Less ugly pest control.

• Author: Pennybacker, Mindy
• Position: GREEN GUIDANCE

When bad weather keeps you indoors, you probably would rather not share your space with pests or conventional remedies. The former can spread disease while pesticides can cause allergic reactions, irritate skin, eyes, and lungs, or poison children and pets. What's the alternative? Hold up a mirror to a roach, and his reflection will cause him to flee the premises, one nineteenth-century author advises. Unfortunately, more than a century later, we still have roaches in places we'd rather not. Many people, in exasperation, resort to highly poisonous "killer" sprays.

Happily, there exists a simple, less dramatic and more effective system of pest control, called Integrated Pest Management, or IPM, which employs least-toxic strategies. "IPM has three parts: sanitation, exclusion, and baits," says Bill Quarles of the Biointegrated Resource Center (BIRC) in Berkeley, California. Here are some tips from BIRC and the book Tiny Game Hunting to help you manage (i.e., destroy) the uninvited:

* They come looking for food and water. Never leave food out. Wash dishes promptly, keep surfaces clean, put garbage in pails with snug-fitting lids and take it out often. When you do not give pests anything to eat, "it forces them to eat the baits," Quarles says. Wipe up moisture and fix any leaks.

* Exclude pests by sealing cracks and crevices, especially around pipes and radiators and between counters, baseboards, and walls, with steel wool (mice can't chew through) or a low- or no-VOC caulk, which won't release toxic volatile organic compounds into your air. "Put out sticky traps so that you know where roaches are--how they get in, where they are living," Quarles advises. To kill roaches, treat crevices with boric acid (see below) before caulking.

* To make the least-toxic bait that will kill insects, mix one-half teaspoon boric acid with one and a half tablespoons sugar in one cup of water and put small amounts in film canisters or other small containers near entry points, underneath the sink, behind the stove and refrigerator and wherever else you've seen ants or roaches. A warning: Although the EPA classifies boric acid as being of low toxicity and a noncarcinogen for humans, it is poisonous if ingested and should, like all pesticides, be placed out of the reach of children and pets.

If the above seems like too much trouble, consider the ugly effects of the harder stuff. "Cancer mortality is down, but cancer incidence is up, and pesticides are definitely...