If there is anything that makes me cringe and shake my head in disbelief, it’s seeing school and community officials (or parents!) sprinkling toxic fire ant killer on lawns, playgrounds and other recreational areas.
Seriously?
Why would you EVER sprinkle poison where children run and play, kicking up pesticide-laden dust to breathe, track into the house, get on their skin and otherwise absorb into their growing bodies? You don’t necessarily have to eat a chemical to experience significant and negative biological exposure. Toxic pesticide powder and granules have no business being sprinkled anywhere near areas where children will be playing! Even adults would be well advised to steer clear.
Unfortunately, our modern society seems obsessed with convenience and quick fixes, rarely taking the time to stop and think about the long term consequences of a given action or activity.
If the stuff is sold at Home Depot or used on school playgrounds, it must be safe, right?
Wrong.
Let’s take a look at the active ingredient of the most popular fire ant killer brands on the market: Hydramethylnon.
Conveniently, the other 99% of the ingredients are unlabeled for these products.
Hydramethylnon is an organic compound commonly used as an insecticide for cockroaches and ants. It is in many popular brands of fire ant killer including Amdro, Combat, Blatex, Cyaforce, Cyclon, Faslane, Grant’s, Impact, Matox, Maxforce, Pyramdron, Siege, and Wipeout.
Hydramethylnon Dangers
According to the National Pesticide Information Center, the EPA has classified hydramethylnon as a possible (group C) human carcinogen due to the development of tumors of the uterus, adrenals, and lungs in rats. This classification means that, although hydramethylnon has been shown to cause cancer in one strain or sex of a laboratory animal, there is inadequate or no evidence that it may cause cancer in humans.
Besides the development of cancerous tumors, here are some of the negative reproductive effects when rats were exposed to hydramethylnon which is commonly found as the active ingredient in commercial fire ant killer:
- Male rats dosed with 200 and 400 ppm hydramethylnon over the course of two generations were less inclined to mate, and evidence of testicular degeneration occurred at all but the lowest dose. Hydramethylnon primarily affects the testes. Rats exposed to high levels of hydramethylnon may have prostate atrophy, testicular degeneration, and germ cell damage. Exposures of this magnitude may also result in small, soft testes of reduced weight.
- Fewer females became pregnant with implantation rates reduced.
The Fluoride Action Network Pesticide Project lists hydramethylnon as a possible human carcinogen and endocrine disruptor with the potential to be an environmental contributor to the development of cancer.
Organs affected include:
- Kidney
- Blood
- Bone
- Lungs
- Adrenals
- Testicles
- Thymus Glank
- Uterus
Opt-out of Pesticide-Based Red Ant Bait
While the EPA, local school administrators, and your local hardware store seem to think this stuff is harmless, as a mother attempting to raise healthy children who hope to have grandchildren one day, I will opt out, thank you very much.
Natural Fire Ant Killer That Works!
What is even more shocking than the liberal and mindless use of insecticides for fire ant eradication purposes is that these critters are so easy and cheap to control naturally!
And, when I say cheap, I mean it. How does free sound to you?
Here’s how I have controlled fire ants for the over two decades I’ve lived on our property in Central Florida, a place notorious for intractable fire ant problems.
I simply heat up a tea kettle full of boiling water and slowly pour it down the hole in the fire ant mound. That’s it! You don’t even need ant bait!
Not only will you kill the queen (she can’t get away quick enough from the boiling water coursing through the mound), but you pretty much kill every single ant in the mound as well.
Sometimes you will need a repeat treatment within a day or two, but usually, a single tea kettle full of boiling water will do the trick to eliminate even a large, thriving mound of fire ants.
The key is to make sure the ants on and around the mound are completely relaxed and undisturbed before you start pouring in the boiling water. If they are upset or anxious in any way, the queen will be long gone by the time you start the treatment.
Walking up slowly and quietly to the mound is the way to go. Don’t do this after your kids have been playing in the yard for a while, as the ants will already be quite distressed from the commotion.
Early morning works very well for this natural fire ant treatment in my experience.
Below is a video I filmed of me getting rid of a fire ant mound right near our driveway. Take a look and see if this method of fire ant removal might work for you too. It’s certainly worth a shot.
For those of you who may ask why I don’t use diatomaceous earth (source), the reason is simple. DE doesn’t work very well for fire ants in my experience.
You will feel good knowing that your children run and play in a yard around your home that is completely chemical free with nothing that can harm them … only help their immunity with exposure to good, “clean”, probiotic-filled dirt untainted by health disrupting pesticides.
