When a new pesticide appears in our shops, it is just the end of a long process involving a large amount of hoop-jumping by both t...
Case Studies
With the instances of bed bug infestations on the increase, it is suprising that there still isn't a specific spray for the treatment of this intrusive insect.
The problem lies not with the development of an appropriate pesticide, but the sequence of hoops that are present for any petro-chemical firm to jump through in order to get their product to appear in the shops.
Before any pesticide can be used, sold, supplied, advertised or stored it must be approved for use. These approvals are granted by the Pesticides Safety Directive (PSD) under a range of specific pesticide related legislation.
To gain approval from the PSD, the pesticide product has to be thoroughly tested for acute and chronic effects on mammals, the potential effects on birds, fish, and honey bees has to be documented, and the environmental fate of these products in water or soil also must be quantified.
The cost of having a product registered is now estimated to be around £50 million. This cost naturally limits the number of products that make it to the marketplace. In addition, there has been a 10 to 15 year trend in reducing the number of pesticide products that receive registration for use in the indoor environment. In short, it is very hard to get new pesticides registered that are labeled for indoor use (as opposed to agricultural use).
However, throughout this trend of limiting indoor pesticides, we were bed bug free. Like the PSD, many people have concerns about applying chemicals where children sleep or play, but if bed bugs should become as big a problem as they were at the beginning of the 20th century, the public may demand that the government register products that are effective against bed bugs.
We will just have to wait and see. At this time, we do not know of any product that is in development specifically for bed bug control, however innovators are always around the corner producing new sprays, lacquers and devices that will hopefully enter the mainstream at some point in the future so that we can use them to clear our property's of pesky pests.