Don’t stop short environmental whackos. Cockroaches, fleas, flies and white grubs need your support in trying to ban neonicotinoids.

Be successful and cockroaches will rejoice with a cacophony like you’ve never heard. The hordes of 4,000 cockroach species all grating their six hairy legs together in unison in appreciation would be astonishing. Silenced forever would be the clicking of the wings of dying roaches trying to right themselves. They’ll be accompanied by equally massive multitudes of buzzing and sucking flies and fleas.

A “consumer watchdog” outfit with a cutesy moniker — SumOfUs.org — tried to extort vendors at the Independent Garden Centers Show in Chicago to stop using neonicotinoids to save honeybees.

Ads were purchased on 55 buses in the Chicago metropolitan area to “build awareness” of their foolish effort.

Forget the cute honeybee on a bus. Put a cockroach on the coaches, right below old ladies and children peering out windows at people looking disgustingly at save-the-cockroach photos.

For several years I wrote articles for a Southern California company publication that supplied products to commercial pest control operators who keep homes and businesses free of pest, including restaurants presumably patronized by environmental radicals.

Neonicotinoids are used to control cockroaches. They are not the only way to control roaches, but an important, effective one.

I have written articles about agricultural pest control for decades, but nothing in agriculture compares to what commercial pest control operators relayed about how absolutely nauseating it is to encounter restaurant cockroach infestations.

Flipping on the light in a dark restaurant, and the floors come alive with filthy roaches scurrying to hide, they say. Food not stored properly and water represent the perfect storm for a raging cockroach infestation.

PCOs say the best defense against cockroaches is cleanliness. They also say it is virtually impossible to achieve perfect sanitation in four-star restaurants or dives.

Therefore, ban neonicotinoids and stop the cockroach scampering. Free the roaches to spread disease and allergens. Cockroach allergens are the excrement and debris from decomposing cockroach bodies that become airborne. Sensitivity to this dust triggers asthma.

They also contribute to global warming. Studies have shown that cockroaches break wind on the average of every 15 minutes. Even after death they continue to release methane for up to 18 hours. In a global scale, insect flatulence is estimated to account for 20 percent of all methane emissions.

There would apparently be no problem with these pesticide-banning marauders sharing the dining table with roaches, since they are bent on pesticide banning. However, I wonder how their environmental radicalism would be fare by seeing a half cockroach in the remaining half of an organic sandwich they were eating.

I am not minimizing the importance of maintaining honey bee health against what is a multitude of factors for the serious threat to bees. Pesticides may impact bee health, but banning a pesticide is not the answer. I vote for enhanced product stewardship rather than sharing my dinner with roaches.

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