas and the temperature over a period of time is very similar to what we’re doing with a fumigation setup. And that’s sealing and containment of fumigant. Think about a hot air balloon. They have a vent on top, they open that vent, they descend very quickly. And the same is true with us in fumigations. And we’ll get into some other relative examples between the two as we move through the process here. One thing I asked you to do as listeners is to continue to send in questions, comments, concerns around prior episodes. And we said that we would play one of those on future episodes. So we’re going to start this process. I’ve been encouraged to do this. I like it with podcasts that I watch. And so one of the, one of the viewers sent in a question about an FMP and said they were concerned that their FMP was very comprehensive and they wanted to know whether that was a good or bad thing. And, and my comment to that was when the FMPs first came out, we tried to throw as much in there as we could because we really weren’t guided very well from EPA on what specifically they wanted. And as our FMPs were critically reviewed, it started to bring some questions up. So you do as you want. Now, EPA has asked eight specific things. You have to follow the label at what the label guides you to on how to build your fmp. You can always put more on there, but you absolutely have to do that you do the very minimum of what the label is requiring of you and you have to make sure that that’s completed. So that’s critically important. There was a second viewer question around integrating their company’s FMP with fumigant usage reports and post fumigation reports. And they ask is there any downside to doing that? The only downside would be that the fumigant usage report is a requirement of using restricted use chemicals. And that’s an audited report with the documentation for pesticide applications. So if there’s anything on your post fumigation report that you wouldn’t want an auditor to see, like continuous improvement comments potentially, then you wouldn’t want to integrate that. I personally think it’s a good idea. I think transparency to improving is important. But if some of those improvements could be critically reviewed, you’ll want to be careful about that. So appreciate those two comments. Please continue. Bring comments to us and we’ll share more on future episodes. Thank you. Appreciate it. In this episode, like we said, we’re to the setup point, so we’re talking about sealing, containing the fumigant. And we can really get into some specifics on this. We’re going to keep this relatively general. We’re going to relate all post harvest fumigations into kind of one scenario. And I think down the line future episodes we may get more specific with commodity treatments versus versus food processing operations. So there’s enough to talk about from a base standpoint, I believe we’re not going to get into application setup and monitoring setup. That’ll be the next episode. So sealing and preparation for a fumigation, fumigate, containment, it really touches all aspects of fumigation from safety to compliance to performance. Right. So our job is to make sure that we’re holding this toxic gas within the structure so that we can drive performance, but also maybe more importantly that we’re not losing gas into outside boundary areas, putting bystanders at risk, putting site operators at risk, even applicators at risk. So containing the fumigation has safety elements, definitely compliance elements where air permitting is required and then clearly from a performance standpoint, and we’ll give some examples of that too. But I want to really first dive into kind of the disparity of the structures that we’re treating. You know, we talk a lot about the post harvest spectrum being both commodity managers and food processing food safety managers. And they’re really two sides of the same coin, but they’re also very different. And you think about grain bins for example, and holding bulk, dense commodities. They have very unique sealing requirements. Then something as relatively small as a land, sea container, very complex food processing operation. These look very differently, they’re treated differently from a sealing strategy. And even big warehouses. There’s a lot in social media right now around educating fumigators on the reality that these larger three pl warehouses can be fumigated. And they’re very large and they absolutely can be fumigated safely. But it takes a slightly different approach. And really, when you think about fumigation and the effort that goes into fumigation, and we’ve talked about this a little bit, is probably on average, 80% of the effort of every fumigation really goes into the setup and the sealing. That’s the large muscle group of this function. And we have to shift a lot of gears from time to time. We, we, we fumigate. We are, excuse me, we, we seal, we hot through the day, dealing with different weather challenges, different challenges the customers or the managers throw at us. And then, you know, it’s a very physical act. And then we go into gas application, which is more of a smaller