Considered working as a Field Technician? This interview will take you through the ups and downs you can expect in the position, what it takes to land the job, what you can expect to earn and more.
I worked for two and a half years as a field technician for a community-funded mosquito abatement district. I think I did well in the position because I was strong, I loved the outdoors and I was willing to learn.
I am a white woman, and though race was never an issue, gender definitely was. The small community where I worked had some old-school ideas about what kind of work women should do, and hard, outdoor labor with potentially toxic chemicals wasn’t on their list of acceptable employment. It took some time to prove to my fellow employees, as well as the land-owners I had to work with, that I was capable and qualified. It did help that the director of the program was also a woman, though she had only just been appointed a few months before I was hired, and she faced a lot of discrimination herself.
With my fellow employees, what worked best was simply to show up and do the work properly and safely. When they realized that I could keep up with them and never asked for special consideration because of my gender, they began to accept me.
The land owners were another problem. I often had to cross their property while inspecting wet lands and sometimes had to treat bodies of water that they owned. I often found that I received the most respect and cooperation from them simply by bringing a male employee along with me. If they were distrustful of a woman, hearing that the man who was with me had the same opinions and offered the same information often put them at ease.
Mosquito abatement, simply stated, is killing mosquitoes near populated areas so that they will not spread disease to animals or humans. It includes the field-work of testing water samples for larva, draining standing water and spraying insecticides. It also includes vehicle maintenance, lab work, careful record keeping and taking certification classes.
One common misconception about mosquito abatement is that it only entails the use of toxic chemicals. Actually there are many different ways to eliminate mosquitoes, and spraying is really the last line of defense. Prevention is much more important and includes finding ways to get rid of stagnant, standing water as well as educating the public. Most people don’t know that it only takes a few inches of standing water to hatch out a batch of mosquitoes and that most of them breed in neglected backyard buckets and wading pools rather than large bodies of water.
Another misconception is that all forms of mosquito control are toxic. Actually, during certain stages of larval development, environmentally friendly larvicidal oils can be sprayed on ponds and lakes. The oil works by smothering the developing mosquitoes but will not harm plants, livestock or wildlife that use the water.
Mosquito abatement is a very physically demanding job. It requires hours and hours of outdoor work in settings that can be hot, muddy, cold or dangerous. For someone who relishes being outdoors for most of their workday, it can be an ideal job. It also requires a fairly high understanding of math and science. Both are needed to pass the certification courses most states require of employees who use chemicals that could effect humans, livestock and wildlife. As I got older, the physical demands of the job started to outweigh the benefits.
On a scale of one to ten, I would have rated my job satisfaction at about six. I really did enjoy being outside so much of the day. I also felt that the job I was doing was an important one, and I was proud of that. I was helping hundreds, if not thousands, of people avoid dangerous mosquito-borne illnesses, and doing it in a way that had the least possible impact on the environment.
Better compensation would have made the job ultimately more appealing. For the hard, physical labor, uncomfortable working conditions and extra unpaid hours of study it required, the pay was rather low. My hourly wage of $15 was lower than other jobs that were just as physically demanding. As a government employee, however, I did qualify for health insurance and other benefits not usually available to lower-paid workers.
Wildlife biology is a related field that I would have found more interesting, though it would have required more schooling than I had. A career in wildlife biology would have combined my love of nature and the outdoors, while allowing me to more effectively pursue issues that I though were important, like wetlands conservation and pollution control.
I ended up working in mosquito abatement rather by accident. I had just finished earning a two-year college degree and needed a job. A friend knew the newly-appointed director of the program and got me an interview. I believe that she found it refreshing to have another woman apply for the position in her male-dominated field.
One lesson I learned the hard way was to be scrupulously honest with the land owners in our district. I often had to use their property to access the areas I needed to test or treat. Sometimes I actually had to treat their property for mosquito infestations. Early on, one property owner asked me what I was spraying on his pond. It was a virtually harmless larvicidal oil, but it was known to cause diarrhea in animals if they drank it. Worried that he would stop me from doing my job, I told him that it was totally inert. When his sheep did indeed get diarrhea, he showed up at our office in a panic, certain that they had been poisoned. If I had been completely forthcoming with him, he would not have been alarmed by the symptoms that appeared in his animals, and I would not have gotten in trouble with my boss.
Mosquito abatement is a hard, demanding job, and it’s not for everyone. It is, however, an important one and one that needs to be done well.
This is a true career story as told to AllEnviornmentalalJobs.com and is one of many interviews with environmental professionals, which among others include an environmental scientist and an asbestos estimator .
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