Let's Talk Pest

2011-09-02T15:17:00.000-07:00

Mike Masterson with Brownie Troop 11384

Mike Masterson with Brownie Troop 11384

Mike Masterson arrived to help the Brownie Troop 11384 earn an Insect Patch.

Stephen Edwards, an employee of Isotech Pest Management and his wife Christine Edwards have a daughter, Melanye, that is part of the Brownie Troop 11384. Melanye, a huge fan of the Verminators and Mike Masterson, couldn't have been more thrilled than to have Mike show up for this learning experience.

Mike explained certain aspects of insects and answered many question. The girls even saw them up close.

Mike said "the girls were amazing" and that he enjoyed spending the time with them.

WE NEED YOUR HELP- VOTE FOR ISOTECH PEST

2011-06-17T12:47:00.000-07:00

We Need Your HELP!

The Los Angeles Times is running a BEST of Los Angeles contest and we could use your support!

Just follow the link below and it will take you to the voting page.

http://readerschoice.latimes.com/

Once at the intro page, look to your left and you will find a box with all the different categories.

STEP 1

Click the STORE category and then scroll down to "Home Improvement". Type in ISOTECH Pest Management and click Los Angeles.

STEP II

Then go to the bottom of the page to submit.

We all at ISOTECH Pest Management appreciate your support!

With Gratitude,

Mike Masterson

CEO

ISOTECH Pest Management Inc

Vampires on a Rampage

2010-12-15T12:21:00.000-08:00

Vampires on a Rampage

Article from Whole Life Times

Even the bad-ass vampires in the popular Twilight series have their redeeming characteristics, but the same can’t be said of the bloodsuckers currently creeping into unsuspecting beds in epidemic numbers. North America is seeing a nasty resurgence of bedbugs, and last summer the pest control company Terminex ranked Los Angeles tenth among the top 15 bedbug-infested cities in America. Despite their shady rap, bedbugs sometimes show up in swank hotels, high-end retail stores and cinemas. Given the horror stories about ruined belongings, nocturnal bites and repeat visits, plenty of people are nervous.
However, rather than live in fear, says Mike Masterson of Covina-based IsoTech Pest Management Inc., we need to get educated. Masterson, whose company stars in the Discovery Channel’s Verminators, likens the pests to a contagious virus, such as the one in the 1995 movie Outbreak that “went viral” after a seemingly innocuous cough in an airplane. “We have to treat this pest differently from any other pest, because it’s like a hitchhiker,” says Masterson. But on the bright side, he counters, the more you know, the better you can avoid bedbugs or stop them before they rule your world.

Avoiding Bedbugs
Start by knowing the high-risk areas, Masterson advises, citing movie theatres, hotels, airplanes and increasingly, malls. Before you get too comfy, he says, perform a visual inspection. “I call it the ‘three Bs.’ Look for live bedbugs, blood stains or black spots.” In a movie theatre, for example: “I always tell people to carry a little flashlight. Before you even sit down, check the cording around the seat, check underneath…I mean yeah, you might look goofy but hey, at least you won’t take home bedbugs.”
If you see signs, leave immediately. Inform the location manager and if you don’t get a response, contact local public health authorities.

If you fear you’ve been exposed, Masterson recommends, “As soon as you get home, take off everything and throw it through a high heat cycle in the dryer, because heat is natural, no chemicals, and it will kill every form of life of a bedbug.”

If You Suspect the Worst
Because bedbugs are so persistent—they’re great hiders, and can go months without a blood meal—professional help is highly recommended if you think you have bedbugs. But do your homework before committing. Stay away from anyone promising a magic bullet. Clearing out bedbugs takes great effort, near-obsessive attention to detail, a multi-pronged attack plan and generally, follow-up treatment.
Masterson outlines the process. “First you have to really find out if you do have bedbugs.” Bedbugs anesthetize you when they bite, so you might not feel it but you’ll see blood spots. And surprisingly, dogs have become invaluable detectives. “Why they work so great,” he explains “is they’ll find everything from a viable egg, [live] nymph or adult.” But confirm your provider has NESDCA (National Entomology Scent Detection Canine Association) certification, he cautions.

As for treatment, while pesticides are prevalent and arguably cheaper, there are profound reasons (environmental concerns, rising chemical-resistance and chemical sensitivities) to opt for greener options. Margaret (not her real name) is an LA-area resident in a pricier part of town who was shocked when she developed a small bedbug infestation. Exacerbating the problem, her chemical sensitivities are so bad, she says: “I would have preferred to live with bedbugs than use pesticides.” Fortunately, she was able to successfully eliminate her bedbugs using natural methods.