muscle group. We’re using instrumentation. We’ve got to be a lot more analytical. And we really shift some pretty hard gears when we’re, when we’re going from setup to application to monitoring. Most of the effort is in the ceiling. And you know, we create that team that comes in to do the prep and the ceiling, and we join that team also with successful partnerships. You know, it kind of starts with the fumigator in charge. He’s the responsible party. He’s the licensed person. He’s the one that’s legally obligated to, you know, fulfill these fumigations in accordance with the label and the laws. But we also need to take a look at the customer point person. We need them in partnership as well. Also maintenance people, they’re the ones that are aware of where the vent switches are and where the functions are that we have to interact with when we’re preparing these fumigations. Shipping and receiving managers not only receiving these fumigants and shipping them back out, but we’re also many times having to seal up their warehouses and whatnot. And there’s some sensitivity around that. And then probably one of the most overlooked partnerships is with site security. They can be a huge supportive ally, or they can be a really point of frustration if they get irritated with the fumigation group. So we really need to respect all these parties. We need to interact with them. We need to communicate with them, make them feel like they’re a part of the process and that they’re appreciated. It’s extremely important in successful fumigations. And you know, once we get the team together and the site partnership, it is a label requirement to review that FMP that we talked about in the last episode with preparation. You know, now that we’re setting up, we’re sealing, we need to make sure that we reviewed these documents and that we’re looking at what that continuous improvement needs to be. We’re looking at, you know, roles and responsibilities, what’s listed as changes to be made. We’re also looking at data from GAS monitoring to see if any changes can be made there as well. So reviewing this documentation, talking to the site leadership around what’s changed since the last fumigation and then making those adjustments to conform to safe and effective treatments, very, very important step in the process here. And you know, I look at data from the prior fumigation this way. I kind of grade it and if you’re viewing the podcast, it’s a little clearer. I’ll try to describe it as I go through it, but I’ve got a linear graph, pretty dynamic graph from a Spectros SF400 and it’s got quite a bit going on in this graph. It’s got three different peaks throughout a 24 hour fumigation and it has wide separation between all the different gas readings. And generally when we fumigate, we like to see these lines very close together, really in parallel. And we don’t want to see any AD gas used if we don’t have to. There’s realities around the fact that we do need to sometimes and we’re prepared for that. But as I look at this graph, there’s a high medium and a low concentration and I’d give that high a C grade at best. I’d give that medium line a D and I’d give that low line an F. We did not achieve even decent efficacy in the area that reading was taken. And by looking at it this way, we can really start with that low line. What, what, where are we losing gas? Why did we struggle to bring concentration up and what do we need to do to improve that? And one of the first things I do is go to those areas and inspect them. And if I cannot figure it out, I’ll ask an area manager, I’ll grab a maintenance person to see what I’m missing, to give me some advice on what’s happening there and then look at what adjustments could be made. Another way to address that is to put out more monitoring lines in that area for the next fumigation. If you think about a symmetric square area, Put forward monitoring lines in four quadrants of that area. And then you can observe where that lagger is, you know, where that fresh air is coming in, or potentially where that gas loss is occurring. And you do that with each of those grades, and you just continue to move up and move up with those gas concentrations and continue to improve that treatment. I’m not going to dig too deeply into kind of the basics of sealing for a fumigation. I am going to stress some specific importance. We all know what we’re using, right? We’re covering fans with plastic and doors. Sometimes we’re cleaning those surfaces with brushes and whatnot and other material, other tools. Sometimes we’re using spray adhesives, which is relatively controversial, and we’ll talk about that a little bit. Tape is really the primary tool, and it’s very controversial among a lot of professional fumigators. They all seem to have their opinions on tape. I can tell you we’ve gone through a lot of different iterations over the years. PM2 seems to be the best tape for overall. You know, with tape, you want it. You want it adhering and holding the seals through relatively harsh weather conditions. Rain, cold, wind, you know, direct sunlight. And you want it to remove and not leave any residual. And