[3] The spongy moth is a very harmful pest for plants and affects forest, shade, and orchard trees across North America and parts of Europe.

Using disparlure as a pest management tool has been shown to be effective to reduce damage to forests.

[4] This pheromone can usually be applied to trap, catch and disrupt spongy moth mating in order to address the economic and environmental impacts caused by the expanding range of infestation.

They are either using chiral pools, which are costly and time consuming, or asymmetric epoxidation, which is quick, easy, and cheap.

[1] One such method involved four steps beginning with the formation of a cis-vinyl epoxide by reacting undecanyl aldehydes with (Z)-(γ-chloroallyl)diisopinocampheylborane.