House Flies Lab Report Essay

Summary
Too many house-flies are coming into people’s homes during the summer when they have their doors and windows open. This is a problem for the people living in these homes as house-flies carry diseases that they transmit onto food around the home. We need to come up with a solution that decreases the number of house-flies coming into the home while allowing people to keep their doors open. After considering numerous ideas I concluded that the best way to do this is via a eugenol based fly spray. Due to tests done by Dr Sinthusiri we have evidence that suggests house-flies will move away from areas that have eugenol sprayed into them. To make it non-harmful and easy to install, the eugenol will be dispersed in automatic canisters set to
a one-hour timer. Dr Dean Antic’s method for the extraction of eugenol from cloves demonstrates that eugenol extraction could take place cheaply and on an industrial scale. As eugenol is already effective against other species of fly such as the mosquito, it is likely to be successful in this case.

Introduction
There are too many flies coming into homes during summer. This is a problem for home owners as flies carry easily communicable diseases such as; Typhoid, leprosy, anthrax and tuberculosis . The flies are attracted to homes by rotting meat, bad smells, damp areas and other similar reasons. One of these is flies are attracted to households by the heat that houses radiate. While closing all doors would significantly reduce fly numbers in the house it is an impractical solution to this problem. People want to leave their doors open during the summer resulting in flies buzzing in. We need to develop a solution to reduce fly numbers entering the house.
Technical Information
DEFINE SUCCESS
• Must be affordable for households to implement
• Easy to install
• Can be sustained over a long period of time
• Environmentally friendly
• Allows doors and windows to stay open throughout the day
• Does not cause any secondary problems
• Reduces the number of house-flies indoors
Ultimately the goal is to significantly reduce the number of house-flies inside. However, the solution needs to be practical for most households. Because of this, it needs to be easy to install and easily affordable. While the intention is to stop flies coming into the house, we do not want to harm any other animals, Therefore, the solution must be environmentally friendly and unlikely to cause secondary problems.
FIND SOLUTIONS
By use of a Dunker Diagram I determined some possible solutions. Of these solutions three stood out. Insect control systems, toxic sprays and fly screens. While researching into these three solution I discovered that they are not quite synchronised with my definition of success. However, the problem with toxic sprays had a solution. Toxic sprays had negative secondary problems with the toxicity of sprays. The use of eugenol based repellents was a solution to this problem. This is already currently effectively used in mosquito repellents . A test done by Dr Jirisuda Sinthusiri demonstrated that eugenol is also effective against the house-fly.
TEST
In her research Dr Sinthusiri determined that flies have a negative chemotaxis towards eugenol.
To conduct this experiment Dr Sinthusiri made with two sections separated by a wooden partition with a hole in the centre. 100 house-flies were released into section B and then sprayed with a crude extract of Tulsi leaves . The movement of flies was recorded every hour for 3 hours. The experiment was repeated for 10 days in June 2008 . The results can be seen in Table 1. This shows that the number of flies did decrease with the introduction of the Tulsi leaf spray. The decrease in the Number of House-flies in section B is shown on Figure 1. The experiment was then done with pure eugenol. And there is a significant increase in the number of flies leaving after the first hour as shown on Table 2. This results in a much steeper gradient in Figure 2 illustrating the effectiveness of eugenol. While pure eugenol is likely not to be the final product, other substances such as lavender oil can be enriched with it causing an effective deterrent to flies. Eugenol is derived from Syzygium aromaticum which is commonly known as Clove . The process of extracting eugenol from cloves is a relatively simple process that could be done on an industrial scale as shown in Dr Antic’s method . Typically, eugenol sprays are made up of 60% eugenol. While there are potential negative side effects if large quantities are ingested, the amount of eugenol required is unlikely to be consumed. However, as a safety precaution, I suggest putting it in timed canisters that release a spray of 4.90 g per hour . This will mean that the amount of eugenol will never reach toxic
levels.

Conclusion
Eugenol is an effective way of decreasing the number of House-flies inside the house while still allowing the doors to stay open. While there are methods that may result in a greater success rate they do not meet my definition of success. An example of this was the chemical fly spray that has negative secondary problems. Eugenol as a fly deterrent is a solution that is cheap and easy to manufacture on an industrial scale as shown by Dr Antic’s method of extracting eugenol from cloves. If it was distributed in a timer release can, as suggested, this would make it easy to install in households and it would significantly decrease the chances of secondary problems. Since it is a naturally occurring chemical, eugenol will not negatively impact the environment in any way. Finally, due to the evidence collected through Dr Sinthusiri research we can conclude that a eugenol based spray will decrease the number of house-flies indoors while the doors are open.