A four year old girl in Salt lake City Utah has died by what is believed to be phosphine gas entering the home after an exterminator may have put the pellets used to administer the gas in the yard for rodents or burrowing pests. Her fifteen year sister is now in intensive care suffering from the same symptoms and as of this writing it is not clear how she is doing.
In pest control we are charged with the safe application of potentially harmful chemicals and products and although this is thankfully NOT a repetitious problem for our industry I would hope that it is one HUGE wake up call for all of us. Nothing can bring back this little girl and it my prayer that her sister will recover and my condolences and thoughts are with the family. I have included the video news footage of this story and you can read more in this link (as long as the news site keeps it up) as a stark reminder to those of us who practice pest control as a living. At times I’m sure we can get complacent and think things like this won’t happen and even in my own writings I explain how rare this is. But again, that won’t bring this little girl back to her family and how safe or how much training we under go hardly matters now.
May we all re-double our efforts to be as conscious as we can about what we are doing and the consequences of our decisions.
Video Courtesy of KSL.com