this brown paper tape seems to be the best. Overall, none are perfect. But PM2 seems to be what. What many of the fumigation companies are using. I’ve seen more people switching over to the. The PVC tape. It’s usually like a yellow or white tape, and it can, it has its place, it can work very well. But when there’s direct sunlight on it, it doesn’t seem to want to hold very well. So what I would encourage you to do is, what I’ve done is try different types of tape with different exposures and see what works best and. And settle on that. PM2 is by far not the cheapest. It’s why we challenged it over the years to try to find something better at a lower cost, but never really did. And, you know, if you’ve ever been on a job with me, I really push the clean surface issues. You can’t overwhelm a dirty surface with spray adhesive. It just creates a mess that later on is much harder to seal. And so cleaning those surfaces off with a brush, Every single person that’s sealing on that crew should have a brush in his back pocket or in his hand actively using it. It’s just, it’s, it’s just a professional way to do it. And, and it’s critical in terms of keeping the integrity of these, of these seals. One of the other questions is, you know, can you seal when wet? Well, we have to be prepared to do that, and fumigators can get pretty creative. There’s some tape material out there that does stick even when we, when things are moist, not soaking wet. But one of the tricks that we use is using strapping tape. And let’s say we’re on a roof and it rained and the tape’s not sticking, you can always cover the vent with plastic, use strapping tape to secure it, and then as it dries, come back and seal those bottom edges. You know, we’re on a timeline usually where we don’t have time for big delays. Roof work many times is the majority of the work that’s needed to be done. So we have to come up with ways to still ensure a tight seal but continue with the fumigation process. At the end of the day, you still got to get that base of those fans sealed well and the bottoms of those doors sealed well. Another one is wind. Many times we’re working through the day, and if you’ve ever noticed the daytime temperatures, daytime solar load is what creates those surface winds. And we traditionally have windier conditions through the daylight hours. And another pet peeve of mine was always loose, baggy pleated seals where they would flap in the wind. It doesn’t take much, much wind for very long to start to weaken that seal. And then in the middle of the treatment, it rips or comes off. So taking the pleat out, taking the bagginess out of these seals is extremely important. And they’ll hold a lot better and you don’t have to constantly go back and retouch. And another one are the million dollar seals, we call them. You know, many of these facilities, especially in, like flour milling operations and food processing operations, there is not one area that we’re sealing. Right. It’s not just the roof and the ground level. Sometimes the only way to access certain, certain openings that need to be sealed are from the inside. What you see here actually is a finished product agar that had been stuffed. And there’s a lower chute coming out of that agar that goes into a packaging area that wasn’t being treated and that had to be sealed. And in this case, this spout was stuffed with plastic. Now, if the fumigator forgets to remove that and they start up operation and that’s finished product and it starts grinding that seal up and it goes into that finished product. That’s a formula for a recall many, many consumer complaints and becomes that million dollar claim, right, that million dollar vent. So how do you go about ensuring that those are removed? What we do and what’s pictured here is we will take a picture of it, we’ll put some comments on that picture from our phones and we’ll send it out to the crew and then that will then appear on the FMP and, or actually the post fumigation review. So that’s always been a good way to do it. And this is a great example of why you don’t have one group seal and another group come in and unseal. This is the type of thing that gets missed unless you have an SOP for sealing where everything is identified and you have someone initial when they seal it, they initial when someone unseals it. And then when you do a double check to make sure everything was removed, they initial that. That’s a process that can, that can give you peace of mind and make sure that you don’t have to be calling your insurance company for a claim that’s completely avoidable. Thank you again for joining this episode of all things fumigation. If you find this helpful, please like us on the streaming network you’re using. And then don’t forget to give us your feedback on this episode and suggestions on future programming. As you can see, we used a couple of those this time and we want to continue to do that in future episodes. So next on our agenda is, we’ve talked about just the basics of ceiling and considerations. What we want to do now is to try to identify a couple of different strategies and how we approach post harvest