ARINIX.com ~The damage from insects

The smallest of things can cause the worst havoc.

Consider the red imported fire ant. It is only a
quarter-inch long at its biggest. But this ferocious pest,
known scientifically as solenopsis invicta, can bite with
its powerful mandibles and sting its victims repeatedly
with venom. When disturbed, fire ants exact painful
vengeance on their foes, human or animal. A native of South America, the red imported fire ant first migrated to the U.S. via ships in the 1930s. It has inexorably invaded hundreds of millions of acres in the southern United States. They are so fierce they easily wipe out rival ant colonies. But as they spread like a virus, they leave widespread economic damage in their wake. The fire ants cause more than $1.4 billion in damage and control efforts each year in Texas alone, destroying or damaging crops, parks, school grounds, electrical wires, sprinklers, and anything else in their way. Across the U.S., fire ant control is a $5 billion annual cost, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The ants pose a threat to farm animals as well as humans, particularly young children and the elderly. The invasion of the fire ants may sound like a bad science fiction movie, but the threat is very real.

A plastics and industrial products company that has been around for five decades, NIX, has figured out a clever way to repel these invaders and prevent them from damaging sensitive electronic equipment. The patent-pending solution, dubbed ARINIX^TM, saves a lot of money and maintenance headaches, and it doesn’t require eradication of pests to be effective. No more do you have to spend money on frequent exterminations, replace damaged equipment, or clean up the damage the ants cause. ARINIX^TM keeps fire ants at bay because it has an effective pesticide embedded in plastic. The pests walk over it, collecting traces of poison on their legs. Aware of its toxicity, the ants will avoid almost anything protected with ARINIX^TM. NIX gives the fire ants their due respect. They are the most Darwinian survivors known on earth. But when confronted with a barrier like ARINIX^TM, they will follow the path of least resistance.

You can’t fire bomb fire ants. Eradication is
a losing war. And fire ants are especially tough.
Pouring pesticides on fire ant mounds fails to kill
the queen ants buried deep underground. The queen
can lay as many as 800 eggs per day, and a single
colony may have several hundred queens. Those queens have wings and can migrate by flying hundreds of feet to new locations. They can bypass natural barriers such as rivers or lakes in this way. They even return to areas that have been hit with pesticides once it’s safe to return, according to Dr. Bastiaan M. Drees, an entomologist at Texas A&M University.

“Eradication of fire ants is not going to happen, especially in the southeastern U.S.,” says Dr. Drees, one of the most respected fire ant authorities in the world. “Some have referred to attempts at eradication as the Vietnam of entomology.” Spraying pesticides often works for only a few days or weeks. Predatory insects do exist, but using them to contain fire ants is a slow, labor-intensive and expensive process. Some have tried putting Teflon coatings on the surfaces of barriers so the ants slip off when the try to walk up vertical walls. But that’s another painstaking and costly solution that wears off over time. Another trick is to put instant grits on dry soil surrounding a nest. The ants will eat the grits, which then swell and rupture the ants’ stomachs. But only the oldest fire ants will eat such food, while younger fire ants will live off liquids. The war against the fire ants is a never-ending battle.

The ants keep spreading fast. If you’ve never
traveled to the South, be wary of open pastures
peppered with small dirt mounds. If you kick a mound
by accident, the ants will crawl upon your leg in a
swarm and attack with their fiery stings. They bite with
their mandibles and repeatedly inject stinging venom.
Each sting on the skin can develop into a burning blister that can become infected. Their toll on equipment is equally fierce. The Texas study found the ants damage equipment such as airport landing lights, churches, nurseries, sod producers, golf courses, commercial businesses, electric communications, homes, cars, trucks and even cemeteries.

