Sponsored by the
Museum of Natural
Science, Louisiana State University
Date: Mon,
19 May 2003 17:14:06 -0700
Reply-To: Bulletin Board for Bird Collections and Curators <AVECOL-L LISTSERV.LSU.EDU>
From: Bulletin Board for Bird Collections and Curators <AVECOL-L LISTSERV.LSU.EDU>
I'm surprised that you can still buy "no pest strips."
Some plastics may be resistant to dichlorvos but the stuff is tough on just  about everything else, including specimens,
paint, many metals, and  people. One
fellow I know spent a few days in the hospital after  photographing a drawer of skins in front of an
open cabinet. I think it  was Gary Stiles
that also got very sick from exposure to the stuff. Some  SPNHC members (Stephen L Williams & ?) did
some research on what it does to  specimens.
As I recall, they exposed various materials to Vapona,  including bare metals, painted metals, wood,
teeth, fur, feathers and bone,  for
relatively short periods, (weeks or months). They analyzed chemical  residues deposited on surfaces, and found a
lot of noxious stuff including  some
really corrosive acids. They did other tests to determine if the  materials were weakened, etc. And the thing
that blew me away was the  before and
after photomicrographs of damage unseen by the naked eye. Don't  know if they published their findings. I went
home from the SPNHC meeting  and told
Lloyd we had to quit using "no pest strips". His father, a  chemist, said to use some silica gel to remove
the residues. And so we  bought big
barrels of silica gel and put open jars of the stuff in each  cabinet. It rather quickly (a few weeks?)
turned dark brown, so we kept  replacing
with fresh silica gel. After a while it was obvious that there  wasn't much left of whatever we were removing
so we considered the job  done...
http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/carbaryl-dicrotophos/dichlorvos-ext.html
Sam
Avinet