I thought I had vetted my notes on the NCUE meeting last week, but was corrected this weekend on a few critical points by my friend, Dr. Chris Geiger, with the City and County of San Francisco (CSF). Chris is the most knowledgeable entomologist I know when it comes to LEED credit language and IPM, and has been integral to the pesticide hazard ranking system used by CSF.
My mistake in reporting had more to do with the talk by Tim Husen on PMP frustrations with LEED. At least some of the issues Dr. Husen and others in the past (including myself) have had with LEED pesticide language have since been corrected by the U.S. Green Building Council, keepers of LEED certification.
Dr. Geiger pointed out that there was never any official San Francisco Tier III list of pesticides. Several years ago there was a temporary listing of pesticides put up by the City, "but it was not at all exhaustive and went quickly out of date." Unfortunately the list lives on in older web pages, and some governments and architects still refer to the Tier III list as if it were the universally accepted standard of P.C. (pesticide correctness).
Instead, the CSF maintains a series of criteria for determining hazard tier of pesticides. Under LEED, some pesticides that are classified as least-toxic (low risk, Tier III) under these criteria are exempt from resident notification requirements in the LEED-for Existing Buildings Operations and Maintenance. There is no longer any list of pesticides, since registered products change so quickly; however the Pesticide Research Institute compares pesticides to these criteria in the PestSmart app I mentioned.
So apologies to Dr. Geiger and CSF for my misunderstanding, and thanks for the polite redirect. My notes, and last week's blog post have been corrected. To see the LEED IPM credit language for IPM in Existing buildings, click here.
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