No one wants to live in a home filled with pests. You’ll find yourself constantly worrying about your family’s health.
The following are some of the most common house pests:
• Termites
• Ticks
• Ants
• Cockroaches
• Fleas and flies
• Bed bugs
• Beetles (grain and fabric)
• Rats
Factors that lead to pest infestations are weather and seasonal changes, loss of habitat, or food and/or water shortages. Just like people, pests need to meet their basic needs: shelter, water, and food. When there’s a lack of food or water or the weather changes, pests will swarm to your home. For example, because of rainy or chilly days, roaches will seek shelter in cardboard boxes kept in the garage or attic.
Mice and other rodents, cockroaches, flies, and mosquitoes leave droppings and dust marks in your home. These droppings, body dust, and moisture often carry allergens and infectious elements that endanger your health. To get rid of these pests effectively and ensure your family’s safety, you’ll need to avail of termite control services or other pest control services. Keep reading to learn how house pests can put your family’s health at risk.
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1. Pests Cause Allergies
Insect bites from mosquitoes, bed bugs, and other flying and crawling insects can cause stings, itchiness, redness, and other allergic reactions. These reactions may not have serious effects usually, but they may be fatal to some people. Other severe cases of allergies result in low blood pressure, asthma attacks, and breathing difficulty.
Asthma is commonly linked to allergies. Pests, such as rodents and roaches, leave droppings from skin and feces, contaminating the air indoors and out, triggering asthma.
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2. Pests Cause Vector-Borne Diseases
Vector-borne diseases are illnesses that occur because of a bite from infected arthropods or vectors, like ticks, mosquitoes, triatomine bugs, fleas, blackflies, and sandflies.
These diseases include:
Malaria
A disease that’s sometimes fatal, malaria is brought on by a parasite transmitted to people through the bites of infected mosquitoes. If you contract malaria, you’ll experience high fever and get shaking chills.
Chagas disease
Chagas disease causes swelling, fever, fatigue, rashes, body aches, swollen eyelids, headaches, and loss of appetite. If not treated immediately, you’ll have digestive and heart problems.
Like malaria, it’s caused by a parasite. Called Trypanosoma cruzi, this parasite is spread to people, as well as animals, by the ‘kissing bug’ or triatomine bug. These bugs are usually found in holes or wood cracks in old and unmaintained homes.
Lymphatic filariasis
A neglected tropical disease and also called elephantiasi, lymphatic filariasis occurs because of mosquitoes that transmit filarial parasites to people. As a result of this illness, the lymphatic system gets damaged, making it difficult for your body to fight infections. Some people who get the tropical disease don’t have any symptoms while others may have fever, inflammation, and swelling.
Yellow Fever
Yellow fever takes place when a virus is transmitted through mosquito bites. Its symptoms occur in three to six days and may include chills, fever, backache, headache, and sore muscles. Some people who have yellow fever might suffer from serious illness that can result in shock, bleeding, organ failure, or even death.
Onchocerciasis
Known as river blindness, it's spread through repeated bites of blackflies. It gets its name ‘river blindness’ from blackflies that are usually found close to rivers and streams. It causes infection that may lead to blindness or visual impairment. It can also trigger skin problems, such as rashes, itchiness, and nodules under the skin.
Dengue
Dengue is a viral infection that’s usually associated with sudden high fever, unbearable headaches, severe muscle and joint pain, vomiting, nausea, fatigue, and petechiae skin rashes. It can be severe with symptoms, like persistent vomiting, vomiting blood, severe abdominal pain, fatigue, and rapid breathing.
It occurs when you get bitten by an infected female mosquito. The mosquito gets infected when it gets blood from a person infected with a virus.
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3. Pests Cause Contamination
Pests transfer from one location to another, bringing with them some contaminants, viruses, and bacteria that may spoil your food. For instance, cockroaches can transmit bacteria and parasitic worms. When you eat food that’s contaminated by roaches, you may suffer from shigellosis, a diarrheal infection that comes with stomach pain and fever. Another health problem you may experience is Escherichia coli or E. coli, a type of bacteria that causes bloody diarrhea, cramps, and vomiting. Other symptoms of E. coli include seizures, fever, bleeding, and kidney failure.
Hence, it’s crucial to keep your place clean.
Wrapping Up
To safeguard your family’s health, you must eliminate pests right away. Keeping a neat home, disposing of garbage regularly, and using pest control services are effective methods that will drive away pests.
