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May 2011

The new monthly Director's Update from the Penn State Pesticide Education Program will highlight the happenings of our program such as new and revised publications, regulatory updates, program activities, new PowerPoints, new web pages, new videos, etc.

You’re Invited To Be a Guest Blogger

If you have a topic of interest related to pest management, pesticides, or pesticide safety, you can be a “Guest Blogger”. The blog is a good opportunity promote an upcoming major event, highlight a successful event that has been held, share a new programming idea, or focus on a pest management/pesticide safety issue. To see our blog: go to blog.pested.psu.edu.

Expanding Our Non-Traditional Outreach – A special thanks to Master Gardeners for their support

A HUGE thank you to Master Gardener Coordinators and their volunteers for all of the help and support they continue to provide to spread our pesticide safety message. Not only has the success of many of our outreach events depended upon their support, but through their efforts the number of outreach programs has expanded dramatically in the past year. Now, after partnering with Master Gardeners and Extension Educators for a successful Poison Prevention Week (which was done for the entire month of March), we are gearing up with them for a busy summer of consumer outreach activities. Outreach events have been held in a Lowe's parking lot, Lebanon County Farm Safety Day camp, and LEAF Arboretum in Erie, and Household Hazardous Waste collections sites in Philadelphia, just to name a few. Our office awarded mini-grants to provide funding for Master Gardener programs to help support these efforts. Tune into our YouTube channel to check out outreach tools available to support consumer and youth pesticide safety education at www.youtube.com/psupested.

Airblast Sprayer Calibration Workshops Planned

Airblast sprayer calibration workshops are being planned for several locations the week of June 20, 2011. We are partnering with an Extension Educator from the University of New Hampshire, who helped organize a similar workshop for a regional meeting in NH that we attended last fall. Eric Oesterling and Phil Pitzer have been working to plan three field demonstrations of the airblast calibration equipment:

  • June 20th at the Biglerville Research Center, 
  • June 22nd at a twilight meeting in Wexford, and
  • June 24th at the Erie Research Center.

We will be video-taping these workshops, and the process of calibrating airblast sprayers so that video clips can be inserted into a PowerPoint presentation for educators to use during the 2012 winter meeting season. Our future goal is to have the calibration equipment available to assist stakeholders with calibration of their airblast sprayers.

Got Thoughts For Next Winter Meeting Season?

We have begun planning some of next year's educational programs for the winter meeting season. Initial topics include: Airblast Sprayer Calibration, Flow Rate Controllers, Nozzle Selection Fate of Pesticides, Surfactants in the Environment, and Spill Management. Our goal is to have these ready by late summer. Possible give-aways for next winter meeting season include: A cutter for removing inside cap from pesticide container, pesticide storage signs, laminated calibration cards, laminated emergency contact cards, and recordkeeping manuals. Let us know if there are other topics you would like to see developed for next meeting season.

Contact Information

We want to hear from you, so please contact us with your ideas, questions, thoughts, etc.

Kerry Richards, Director: kmh14@psu.edu
Sharon Gripp, Information Specialist: sgripp@psu.edu>

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