More Information on Controlling Pests
Natural Carpenter Ants Removal
Steps to Remove a Tick Safely and Easily
Nontoxic Pest Control Ideas that Work
Bed Bug Removal Techniques
Fast and Effective Fly Repellent
Attracting and Using Ladybugs for Garden Pest Control
How to Resolve a Flea Infestation Naturally
Quick and Easy Homemade Fly Trap
Spider Repellent Guaranteed to Work
Fast Acting Mosquito Bite Remedy That’s Probably Already in Your Kitchen
The hot water works – boiling anything to death WILL kill it! But it also kills any grass, plants, & bushes that it touches – including the roots, so they won’t grow back.
Your hot water is bogus. There are no home remedies that will eliminate fire ants. Our environmental control board removed the only thing that would kill the ants. Some type of chemical is used to control pest. Forget the home remedies, you are wasting your time. I have tried many, like grits,baking soda and vinegar, hot water,boric acid bait. Still looking for a solution that will kill them all. Tried store bought products, the ants just move. If you do not like pesticides, then learn to live with the ants. Someday they will take over your property. Thanks to our dumb environmentalist
The boiling water works very well! Yes, sometimes the remaining few surviving ants move to a new pile nearby, but you just douse them again. Two or at most three times does the trick for us. Once you get the queen, it’s all over for that mound. We have no problems at all using this approach on our 2 acre property.
We have half an acre and I am really trying to be careful about this but we have a very large amount of ant hills. MY dad is highly allergic and we have easily more than a hundred mounds in the yard. Some are clustered in the same area and others are spread out throughout the yard. Any ideas on how to take care of this. 200 pots of water doesn’t seem like it will be effective or capable of doing. Help please.
I recently read that everyone should drain their hot water tank annually for better tank up keep. Their is a spot on it at it’s base if one adds in a garden house that can take the heat – may be rubbers they can do the entire back yard and front with it , and make their tank last longer as a result.
I’ve given this tip a try and it’s worked on a few mounds. Trouble is it’s almost impossible to treat a large piece of acreage with this method where we probably have at least 50 mounds. And this method does kill whatever plants are growing in the treated spot including the root system deep down. I have a little 14 month old that I’m desperate to let run outside in the yard and play in the dirt, but it’s just too dangerous.
I would hate to use poison. I wish there was an alternative to treat large areas.
Will my grass die as well?
I was doing this and they just came up with a new mound a few feet away. Then I found out they have massive underground network and the mound you see is just one of the doorways. If you destroy one, they just open up another from the same network, so you are actually accomplishing very little. The granules you pour on the mound are taken down into the network and do far more severe damage to the colony, hopefully completely destroying it. That will never happen using boiling water. All you are doing with boiling water is removing a symptom while the problem continues to thrive.
Yes, you have to treat the second mound … but each successive mound is smaller and after a couple of treatments, they are gone.
I live in California, Red & Fire Ants excavate large labyrinths of pathways and chambers underneath the earth’s surface. The depth of these complicated colonies can vary widely from species to species.
Ants can build a nest of up to 3 meters deep each year,
When I found a Red Ant nest near our pond. I went and boiled 3 large pots of water. We took the pots outside,Pour it threw and over the ant hill.. Omg the Ants went crazy and now where crawling up my legs..
We ran. Came back with shovels and picks to the ground. While using poison, till we got them!
We use poisons after that..I grow Organic, and do Not want poisons on my property. But there are times when I think its necessary ,
Btw if you notice, Sometimes a year or longer there will be another ant hill in the same place.
That is Because the boiling water does Not go deep enough.
I believe I read here, to use Borax , and sugar and the Ants will die!..No they won’t.
Ants of today are not the ants when I was a kid.
There interbred now, and tough.
The instructions given work very well, the trick is as the author noted using (in her case a tea kettle) a continer of boiling water that can be poured onto the mound in a confined stream in one spot preferably near the center of the mound. Sloshing a stock pot full of boiling water does little good as it collapses the entire mound and prevents the hot water from penetrating lower into the ant hill.. We have used this method for many years before this blog was written. Found this blog while looking for a less time consuming organic and safe method.
Also the domestic red ants we had before the fire ant invasion are completely different in many ways. The method to eradicate one is entirely different that the other, if you are going to use a natural remedy.
I alternate between boiling water and then grits a few days later (just sprinkle on heavy early on a dry day). Florida ants are tough little beast!
Gosh I wish this worked for me!
I live on the edge of the desert in AZ and my ants are voracious! I have tried digging them, dumped boiling water (somtimes with neem & other essential oils) down their holes dozens of times. I’ve tried nematodes, and every natural remedy i’ve heard of and nothing makes a dent..