Bed-ridden patients in nursing homes have been attacked as well. Lucille Devers, an 84-year-old nursing home patient in Huntsville, Ala., awoke to a nightmare one day in 2002. The elderly Alzheimer’s patient had been attacked by fire ants as she slept and suffered hundreds of bites. She sued the nursing home and a jury awarded her a verdict of $5.3 million. That was just one of numerous lawsuits against nursing homes.

The hum of electrical equipment is like a love
song for these ants. Dr. Drees says that the cold-
blooded animals are attracted to the extra warmth
that utility housings and other electrical devices give
off during winter. The ants seek the shelter of these
places during heavy rains. But their mere presence is destructive. The ants bring nesting soil, which has a corrosive effect on wires and switches. The ants chew on insulation, causing short circuits and switch failures. Even worse, ants which are electrocuted in the process of chewing on wires can cause a lemming-like effect. The dead ants release a pheromone that attracts other worker ants. The bodies of dead ants pile up and jam the switching mechanisms and muck up the wiring. It’s as if they’re Luddites, a reference to the workers of the 1800s who went around smashing modern machinery.

“It’s like a positive feedback cycle,” Dr. Drees explains.

They swarm all over traffic signals, air conditioners,
control boxes for sprinkler, alarm sensors, and other
outdoor electrical equipment. As they gum up the
innards of these devices, they can do considerable
damage. A report by the Texas Department of
Agriculture, Texas A&M University and other leading researchers estimated that the costs of controlling fire ants in the metropolitan regions of Dallas, Austin, Forth Worth, San Antonio and Houston exceeded $580 million in 1998 and 1999. Fire ant damages and control for homes topped $711.5 million across all of Texas.

“The red imported fire ant has become a major economic pest to various sectors of the Texas economy,” according to the report made for the Texas Legislature in August, 2001.

Fire ants have infested the entire south from Texas to
Florida. Experts predict the threat could spread to the West
Coast of the U.S. and further north from the Southern states.
If fire ants are anywhere near your location, you should think
about ways to ward them off ahead of time. As you can see,
this isn’t some vague threat like Killer Bees or aliens from
outer space. This is a real world problem with measurable costs.

The payback for using ARINIX^TM comes in many ways. First, it offers general-purpose protection. No longer do you have to use exterminators who offer protection against only one kind of pest, such as termites. ARINIX^TM doesn’t just work against fire ants. It will protect against termites, spiders, common ants, fleas, ticks, mites, silverfish and a variety of other pests as well.

ARINIX^TM also eliminates the need for pesticide maintenance bills, as well as service calls where the technician has to remove fire ant nests from utility boxes. Every time a service technician is dispatched to conduct maintenance for a utility box, it costs about $200 and distracts the technician from the actual service required. Technicians often toss a small amount of pesticide into a box that lasts for only a few weeks. ARINIX^TM lasts such a long time that there is only a single upfront investment in installation costs. It eliminates the need for those repeated $200 insect-related service calls for three to five years, based on laboratory testing. And the cost of installing ARINIX^TM needn’t be huge since it needn’t be deployed on a massive scale. It can be used instead to protect the particularly sensitive targets that ants may attack. By sealing off utility boxes and other targets, you don’t have to eradicate fire ants from an entire region or protect an entire area. The installation work can be done while performing other work, eliminating the need for a separate service call.

Moreover, ARINIX^TM can save companies from spending huge sums replacing parts in damaged equipment, or, even worse, replacing equipment altogether. With ARINIX^TM, companies can slash their operating costs for maintaining and replacing equipment. They can also protect themselves from liability for any human injuries that are caused by the pests or their indirect effects, such as traffic light outages that can cause car wrecks. Ultimately, installing ARINIX^TM comes down to protecting people. Lastly, ARINIX^TM isn’t expensive to deploy compared to many other kinds of plastics. It is being mass-produced already and pricing varies depending upon the application. In many cases, ARINIX^TM isn’t an additional expense. It is just replacing standard plastic or other ineffective barriers against fire ants. Over time, equipment designers can design for ARINIX^TM from the outset.