On May 28, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its final ruling on rodenticide mitigation measures that will become law. These risk mitigation decision (RMD) measures have been the subject of much debate for nearly a decade, and the subject of some prior articles in the pages of this magazine (for example, see the March 2007 cover story). Here are the significant points that Pest Management Professionals (PMPs) need to know about the Agency's latest decision.

In my last column ("Myths about Rodents," March), I covered some common misconceptions about rodent behavior and activity, and what follows are some additional tall tales. Check with your staff to see if they know the truth behind these and other myths. They may hear these as statements or as questions from their customers. Sometimes, uninformed technicians may pass these on as fact or use them as sales claims.

Few pests generate as many persistent myths as do pest rodents and their management. Who hasn't heard stories about "rats as big as cats," and how some rodenticides supposedly make rodents go outside to drink, or perhaps allegedly mummify them?

Is your rodent business up over the past year? The warmer weather across much of the United States seems to have extended the active rodent season. If climate experts are correct, we can expect this trend to continue. Delays in usual frost dates provide longer periods of vegetation for food and harborage, and provide increased survival of young rats and mice. So, now is a good time to think about your rodenticide purchasing, use patterns and policies, and how to determine what kinds of products to use with specific types of accounts.

There's an age-old adage that "no good deed goes unpunished." Unfortunately, the saying applies to recent efforts by Dr. Bruce Colvin and me to dig into published city statistics and develop a system for rating municipalities for their vulnerability to having or developing rodent problems.

Restaurants should consider paying a little extra for waste management companies that provide dumpsters in good repair and offer dumpster cleaning on a regular basis.

Nuisance ant accounts have long been a bane to pest management professionals (PMPs). Few tasks are more frustrating than having to revisit and re-treat nuisance ant jobs during what is most PMPs' busiest season.

In the May issue, we looked back at the evolution of bait stations that figure so prominently in today's rodent management programs. These began with simple stations that predated the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and led to more complex stations for pest management professionals (PMPs) that were necessitated by the agency's creation of and requirement for "tamper-resistant" designs.

Like the building of a better mousetrap, a review of these decades-old bait station patents indicates people's ingenuity.