Get Them Out Pronto
Here are some innovative, non-toxic approaches that, in combination, are proving effective:

• Thermal heat treatment involves tenting and heating an entire home or part thereof to 130°F. An experienced, reputable practitioner, such as California-based ThermaPureHeat or IsoTech is vital.
• Food-grade diatomaceous earth made from jagged-edged tiny algae fossils is a favorite for discouraging garden pests, and works as well here. Sprinkle it around cracks and beds.
• Vacuuming and steam cleaning provides some ability to clear bedbugs and eggs (from mattress seams or luggage, for example) but doesn’t have enough “reach” to kill bugs inside walls or in hidden crevasses.
• Instead of trashing suspect clothes or linens, launder in hot water and a high-heat dryer setting. If you don’t have in-house machines, put the affected items in sealed plastic bags until you can get them to the laundry.
• Caulk cracks and holes. In multi-unit housing, caulking cracks can help stop bedbugs from spreading among units.
• Special mattress covers can’t kill bedbugs but can protect your mattress.
• Decluttering makes detection easier and reduces areas where bugs can hide.

Each situation is different. A good professional will recommend the best approach and follow up until your home is clear. Masterson says current methods are “effective and will take care of bedbugs,” but warns, “The element that really continues to be a problem is what people take out of their units while the [clearing] treatment is taking place, and that they then bring back in and reinfest their own homes.”
This is the scary reality. When you’re battling bedbugs, there’s just no margin for error.
—Connie Jeske Crane

L.A.'s slow trickle of BEDBUGS may turn into a flood

2010-12-07T08:16:00.000-08:00

Erik Alden of Isotech Pest Management and his coonhound, Maddie, are on the hunt for bedbugs in a Santa Clarita apartment building. (Lawrence K. Ho, Los Angeles Times/ November 9, 2010)

County officials are already confirming as many as 55 bedbug cases a month, but exterminators fear that holiday travel and gift-giving will cause the problem to explode.

New Yorkers aren't the only ones coping with creepy, crawly bloodsuckers.

Bedbugs have turned up in the Golden Triangle retail district of Beverly Hills and inside homes and apartments in more than two dozen local communities.

"It's really all over the county," said Angelo J. Bellomo, director of environmental health for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

After noticing an increase in reports from tenants, property owners and businesses, public health officials last spring began tracking reports of bedbugs and later posted public notices about how to prevent and treat infestations. They're confirming as many as 55 reports of the lentil-size, brown critters each month.

Across the United States, bedbugs have turned up in posh hotels, movie theaters, churches, hospitals, dormitories and high-end clothing stores. Fears of hotel infestations, particularly in New York, have thrown the travel industry into a tizzy, and national "bedbug summits" have drawn standing-room-only crowds.

The pests are "very good hitchhikers" that can be transported on luggage, clothing, beds, furniture and other items, said L.A. County Public Health Director Jonathan E. Fielding. The bugs also hide out in draperies, throw pillows and even electronics, and adults can live more than a year without feeding.

Now, with the holiday season upon us, one commercial exterminator has warned that the number of reports might spike because of increased travel.

Health officials say heightened public awareness of the pests might be playing a role in the uptick in reports in Southern California, where the problem appears to be far less prevalent than in New York, Ohio and other hotbeds.

Over the summer, plentiful sightings of bedbugs had New Yorkers' skin crawling. The Empire State Building called in fumigators after an employee carried bedbugs into the basement on his clothes. That was after bedbugs were seen at a movie theater in Times Square, the Brooklyn district attorney's office and a Victoria's Secret store in Lenox Hill.

Infestations were common in the United States before World War II, but improvements in hygiene and the widespread use of DDT all but eradicated the pests here in 1940s and '50s. They remained common, however, in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.

Global travel and immigration get much of the blame for the bedbug resurgence in this country, entomologists say. In a recent National Pest Management Assn. survey, exterminators also blamed overcrowding of cities, unregulated sales and donations of secondhand clothing and mattresses, and reliance on short-lived chemicals that don't fully eradicate an infestation. Even DDT proved an impermanent solution after the pests developed a resistance to the chemical, which the U.S. later banned for environmental reasons.

In a September Rasmussen Reports poll, 20% of those surveyed said news of bedbug infestations had prompted them to change their plans to go to certain public places.

