Why Use Natural Pest Control Products?

In a conversation this week, the question was asked, "Why use natural pest control products?" While the answer is obvious to me, those who do not know much about the pest control industry or pest control products may not know why you want to use natural pest control products.

Let us begin with a quick back story on the pest control industry.  

Pests have been around since forever.  Really, forever.  Cave drawings show bugs irritating humans.  If there are humans, there are pests.

For many years, bugs were just considered a part of life.  "Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite" was a cute little bedtime rhyme because bed bugs were common.  People used garlic on the skin or smoked pipes to repel mosquitoes.  Grandmothers would squeeze lemon juice or peppermint oil to repel ants.  And every house had a cedar chest or closet to keep bugs away from linens and fine clothing.  

Then came World War II.  Scientists from around the globe were feverishly working to create the best weapons and voila! Toxic, synthetic pesticides were born.  These are man-made, laboratory-made, do-not-exist-in-Nature concoctions designed to attack the nervous systems (that means the 'brains') of non-desirable living things.   

After the war, these synthetic poisons became the a-ha idea for pest control.  It was decided that using them at a low level is enough to kill bugs but not harm anything else.  How wonderful! DDT was so magnificent - it won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for virtually wiping out bed bugs.  The invention of the century!  Hooray for DDT!

Not so fast.  The idea that numerous poisons being sprayed, ingested, inhaled, and absorbed would be harmless is ridiculous... and time proved that to be true.  DDT upset the breeding of pests.  But predators that ate the bugs also had their reproduction abilities messed up.  Alligators, Condors, etc. had non-viable eggs.

Synthetic pesticides cannot be metabolized.  They accumulate up the food chain (the term is bio-accumulation) and the higher you are on the food chain, the more poisons have accumulated.  That is why DDT was wiping out the Condors plus pushing many other species into dangerous threats of extinction.  All because of the miracle pesticide DDT - that was quickly banned in the United States once this knowledge could not be ignored.

Here is the crazy part - when using synthetic pesticides on bugs, there will always be a certain percentage of the bug population that is resistant for some reason.  They pass the immunity to their offspring and after several generations, the entire bug population is resistant to that poisonous pesticide.  Hence, we have bed bugs again.

Greenbug all-natural pest control products are made from ingredients found in Nature.  They are not created in a lab - they exist naturally.  Our bodies can metabolize them, they do not bio-accumulate, they are effective in controlling pests yet harmless to humans, pets and the environment.  

So why use natural pest control products? Because synthetic pest control products are bad for you and everything you hold dear.