How long to stay out, and who to tell first

Victoria: until the pesticide is dry

Victoria's health service gives the waiting its own shape. Its advice to a household is to be out of the house while the product is being mixed and applied, and to stay out until it is dry. It puts the usual figure at four to six hours, and adds that the operator will give the time the treatment at hand needs, since the right answer depends on what was used.

The same page treats pets as part of the household: they are to be moved out during the treatment, and kept out for the same stretch, ending when the surface is dry.

Another page of the same department, on bedbug treatment, advises reading the pesticide label before use, because some pesticides cannot be applied to mattresses, and says the room should be well aired at the end of the treatment, with the re-entry periods kept to.

Western Australia: ask the question, in their words

WA Health's consumer page for choosing a pest management business puts the waiting into the customer's own hands. Its closing instruction to a customer is to confirm what the recommended waiting or re-entry time is, for people and pets, which makes it a question to ask rather than a number to assume.

The same page carries the one exception to waiting, and it is not a timing rule at all: if a person feels unwell or thinks they were exposed to a pesticide, its advice is to seek medical help. The complaint guide on this site follows that order, health first.

New South Wales: the neighbours, and the unit block

New South Wales splits the question of telling people from the question of going back in. The EPA notes that a label or an APVMA permit can require residents, neighbours or other members of the public to be told before or while the pesticide is applied, so the label can carry a duty the customer never sees.

Where the label is silent, the EPA still suggests a habit: a home owner telling immediate neighbours that work is coming, particularly where an odour may travel.

For a unit or apartment building, the duty stops being a habit. Under the Pesticides Regulation 2017, whoever organises the treatment of a unit block's common areas has to give residents at least five working days' notice.

The rule has edges worth knowing. It does not catch dual occupancies, duplexes or single homes, and where it does apply, the EPA's guidance is that the work cannot go ahead until the five working days' notice has been given.

The NSW Government's own page for strata committees states the same duty in a shorter form: "Residents must have at least five days' notice before any pesticide is used." Read with the EPA's wording, the five working days is the figure for the common areas of a unit block, and it is counted before the technician arrives, not before the residents smell anything.

One more notice sits beside the unit-block rule, and it applies to a building next door rather than the reader's own. Under the same regulation, a fumigator or a pest management technician has to make sure a pesticide use notice is given at least five working days ahead of a pesticide being sprayed outdoors, or injected into the ground outdoors, within 20 metres of a sensitive place, addressed to whoever has the care, control or management of that place.

The EPA's own page on that notice is clear about one exclusion, and it is worth stating exactly: there is no requirement to give the notice if the sensitive place is a hospital. A hospital is not owed this notice under the rule; the other places the rule catches are, through the person who manages them, and the EPA's page, listed at the foot of this one, names them.

One limit on all of this is written into the regulation itself: a notice given under it is for information, and it gives residents no additional rights about whether the pesticide may be used.