Wall Street Journal - Death by Mint Oil: Natural Pesticides

07/30/2009

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This summer, the pests around my house are dying of more natural causes.

One colony of wasps on my deck got neutralized by shots of mint oil. The cabbageworms shredding my broccoli plants were done in by an ingredient culled from seeds of trees native to India. And I annihilated several fire-ant compounds by enticing them to eat bait packed with a soil-dwelling bacterium that fried their tiny nervous systems.

Natural alternatives are available to kill aphids, cabbage loopers, carpenter ants and other pests.

Surprisingly, none of these products were hard to find. Increasingly, well-known insecticide manufacturers, retailers and even professional pest-control services are rolling out solutions derived from natural materials like animals, plants, bacteria and minerals, many of them considered potentially safer to humans, pets and the environment than their synthetic-chemical counterparts. Fueling the move is increased governmental scrutiny over what pesticides we spray in and around our homes, as well as a bid to satisfy more health-conscious consumers—especially women, who typically dictate household pest-solution purchases.

....Lititz, Pa.-based Woodstream Corp. last year bolstered its Safer product line with an organic mosquito- and tick-control concentrate made in part from chrysanthemum flowers.....

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