fumigations in general from a ceiling and setup perspective. You know, we talked about, you know, commodity fumigations being more vertical storages and with statically dense commodities inside. And generally those fumigations are a lot longer. They’re very long fumigations, four to seven days. And then when we think about food processing operations or milling operations or warehouses, generally these are shorter fumigations, one and a half to two days long. And really your sealing strategy is different between those two. You can’t seal the same with these long four to ten and even two, two week long fumigations. You know, the ceiling has to be much more robust. Taking the flap out of sealed vents is absolutely, you know, critical. You know, putting Extra layers of tape and strapping some of these seals down, doing, doing whatever it takes to keep that, that flex and bow out of the seals that are there. And we’ll get into a little more later about checking those seals as well, which is extremely important. And in particular for those long fumigations. If we break down a short fumigation first. And you think about a flour mill, most flour mills are, you know, five, six stories tall. They can have some taller segments of these mills, but they’re relatively open. They’re generally pneumatic in nature. And you’ve got a lot of chimney effect that goes on in these structures. You’ve got multiple stairwells, you’ve got recessed walls, and you know, your thermal dynamic is again, is much more in these situations, like a balloon, you’ve got this lift going on of the warm air wanting to go up. And in these situations, if you have a leak at the top and you have gas escaping from that leak, the only way that gas can escape is if you’ve got fresh air coming in somewhere else. Think about that hot air balloon. It has a vent on top, they pull a string, that vent opens and that balloon descends, right? Well, our fumigation is descending when we have this scenario in these structures. So we have to figure out where that fresh air is coming in. And you can literally see this in dynamic gas readings where you’ll see the lower concentrations on the first floor. And some people think, well, we’re losing gas on the first floor. You’re actually not losing gas on the first floor. You’re getting fresh air intrusion on the first floor, you’re losing gas up above. So knowing this, you can then read the data from continuous monitoring and really pinpoint where your losses are. It’s just an extremely useful tool that pays for itself really quickly from an ROI perspective, from an education perspective and from a performance driven perspective. And if you look at some of this, the data that you generate, again, there’s so much you can read from that. I’ve got a graph set up here and for those of you who are listening and, and not watching, please go to YouTube where you can see the show notes and observe what we’re describing here. I believe it’s very important for fumigators that are trying to drive performance. But what we’re looking at here is a flour mill that’s been treated. And the first through the fourth floor you’ll see the gas concentrations stay together. But on the fifth and the sixth floor you see AD gas going in. And these peaks. And when the AD gas is administered, you see very little impact to the lower floors. It’s not boosting the gas concentration. And what that absolutely tells us is we’ve got cross ventilation going on on those top floors. So that is telling us exactly where we need to focus to improve this fumigation. And just by simple observation of this data, and now we track down where those losses are. And in this fumigation, if you erase those three peaks, you’re going to say they would have saved six cylinders of fumigant. And that almost pays for the SF400. So it’s or whatever high range monitoring device that you’re using out there for continuous monitoring. But continuous monitoring is the only way you’re really going to observe this unless you’re just physically, manually, constantly monitoring. But it’s just a great example of how you can drive performance and really contain that fumigation as it should be contained. If we take a look at bulk storages, think about a corrugated grain bin and you have the same scenario. Some people don’t think that the air rises through the interstitial space of this bulk, bulk dense commodity, but it absolutely does. There’s still convection going on in there. It’s still like a hot air balloon. Right. Any leaks at the top, we start to get loss if we have fresh air going in the bottom. The other thing that’s going on that I want to remind fumigators of is you have an incredible temperature dynamic in there, which is why the convection currents are so strong. Many times in the lower areas of these grain bins you might see 55 degrees Fahrenheit and up more towards the top, you’ll see as high as 85. I’ve even seen 116 degrees Fahrenheit. Huge temperature disparities. So it’s really creating a lot of activity in that bin, more than you realize. So the other thing is many of these storages, whether it’s a concrete silo or a bolted corrugated bin, the top section