A buzzing business built around controlling mosquitoes
THOSE MOSQUITOES buzzing around your backyard this summer might have met their match.
Mosquiron — a control formula launched by entomologist Dr. Barry Tyler, owner of Pestalto Environmental Health Services of Hamilton — is said to stop mosquitoes from developing through their life cycle.
The product comes in small pellets or briquettes and can be used in rain barrels, bird baths and ponds.
Twelve hours after you drop a pellet into a bird bath the active ingredient, Novaluron, will have diffused into the water and started to work, Tyler says.
“This product can help people control nuisance and also West Nile virus mosquitoes around their own home.”
The idea started buzzing in 2002 when Ontario had an outbreak of West Nile.
By 2004, the World Health Organization was combating malaria.
To do that, it looked at Novaluron — a new active ingredient at the time — but wasn’t satisfied with its hard-to-use liquid formula.
So Tyler hired Hamilton-based formulation specialist Rob Dupree and tasked him with developing a new, solid product to sell and use in their control programs.
That formula — now called Mosquiron — was patented in 2009 and tested in trials across the country and as far away as the Middle East.
When tested in Canadian ponds one June, it was still controlling mosquito populations there the following spring.
It’s the controlled, slow release of Novaluron that makes the product unique, Tyler says.
“We’re talking a minimum of 90 days (and up to) season-long control.”
Made with food grade materials, Mosquiron has been approved by Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency as an insecticide and certified by the province.
The product is available in briquette form (for up to 200 litres) at Canadian Tire stores across the country and in briquette and pellet forms (for up to 10 litres) at independent hardware stores and co-operatives.
According to Public Health Ontario, local transmission of viruses like Zika and dengue through mosquitoes in Ontario is unlikely because the species that carry the virus are not native to the province.
Dr. Jessica Hopkins, an associate medical officer of health in Hamilton, said in February that people most at risk of contracting Zika are those travelling to countries with the highest infection rates, such as the Caribbean and South America.
Tyler is hoping his product can help combat those diseases in developing countries.
“If you have the knowledge and the interest, then you want to try and help.”