03/26/2026
We care about long term solutions and keeping pets/wildlife safe.
Let's hear from folks who actually have worked in pest control but don't agree with the traditional poison, baby, poison model.
First, Lex's Pest Solutions.
Lex worked for years for traditional pest control companies and got an insider's perspective about how it works. She left, because she was fed up with the culture and didn't agree with their use of poisons (and due to her company's carelessness, was almost accidentally poisoned herself). Now she's an exclusion specialist.
Here's her thoughts about NEPMA insistence that only consumer use be banned and pest control cos continue to have access and exclusion is "impractical" or too expensive:
- Being a pest control technician doesn't really mean anything at times [for reducing accidental exposures], and depending on the company, they can be a bigger danger [compared to consumer].
- A lot of techs do NOT have a license, any experience, or proper training. Multiple techs can work under another tech's license.
- Companies just want bodies out there. Larger corporations don't care about the fines if a tech messes up.
- I've seen "techs" with less than 1 week of training get their trucks, access to chemicals and poisons, and sent off on their own to treat people's homes.
- A LOT of companies/Techs do not care about people's homes-- they want to get in and out as quickly as possible to make $$. They don't care if they kill everything as long as the "problem" gets better.
- "Bait stations" aka boxes of poison - are handy for these companies to say " look all the bait has been taken, lots of activity" and that goes on forever.
- Bait stations should have to be referred to by what they are, "tamper resistant poison boxes."
- In PA we start Basic Exclusion at $350.00 without a warranty. You CAN exclude a house with caulking, sheet metal, and hardware cloth if they are so worried about costs to low income families.
And now here's Paul Trapp from Seal 'Em Out, another exclusion specialist who left mainstream pest control after getting disillusioned with the way things were done.
- Iāve been doing this for 25 years a residential exclusion runs $600 to $1,500, once, with a warranty. Rodenticide runs $1,000 a year, forever, and their warrantee is more chemicals.
- ANY home can be rodent proof.
- All homes, no matter the age, are built with rodent proof materials, the vulnerability is where they come together. Builders have been able to keep water from entering homeās for centuriesā¦there is no reason the same canāt be done for rodents.
- Rodent exclusion isnāt part of pest control licensing or training. So, when a technician says exclusion is impossible on an old home, theyāre not lying, they just donāt know how. But a lack of constriction or engineering knowledge isnāt a reason to justify poison. Itās a sign they need better training.
- Itās a training gap the industry has a financial reason to leave open.
- Because: Any training technicians actually receive comes from manufacturers like Bell Labs, who make inhumane rodenticides and traps.
- One more angle for the old-home argument: 82% of U.S. homes contain detectable mouse allergen present in the environment.
The only intervention that actually reduces exposure is eliminating structural entry.
- Bait accelerates the number of unique rodents and the damage they cause entering buildings.
Thanks to the pest control experts taking a stand and explaining these things. It's important to hear from them and they are doing an incredible service offering alternatives to poisons.
For FB tax, a dead Somerville owl we tested last year that had been poisoned. Bait boxes containing ARs all over the block.
