[Mosquito Control Supplement] Maruyama Focuses on Prevention, Education

Now that dengue fever is on the radar in Florida, Maruyama, a supplier of commercial outdoor power, chemical application and agricultural products, has directed its training efforts to focus on prevention.

According to Maruyama, effectively knocking down the mosquito species that can infect people with dengue fever has a lot to do with the mist. In other words, it’s not about how much chemical is sprayed, or how long a pest control operator spends treating areas that breed mosquitoes.

“With fogging, you want hang time,” explains Benjamin Anderson, chemical application equipment specialist at Maruyama in Denton, Texas. And the smaller the droplet of liquid product, the greater the hang time. For instance, an ultra-low volume (ULV) fogger by Maruyama that puts out particles measuring below 25 microns will generate a mist that lingers in the air for up to 22 minutes (in a gymnasium environment), Anderson says. This type of blanket tends to catch more mosquitoes, Anderson says, which drop mid-air when they come in contact with the chemical spray.

“This allows operators to apply product in select areas and leave behind a huge volume of treated chemical without using a lot of product,” Anderson says, explaining a concept that Maruyama educators are emphasizing in Florida.

People infected with dengue present with the classic symptoms of a persistent fever lasting a week or longer, vomiting, abdominal pain, joint pain and headache. Essentially, dengue causes porosity in blood vessels. Imagine capillaries that are pocked with holes like Swiss cheese, Anderson relates. The only way to deal with dengue fever is to treat its symptoms with bed rest, fluids and acetaminophen, or prevent the disease.

That’s where Maruyama has stepped in, educating PCOs through distributors like Roberts Supply in Winter Park, Fla., on ways to effectively manage mosquitoes that carry dengue. Maruyama trains PCOs to use its fogging equipment — the MD155DX power mister, duster and blower and the MD155DX-ULV that diffuses sub-25 micron droplets.

The company has also partnered with Tim Whitt, industry veteran and president of Eufala, Okla.-based Pied Piper Services and staff adviser at Maruyama. At the same time, Maruyama is reaching out to Florida government agencies, particularly the vector control agency.

“We’re showing PCOs how to properly utilize the tools to give them the best financial impact so they can use less chemical and make smarter applications,” Anderson says. “We are enlightening operators so they can make better choices when they see a quart of water sitting on a park strip or when they see a tire laying in an alley someplace,” he adds, noting that tires capture enough water to breed thousands of larvae.

In fact, discarded tires are a big problem in countries like Guatemala, El Salvador and Peru, where the United States and other industrialized nations ship old tires. “Tires go everywhere else but in our own home landfills, and tires that are not [slashed] serve as cisterns for water,” Anderson says, noting Maruyama’s international outreach in South America and Africa, where dengue fever is a major plague. The company is scheduled to meet with the Honduran secretary of health and has already met with the Mexican secretary of health to discuss fogging to control mosquitoes.

In Florida, even condensation that collects in a flower petal can serve as a larval breeding ground for the dengue-carrying mosquito. And once a person is bitten, another mosquito that bites that infected individual will pick up dengue—and the disease continues to spread.

Mosquitos carrying dengue are controlled three ways. Some PCOs in Key West use larvicide pellet applications to treat standing water. “The downside to that is it’s an extremely intensive effort because PCOs carry bags of the product, and it’s not like they can walk around using a spreader; and you can’t convince a mosquito to eat poison,” Anderson says. “You can only kill the larvae.”

Contact spray is another solution, or spraying en masse, which is accomplished with foggers like the mister-duster, which straps on to the operator like a backpack blower. Portability and cost-effectiveness of this machine and Maruyama’s ULV fogger are attractive to PCOs, Anderson points out. Unlike some foggers that are cumbersome and powered by electric motors, these machines are gas-powered and produce the tiny droplet size that stays airborne to wipe out dengue-carrying mosquitoes.

Maruyama will expand its educational efforts this year to help PCOs understand the equipment available and best practices for managing dengue fever.

“We look at it as, sure it’s great to sell equipment, but if we don’t benefit the public, then why even be in business?” Anderson says.

 
— Kristen Hampshire