Are you sick of cockroaches’ progeny that is living in your home and continuously keep on raving fearlessly in front of you? Do they also have a special affinity for the corner of your home that is so important to you i.e Kitchen? Then you would have been facing a tough time in protecting your food. Opposite to their physique, cockroaches are tough insects and are difficult to kill. It was the only living creature that escaped from the devastation of world war 2 without even having a minor injury. So now the question is how can we protect our food from cockroaches?
How are cockroaches dangerous?
Cockroaches are beneficial to the environment because they play an active role in decaying organic matter. But they do more damage than doing good. Roache spread unpleasant odors and are found in dirty habitats such as waste, deposits, sewerage, etc. Knowledge of cockroaches’ environment itself makes it clear that they are loaded with harmful germs.
Allergens in feces, saliva, and body parts of roaches may turn on allergy and asthma. Roaches are known to move 33 kinds of bacteria e.g E.coli and Salmonella, etc. Cockroaches carry six types of parasitic worms and more than seven kinds of other pathogens. According to the WHO, these microbes, in turn, produce diarrhea, dysentery, cholera, leprosy, plague, typhoid, fever, and viral diseases such as poliomyelitis.
How to prevent bacteria from spoiling food?
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Store food properly:
Your little cautiousness about storing food properly can discourage roaches and break their hopes for a happy meal. Always avoid to leave food out here and there in the kitchen, or anywhere at home. Keep your food stored in airtight containers. Try to get thick plastic bags or glass containers for storing your stuff, because roaches can easily ingest thin cardboard boxes and plastic bags as appetizers before getting their hands on the actual meal.
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Regularly inspect your cupboards:
Cockroaches infestation begins from kitchen. Cockroaches feel safe in dark and warm kitchen cabinets, and love to settle inside its premises. Along with getting shelter in cupboard, roaches will also help you by tasting your snacks. Thus, cleaning up your cupboards on regular basis will tremendously help you in your mission impossible against cockroaches. Cupboard may be a difficult area to clean and may also contain some unnoticeable food droppings that might be attracting roaches. By regular inspection of cupboards you will give less chances to roaches for survival and they will have no option other than to run.
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Clean your kitchen floor:
Your kitchen may be full of all the chunks of food snacks that have been accumulating throughout the day. Cleaning your area on a regular basis will lower chances of the arthropod survival. Disinfecting your kitchen slabs and floors daily will further help you to get rid from infestation of roaches as well. Sweeping floor especially at night when you have finished all kitchen activities will help you in wiping out roaches.
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Empty your trash bin:
Purifying your cupboards but dumping the trash in trash bin will not yield perfect results. Trash bin too have remnants of food that will provide roaches an opportunity to linger on. Make sure that you have a properly sealed basket and move out your trash on a daily basis.
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Scrutinize:
On bringing something new to your home do consider to check it. Scrutinizing your grocery products or checking school bags of your children can vanish the problem before it is created. If you are buying used items then firstly ensure their hygiene.
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Seal Broken Pipes:
Roaches naturally inhibit sewerage. Any cracks in sewage pipes or holes in your washroom will give them their desirable opportunity. In addition, any cracks in your kitchen or your home will give an amazing chance to the insect for climbing in. Even if roaches have no point of entry from your pipes then leaking faucets will appeal roaches because of their moisture. Repairing your pipes will not only save water reserves it will also take back friendly environment from roaches.
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Clean your kitchen sink:
You can be really tired after your daily chores and in a hurry to get into your bed. But dirty dishes in the kitchen sink loaded with food particles will give roaches immense pleasure so that they can enjoy their party the whole night while you are comfortable sleeping. By the next day you wake up, plates would have caught the infestation from roaches. So, 2-3 minutes spending to wipe out your dishes in the dishwasher or manually will give you relief from hundreds of diseases due to roach infestation.
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Control Measures:
Environmental management steps combined with chemical insecticides will bring out the desired results. You can apply these chemical formulations along with all hygienic precautions. These cockroach killers can be in any form, they can be in the form of residual sprays, dust, aerosols, smokes, baits and traps, and repellents.
These products can work differently. They can be:
- Insecticides that are concentrated enough to kill roaches.
- Can be a bait that can attract roaches and draw them out from their bills OR
- A growth regulator that interferes with the lifecycle of cockroaches and makes them infertile.
Some of these products are:
- GELS:
Roach killing gels are baits and poisonous substances that play the role of seren sirens for attracting roaches. Gels are commonly nonrepellant in nature and usually made from fipronil or indoxacarb. Most of the time gels are effective for a broad range of roach species, but a particular bait doesn’t attract all roach types and may be ineffective for other species.
When the roach takes in the mistaken food, then bait converts itself into an insecticide molecule which reacts with specific enzymes of roaches. On getting food, cockroaches take it for other roaches. Thus we can get a chain of roaches that consumes the bait and gets killed instantly.
Gels can be applied on cracks or near roach settlements. Roaches are attracted to places where they shed their skin and feces. Thus that can be a perfect place to apply baits.
- TRAPS:
Traps are little boxes that have bait in the middle and have several entry points for roaches to enter. The sweet smell of bait will force roaches to enter inbox and consume that bait as food.
This is a very convenient method. You can easily place a moderate number of boxes throughout your kitchen. They can kill roaches of any size. Children and pets have less access to the poisonous baits placed inside boxes thus it is much safer to use. Traps remain active for 2 weeks for three months. During this time period, cockroaches will enter and take this food to their other roach buddies. Therefore, this small box can kill large numbers of roaches.
- HOUSES:
Like toy houses, roach killing houses are cardboard boxes, who have their walls coated with tanglefoot.
They attract roaches with their sweet smell. This smell not only attracts roaches but also enchants your house with a fresh smell.
Insects crawl inside the house and get stuck with glue on the walls. This is a very environmentally friendly method. As there are no baits or pesticides involved in equipment. If your house is not successful in attracting pests then you must change its location, to make it work more efficiently. When the walls of the house are overloaded with the roach bodies, you can trash it and replace it with a new one. Isn’t that amazing?
- CHALKS:
While working on roach infestation with chalk you need to be careful. It contains toxic agents, that can be harmful to pets. Chalks are not recommended to use around food. Regarding the working efficiency of chalks, there is no second opinion about it. Mark of roach killing chalks resembles the mark of common board chalk but has dangerous ingredients.
It can be applied on areas near roach infestations such as cracks on pipes or cupboards. Chalks are banned in some regions of the world but chalk is an effective option. They can be used with caution.
- SPRAYS:
This is the most common method to kill roaches. The most common ingredient of roach killer sprays is pyrethrins that are found in chrysanthemum flowers. Imiprothrin and deltamethrin are the two most used pyrethrins in bug sprays.
When poor roaches come in contact with other spray chemicals then the chemical gets absorbed or ingested into the bodies of roaches. They are knocked down by an effect known as the knockdown effect. Soon they are unable to see anything and their body parts become paralyzed. Which leads to the death of the organism.
For a larger infestation, consider using a cockroach fogger. You can easily find it on Amazon and other online retailers.
If you have tried all remedies but are still unable to get rid of the infestation, then it is time that cockroaches population is exploded to such a large extent and can’t be controlled. In this case, you need to get professional help is the best option.
