Have you ever found yourself needing to verify that you or any of your employees are fully licensed? Or perhaps you are in need of information on a product’s registration status? The Illinois Department of Agriculture’s website can now assist with your needs thanks to a powerful yet easy to use search feature offered by USAPlants. This fully functional search engine is simple to use and needs no login or account to be accessed.

Using the Licensed Pesticide Applicator / Operator Search, you can search for individuals by their last name to learn their license status. Businesses can search by their company name to pull up their account and view the status of their employees’ licenses.

If you are a private applicator, rest assured that your full, private, home address is not accessible to the public. However, business addresses for commercial applicators are shared information.  

Note that clicking on a name in the search results will auto populate a new browser tab. If you search for additional names, you’ll need to return to the original tab.

With the Pesticide Product search, you can search by active ingredient or a product’s trade name. Filters can be applied to narrow the results based on company name or use classification. We’ve been asked in the past for a list of Restricted Use Pesticides. You can search for that. There appears to be 295 records for those. The company name list is super long, and it’s not arranged alphabetically. But if you are looking for a specific name, it could be helpful to simply search the page for the name using Ctrl+F on your keyboard. Happy hunting!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michelle Wiesbrook provides subject matter expertise and training in pesticide safety with an emphasis on horticultural weed science. She serves as the Illinois Pesticide Review newsletter editor, collecting and organizing material; and co-coordinates social media information for the PSEP program and ensures its timely publication. Her other interests include herbicide injury and invasive species.