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Compounds More Toxic to Fleas than DDT¹

Laboratory tests were conducted with 620 insecticides to evaluate their effectiveness in dusts against the cat flea, Ctenocephalides felis (Bouché) and the oriental rat flea, Xenopsylla cheopis (Rothsch.). Recrystallized DDT was used as a standard of comparison. At a concentration of 0.5 per cent, 29 compounds were more effective than DDT, 24 were within the range of effectiveness of DDT, and 566 were less effective than DDT.

The outstanding toxicants were heptachlor, dieldrin (compound 497), aldrin (compound 118), and benzene hexachloride (95 per cent gamma isomer). Chlordane and parathion were more effective than DDT at concentrations of 0.5 and 0.05 per cent, and toxaphene and pyrethrum extract plus piperonyl butoxide at 0.5 per cent only. Methoxychlor and other analogs were about equal to DDT.

Thirty-three compounds were more toxic to cat fleas than to rat fleas, whereas only two, benzene hexachloride and pyrethrum extract plus piperonyl butoxide, were more toxic to rat fleas.

Dusts of 13 of the better toxicants showed no evidence of deterioration after 10 to 12 months of storage, and with 3 others the evidence was not conclusive.

¹ This work was conducted under funds allotted by the Department of Defense to the Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine.

² The author acknowledges the assistance of the following members of the Orlando, Fla., laboratory of the Bureau: W. V. King, under whose direction the study was made; Lyda Roberson, Julian Bornstein, and William S. Geber, who carried out most of the actual test work; and various members of the chemistry section of this laboratory who prepared the dusts.

³ Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine, Agricultural Research Administration, United States Department of Agriculture, Orlando, Florida.