The good news is that "bedbugs don't transmit diseases," said Richard Cooper, an entomologist and vice president of the website BedBugCentral.com. Many people, however, suffer allergic reactions that can increase the risk of secondary infection. Of greater concern can be the psychological effect, he said.

"It's very difficult to go to sleep at night when you know you become a slab of meat to feed on," he said. "People have anxiety and start isolating themselves. There's a huge emotional impact that can't be underestimated."

Crawling atop a sleeping host, a bedbug stabs its mouth tube into a victim, injects numbing saliva and anticoagulant, probes for a blood vessel, and then gorges on the warm, red fluid. The hapless prey, oblivious to the attack, wakes hours later to a constellation of itchy red welts.

San Diego apartment dweller Carissa Washington had grown up thinking that "sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite" referred to mythical creatures that parents invoked to help children slip into slumber. But she wasn't imagining the prickly bumps that irritated her skin many mornings and eventually caused her to dread falling asleep. After she nabbed some of the pests skittering across her bed, an exterminator confirmed the worst.

"It makes you want to pull your hair out," said Washington, 25. "It's never-ending, like a Freddy Krueger movie."

Adult bedbugs are reddish-brown, with oval, flattened bodies. They tend to congregate on mattresses, box springs, bed frames, headboards, floorboards and peeling paint, leaving dark spots of dried excrement. Eggshells and brownish molted skin are other telltale signs, along with rusty or reddish blood smears on bed sheets that indicate an engorged bug has been crushed.

"The bedbug for its part wants to get in, get the bite and get away without being detected, so it's to its advantage to not do anything to wake you up or have you scratch or slap in your sleep," said Steve Heydon, senior museum scientist at the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis.

Isotech Pest Management, based in Covina, won't name the store it recently treated in Beverly Hills, but co-owner Mike Masterson predicted that over the holidays "we're going to see such an influx of bedbugs in stores that it's going to catch a lot of people off guard."

Masterson, a former celebrity bodyguard turned star of the Discovery Channel reality show "Verminators," said Isotech did 39 bedbug treatments in 2004 and will probably "break 40,000" in 2010, including dorm rooms and faculty housing at major universities, and a 600-unit hotel in San Francisco. Treatments can cost hundreds of dollars.

Often, the first step toward confirming an invasion involves bedbug-sniffing hounds. One recent evening, Erik Alden, Isotech's canine and bedbug supervisor, and his colleague Robert Gregorio held the leashes of first Maddie, a coonhound, and then Zip, a beagle, as the dogs whiffed through several apartments in a Santa Clarita complex.

Only when Alden or Gregorio planted a vial containing live bedbugs under a mattress did the dogs begin scratching wildly to indicate they had located their quarry. "You don't have bedbugs; that's the glorious part," Alden told Maryann Elders, a jewelry maker who had trapped some insects in a plastic bag. The less glorious part? The creatures turned out to be carpet beetles.

martha.groves@latimes.com

For more information on BEDBUGS, visit our site www.isotechpest.com or click on http://www.isotechpest.com/bed-bug-identification-facts.html or www.k9bedbughunters.com

You can purchase BEDBUG products by visiting www.store.isotechpest.com

Corona Cares Community TOY DRIVE

2010-12-01T13:22:00.000-08:00

Come check us out!

The Corona Cares Community Toy Drive

Saturday December 4, 2010 12:00 to 4:00 p.m.

The event will take place at Graziano's Corona, 333 Magnolia Ave, Corona, Ca 92879

Bring an unwrapped toy and get a FREE order of garlic knots!

Guests include:

Corona Police Department K-9 Unit and Crime Prevention Department
Corona Fire Department
Discovery Channel's VERMINATORS
TLC's West Coast Customs
Hansen's
Corona Chargers
Santiago Band
Centennial Madrigals.

Santa Claus will make an appearance and the Police Department will have a booth for fingerprinting children.

For information, call 951-734-8500.

A LITTLE FUN AT THE ISOTECH OFFICE

2010-10-29T11:29:00.000-07:00

Dressing Up for Halloween!


What do you mean I was filing incorrectly?

DON'T FORGET to e-mail us your Halloween Exterminator photo!

Send it to mike@isotechpest.com

We will post you on the BLOG

ISOTECH PEST MAMAGEMENT INC. WITH CBS LOS ANGELES- CHANNEL 2

2010-10-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

Some Pest Control Companies Charging To Kill Nonexistent Bugs?

