Pest Public Health Hazard

Let’s take a quick look at some of the main ones:

Salmonella, Dysentery & Gastroenteritis

These illnesses can be caused by cockroaches contaminating your food and work surfaces if your food is not stored safely. The problem can be exacerbated if flies are allowed to land on food and spread the germs further. All three of these illnesses can become serious if not dealt with quickly and they lead to; vomiting, diarrhoea, and severe stomach cramps. Rats or mice contaminating your food can cause these problems as well.

Hantavirus

This is pretty rare and is caused when humans come into contact with mouse or rat urine, droppings or saliva.
Symptoms of Hantavirus are fever, haemorrhage and in a worse-case scenario, renal failure.

Weil’s Disease

This can be caused if rat or mouse urine contaminates water. It enters the body through eyes, mouth, nose, ears or cuts in the skin. Once again, this is rare and it is more likely to happen in farming or agricultural environments. Symptoms are similar to flu but it can then escalate into something far more serious and damaging such as meningitis or liver damage.

Pneumonia, E- Coli and Listeria

Water that is contaminated by bird droppings can potentially cause e-coli and listeria. If bird droppings are allowed to accumulate and dry it can cause a dust that can bring about respiratory infections and problems such as pneumonia.

Thankfully, all of the above are quite rare and with appropriate hygiene standards they can be avoided completely. However, the severity of these illnesses illustrates the need to act quickly in the event of a pest infestation. It can be dangerous to let pest problems escalate so if you need any advice or a free no obligation survey in dealing with a pest control problem and how to avoid issues in the future, please contact us via phone or email and we would be happy to help.

Shield Pest Control supports good practice and has therefore made significant investment in employee development as well as technology.

Our company has developed an advanced electronic reporting management system. This offers managing agents real time online access to reports including images taken on site. Our field operatives are all issued with handheld PDAs to upload all essential visit and site data, including status reports and action undertaken.