Find a Less-Toxic Pest Control Company

April showers bring May...bugs. While homemade remedies-such as sprinkling crushed mint leaves and cloves on your kitchen counters to deter ants-may work in a pinchfull-blown infestations call for professional backup.

That's where Beyond Pesticides comes in. The national grassroots coalition group has informally vetted 225 pest-management companies that use one or more practices that it categorizes as "non-toxic" or "least-toxic." Beyond Pesticides even includes a list of subjects you should raise with a potential service provider, such as background information about any pesticides that the company is proposing to use, as well as state certifications of personnel applying the pesticides. You can also browse a listing of commonly used toxic pesticides that are also hazardous to human health, so you know what you're up against, or, more important, which ones to avoid like the plague.

Finding a less-toxic provider on the non-profit's Web site is easy: You can search by service category (such as landscape, residential, commercial, or school), or by state. ::Beyond Pesticides

Difficulty level: Easy