Don't be fooled by companies wanting to make money off you and the latest out-break of BED BUGS.

Understand and be informed about BED BUGS.

We offer two website to visit: www.isotechpest.com and www.k9bedbughunters.com.

Know what to look and who to call for your inspection.

EXTERMINATOR COSTUMES!!

2010-10-26T17:43:00.000-07:00

You, your spouse, your child, or your pet, dressing up as an EXTERMINATOR for Halloween?

SEND US YOUR BEST PHOTO!

Email your photos to: mike@isotechpest.com

You might just find yourself on our BLOG.

ANOTHER WAY TO GET YOUR T-SHIRT!

2010-10-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

ISOTECH Pest Management will be giving a FREE T-SHIRT with all orders that are $25 or more. This excludes tax and shipping if applicable.
Just enter the code F25 during check out.

Place your order at http://store.isotechpest.com. We have everything you would need for your home and/or business to battle pests. We understand in this economy, not everyone can afford a Pest Control Service, that's why we set-up the http://store.isotechpest.com.

Not sure what to buy for your problem? Then call us at 888-947-6832 or email us at store.isotechpest.com.

FREE T-SHIRT GIVEAWAY- Winner #2 and #3!

2010-10-11T11:23:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Paul R. of Virginia and our newest winner Jonel V. in the FREE T-SHIRT a week GIVEAWAY!
Sign-up is easy. Just go to http://www.isotechpest.com/ and click on the Sign-Up for Pest Information and enter your name and e-mail.

IT'S THAT EASY!

We only have 3 weeks left, so HURRY and sign up today!

GOOD LUCK.

WINNER of the Free-T-SHIRT a week Giveaway!

2010-09-20T13:24:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Henry C of California!

Our first winner in our Free T-SHIRT a week Giveaway

The BedBugs are back in LOS ANGELES

2010-09-17T16:02:00.000-07:00


Erik Alden, of Isotech Pest Management, takes his bed bug detection canine Bailey, a rescued Beagle, through a Los Angeles apartment in search of Bedbugs, Friday, August 6, 2010.

A recent article in the Whittier Daily News featured Isotech Pest Mangement doing what we do best, (well one of the things we do best) searching and treating for BEDBUGS.

Your best form of prevention and treatment is to become educated. Stay informed by reading our blog, checking out information on our website www.isotechpest.com, our sister website www.k9bedbughunters.com, twitter and youtube.

Bedbugs can effect EVERYONE and ANYONE, so keep yourself informed!

For more information on the Whittier Daily News article CLICK HERE.

Erik Alden and Bailey in a Los Angeles Apartment

To purchase BedBug detection and service products CLICK HERE.

Free T-SHIRT Giveaway

2010-09-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

OK everyone, today starts the "free shirt a week" in our Free T-SHIRT Giveaway.
Every week until midnight 10/29/10, ISOTECH will giveaway a T-SHIRT of your choice.

Kids T-Shirts

Adult T-Shirts

It's easy to enter. Just visit our website home page and click on the PEST INFORMATION SIGN UP and enter your information.

Our Best Seller is the GLOW IN THE DARK for Kids and Adults.

Why wait! ENTER HERE and we will take you there!

For complete T-SHIRT giveaway rules CLICK HERE.


Kid and Adults T-Shirts

The DR. OZ Show

2010-09-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

It is official! Mike Masterson will be appearing on the DR. OZ Show SEPTEMBER 14, 2010. Check out your local listing for your show time.

$10.05 Sale Price

Learn what you can do to avoid and treat for BED BUGS while traveling our just out at the movies. Mike Masterson will be featuring additional BED BUG products like BEDLAM available on sale till the end of September 2010. Just visit store.isotechpest.com.

Upcoming on the Dr. Oz Show

2010-08-16T17:07:00.000-07:00

Packtite


BedBug II- WaterBase Bedbugs were pretty much eliminated by 1950 by DDT, however in the 1970's DDT was banned in the United States due to the high toxicity level. So chemical manufactures began developing more pest specific chemicals, meaning sprays that will kill ants, gels that will kill roaches, but non-target pests such as bedbugs began to thrive! So by the year 2010, most people had not seen bedbugs. Of-course then leading to miss identification and treatments, and in turn leading to massive infestations. During the show I will show you how to properly identify, protect you and your items in vulnerable areas like movie theaters. Also I will show you how to check your purse and luggage for Bedbugs and then HOW TO TREAT should you have them. We will post the air date as soon as we are given the information.