How to Keep Your Home Healthy When You Have Roaches

Roaches can enter your home through cracks in the walls, pipes in your sewer, and even the grocery bags you bring home. Your home, unfortunately, is a nice, cozy and warm breeding ground and nesting site for roaches. In fact, they can stay active all year round in such cozy surroundings.

Roaches are associated with numerous health problems, and kids can particularly be susceptible. If you have a toddler or kids that walk barefoot on the floor, they can pick up the skin and droppings that roaches shed. This shed skin greatly impacts allergies. Asthma is also greatly complicated by cockroaches because their skin and droppings contain allergens which can cause somewhat severe allergic or asthmatic reactions in your child. In some cases, these reactions can be life-threatening.

What Attracts Roaches

It is well known that roaches carry disease. These insects are naturally attracted to grubby areas of your home like toilets and kitchen trash cans which can already be contaminated. When roaches walk across these surfaces, they then carry these germs to other parts of your home that your child will likely come into contact with.

A particularly disgusting feature of roaches is that they actually regurgitate while they eat, so if they’re eating on your kitchen counters, all of that vomit can infect your food preparation surfaces. You may not be able to see it, but it is there. For example, roaches carry the Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria. When humans are infected with it, they can have digestive illnesses and urinary tract infections.

Some cockroach species will even bite humans, leaving a skin wound that can easily become infected.

Just remember, cockroaches eat anything and everything, so be sure to always keep your kitchen clean. Wipe down food preparation surfaces before every meal prep and keep opened bags of food closed with clips or stored in airtight containers. If you leave an open bag, roaches will get in and leave their droppings in your food. Also keep floors clean, particularly if you have toddlers. Vacuum and mop often to remove shed skin and other roach debris.

If you’ve seen one roach, there are likely many more lurking inside your walls. Another sign to look for is feces or egg casings that cockroaches leave behind. If you see any of these signs, you likely have an infestation, so be sure to contact ABC Exterminating today. Hiring a professional like ABC Exterminating is a good call and an important one for keeping your kids healthy.