This is a book about the insects and fungi that may appear in building timbers if unnoticed or unavoidable maintenance problems allow them to remain damp. There are two options if a problem is found. The building owner or occupier may require the organism to be rapidly exterminated and a document issued which seems to reassure that it will not come back. In this case they must accept generally expensive and frequently destructive chemical treatments using more or less noxious pesticides. Unfortunately each decade's panacea has usually become the next decade's poison and a pesticide...