is relatively leaky or leaky, meaning we’re losing gas out of there and, and you. We definitely have some cross ventilation going on if we’re not sealing that, you know, strategically and tightly. But again, if we have gas going out that top and we’ve got some fresh air sucking in, we have rapid reduction of fumigant concentration within that vessel, that grain bin, and generally we’ll see the fresh air. It’s always easier to focus first on the lower sections. They’re generally more accessible. So if you Think about the side wall of that bin. Let’s talk about a metal bin where it meets the concrete base. You know that that bin, when it’s loaded and emptied, it flexes and bows, right? So when that bin was first put in, it had a seal at that, that concrete, metal juncture. And over time of moving back and forth, little by little, it’s, it’s ground away or pushed out so many times, that’s a point of intrusion, fresh air intrusion. And the other one is on the ventilation fans and the ductwork that goes into the lower plenums of these bins. Very small cracks in some of the seamed galvanized metal. It will supply a tremendous amount of fresh air over a 10 day period of time in that bin. And the effort it takes to, to seal that up properly is phenomenal. And again, if you Visit us on YouTube to see the deck that’s laid out, this is a great example of the level that we have to go to to seal. We’re using foam, we’re using caulk, we’re using specialized tape to really diligently seal that up. Because we’re monitoring that subfloor and we’re monitoring the top and we know that’s what it takes to have stable gas concentrations in that storage. Through the ventilation process and, excuse me, through the sealing process, it’s taking a lot of time on food processing operation, it may take days. And at some point the fumigator in charge or their assigned person has to branch off and work with your maintenance partner to start to identify switches for ventilation. And that’s all part of the setup process right before you, you introduce the gas. So we need to know where those ventilation systems are activated prior to the fumigation. So while your team is up there sealing those vents, you have to find out where to activate them. You have to clearly mark those. And I would also encourage you to add those to your sop. Your SOP should be broken down into areas of ceiling need. You could put on things, put the, put on things like where shoot lines go, where monitoring lines go, and then also where those ventilation switches are. And this will save a tremendous amount of risk and make the job go much smoother. I’ve seen situations where people didn’t really do this diligently. They didn’t remember where these switches were and they went in and just started turning things on. And in several instances, insurance companies had to be called and policies had to be exercised. It’s dangerous to guess. You’ve got to mark these switches and Be absolutely certain that you’re turning on a fan and not a sifter box or another integrated system. So this is extremely important and you definitely want to do this yourself or with your right hand person and a trusted person. This step is very important. And then at a respectful time, before you clear everyone from the fumigated area, you want to go through and check all the seals. There are seals sometime on thermal controlled or time actuated. And when your team is there sealing, you know, we tell them, hey, everything’s turned off, you’re good to seal that area. Everyone thought it was turned off. And lo and behold, you know, a vent turns on or somebody below turns that vent on and it blows the seal and that fan’s running. And now our crew is at another far reaching area of the roof and we don’t know that it’s on. And if maintenance leaves that facility, we may not know where to turn that specific fan off at. So before maintenance leaves, make sure they’re checking in with you. Make sure, make sure that you’re doing an inventory, that everything is turned off and that you don’t need them. Also get an emergency phone number from that person and have it pre agreed that they’re going to keep that phone on ring and answer 247 during that fumigation. And if they don’t, someone that is knowledgeable in the ventilation systems, you know, will respond. This is extremely important, especially on larger processing facilities. Towards the end of the setup process, we start to look ahead to putting warning placards on signage on the doors, calling the authorities and doing the all clear. These are absolutely critical to life and health of people. Some of the tips that I want to give you is, you know, this. You never put signs on before everybody has left the building. Anyone that’s not trained cannot be walking in and out of a building with placards on it. They become desensitized to the importance of that very critical sign. And that’s an activity that really must be done after everyone’s out. Obviously you’re doing that before any kind of gassing starts with certainty. And then from an all clear standpoint, you know, consider doing it in both Spanish and English and don’t be shy. Many times, you know, I would get crews together, we would comb through very specific areas. We’d use a bullhorn sometimes on larger facilities, but just doing a very loud, robust all clear. If there is a speaker system, integrated speaker system in the facility, you know, obviously utilize that, know how to access that, get permission and do a very robust all clear and last is cars in the parking lot. This is for me was always the unnerving one. We always put that and identified that in our roles and responsibilities and gave that to the customer because we can’t control that as a, you know, a fumigator service coming in. So we always wanted all cars accounted for, company cars were identified and any cars left behind for whatever reason had to be checked off. So just peace of mind. If you can’t align those cars, you have to assume that person’s in the facility. I talked about checking seals because I wanted to repeat this twice. Once sealing is completed and you’re ready to gas, you don’t walk away from the seals and the ceiling and not consider that through the process of the fumigation. Like I said, you think about grain commodity fumigations going 4 to 10 days, even 14 days. So much can happen during that period of time. And you really want to plan the seal checks in, in advance and make assignments to those. They should be checked, you know, on the, on the commodity fumigations. They should be checked daily and preferably in the morning. Remember what I said about, you know, during the day is usually when it’s breezier or windier. So if you lost a seal at some point, you know, through that, that consistently breezier time, you want to shore those seals up so that you’re not losing gas through the day. And then obviously you have to look ahead for storms and you know, evening high high winds as well. And then the short fumes. I always suggest as at an absolute minimum at the 6 to 8 hour time frame on a 24 hour treatment. And then at 10 to 12 hours on a 24 hour treatment, you don’t want to have to save a fumigation in the back half of that treatment time. It’s very, very important. And then always recheck seals before adding gas. Now when I say recheck seals, I’m not suggesting suit up with an SCBA and go in and check every single seal. I’m saying check the seals on the outside that you can access. Generally we’ll even access the roof if there isn’t a ladder by having a lift available that’ll put us up on the roof so that we can check those seals. And then always remember to have a personal monitoring device with you. Anytime you’re in close proximity to that fumigation. You’ve got to make sure that you’re in a safe breathing zone. And then as we wrap this episode up, the one reminder I want to give you is look at integrating your training process into your ceiling process. To me, this was always the first step with new employees that were showing promise, that wanted responsibility. And I would break the ceiling functions up into roof and ground, or if the roof was very large, up into segments. And then I would take that person that I thought was capable and wanted to challenge and see if they could take instructions effectively and give them an assignment and give them some people to work with them, under them and see how they handle that. Ultimately get them in charge of the roof as a whole, move them to that next iteration and then in charge of the whole ceiling job. It’s a great way to really kick the tires of promising associates. So think about that, Break that into bits and pieces and continue to develop your people. A lot of what we’re doing with fumigation, you can’t learn by reading in a book. You can learn how to be safe, you can learn certain specific functions. But there’s so much situational thinking and independent thinking that goes on with the fumigation that you really need to develop through apprenticeship and really hands on learning. And this is your opportunity to do that where we’re not dealing with hazardous chemicals and things like that. If they can’t take instruction effectively, then you may need to second guess if they should be handling something that can hurt themselves or someone else. And this is the best place to start that. So with that, I want to thank you again for joining this episode. I want to remind you to like us on your streaming network. I’d love for you to go to, you know, to YouTube and watch us. And again, we want your feedback. Definitely. As you see, we’ve, we’ve lived up to what we said. We’ll share some of these in the beginning of the next episode and I look forward to that. That’s how we learn. And with that I want to remind everybody fumigation is applied science. And our theme, as you see from a marketing standpoint is be a science cowboy, apply the science and protect your product. Thank you very much. And we also want to remind you that this podcast support fumigators in improving safety, compliance and solutions. Always follow the federal fumigant label. State and local laws and licensed fumigators are legally responsible for their applications. Thanks again for joining us. And this is John B. Mueller with all things fumigation. Sam.