As warmer weather approaches, pests like ants, rodents, and roaches start to move in. When choosing a pest control company, look for one that offers guaranteed services and has solid credentials.
Signs of rodent infestation include rice grain-sized droppings and gnawing on electrical wires. They also spread diseases such as leptospirosis, hantavirus, and salmonella. Contact Pest Control Van Nuys now!
Pests are more than an annoyance — they can contaminate food, cause structural damage, and carry dangerous germs like histoplasmosis and leptospirosis. The best way to deal with a pest infestation is through preventive pest control – putting in place systems to stop an insect problem before it starts. Prevention is typically less expensive than eradicating a full-blown infestation. Also, it helps businesses maintain their reputation by showing that they are concerned about their customers’ and employees’ cleanliness and health.
Prevention involves a combination of preventative strategies that include best practices for avoiding pest infestations in the first place and treatments to stop an infestation in its tracks. These preventative strategies can be as simple as storing food in sealed containers or removing trash regularly. They can involve modifying the environment to make it less favorable to pests, such as blocking entry points and managing waste effectively, or changing agricultural methods, such as crop rotation or using pest-resistant plant varieties. Preventive strategies may also involve the use of biological control agents such as ladybugs or lacewings to suppress pest populations, or nematodes to help with soil-dwelling pests.
While preventing pests from taking up residence is the primary goal, a good preventative program will always include a treatment component. This part of the process focuses on eliminating what is attracting the pests to the site and is usually done after a thorough inspection. It can include removing sources of moisture and food, cleaning surfaces to remove attractants or implementing pheromones to disrupt the pests’ behavior. It may also involve the targeted use of chemicals such as baits, granules or spraying.
Integrated Pest Management, or IPM, is a comprehensive approach that uses prevention, suppression and eradication treatments in tandem with a variety of other techniques to create an unfavorable environment for pests, including biological controls, environmental manipulation and cultural practices. It also includes monitoring the pests, analyzing their life cycles and habits, and determining the type of control needed per tolerance level. It may include the use of natural enemies, such as parasites and predators, or chemical control options based on the pest’s life cycle stage and population density.
Suppression
The goal of suppression is to control pests by eliminating them or reducing their numbers so that they no longer damage plants or crops. This can be accomplished using physical, chemical or biological methods. Physical methods include removing the pests’ food, water or shelter and blocking their access to those items. Chemical controls use poisonous substances to kill or repel pests. These substances may be sprays, powders, baits or granules. This is a very common method of pest control, but it can be harmful to human and animal health. The toxins in these chemicals can also harm other living organisms, soil, water and crops.
Biological controls involve the use of other organisms to control pests, such as predation, parasitism, herbivory and pathogens. This method usually requires an active human management role and is typically used in combination with other methods.
Many factors affect pest populations, including climate conditions, the availability of food and water, the availability of breeding sites, and the ability to find shelter from predators. The success of some natural enemies is also affected by a number of factors, such as the type of organisms they feed on, how fast or slow they reproduce, and their resistance to disease.
There are also some environmental features that restrict the movement of pests, such as mountains or bodies of water. In addition, the environment in which a pest is living can change its behavior and cause it to become more or less damaging.
Some pests live in buildings or other structures, such as factories and warehouses. These pests often have to compete for roosting and water supplies with other animals. They can also be affected by poor indoor air quality, which can trigger asthma and other respiratory problems in people.
Some pests are persistent and require ongoing control, such as cockroaches and mice. Others are sporadic and require only intermittent control, such as caterpillars and beetles. Some pests are more serious than others, and their presence in a building can affect the lives of its inhabitants, such as by making food unpalatable or causing illnesses.
Eradication
The goal of pest control is to reduce the damage caused by insects or diseases to an acceptable level. This can be accomplished through prevention, suppression, containment, or eradication. Prevention involves stopping a pest infestation before it occurs; suppression is reducing the number of pests to below the economic injury threshold; containment is keeping pest populations at bay; and eradication is eliminating a pest completely (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2005).
To eradicate a pest means to eliminate all its population in a given area or region. This is a very difficult task and requires considerable resources on a global scale. For example, the eradication of smallpox required the cooperation of 50 nations and took over 20 years to complete. The Guinea worm and polio eradication programs also require international efforts to eradicate the disease.
One of the reasons eradication is so challenging is that pests often disperse from one management unit to another. This can occur because of geographic barriers such as mountains and rivers, land bridges, or human migration. Dispersal can also be facilitated by the fact that many pest species are eusocial, meaning they live in large colonies and share the same genes.
For this reason, a molecular approach to defining eradication units can help control an invasive pest. For instance, by analyzing the genetic variation in a sample of individuals within an eradication unit, it is possible to distinguish between a failed eradication effort and a successful recolonization event. This can allow an eradication program to adjust its strategy in the face of failure and increase the chance of success in the future.
Another factor affecting eradication is the development of resistance to pesticides. This can happen when a pesticide is used repeatedly over a very wide geographic area, or when the same pesticide is used in different places without changing the spraying pattern or duration. Rotating different pesticides and using more than one type of spraying method may prevent the development of resistance.
Pest control is an important part of food production. It decreases yield loss and deterioration, reduces microorganism intrusion into food products, and controls contamination from residues. However, it is essential to remember that a pesticide is a chemical that must be handled properly and only by properly trained and supervised personnel. The UF/IFAS Basic Pesticide Training manual (SM-59) is a great resource for basic pesticide training for field personnel.
Integrated Pest Management
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an ecosystem-based approach to pest control that reduces the use of pesticides and maximizes beneficial organisms in urban, agricultural, and natural resource habitats. It utilizes knowledge about pest biology, life cycles and environmental requirements to prevent unacceptable levels of pest damage by using non-chemical methods first, and pesticides only when necessary and with a minimum risk to people and the environment.
IPM begins with monitoring and scouting to determine insect types, population levels, and damage. Then the IPM program develops a treatment strategy to keep pest populations below economic injury thresholds. The strategy may include structural maintenance, sanitation, biological, mechanical and chemical controls, or a combination of these strategies. IPM also emphasizes monitoring and evaluation, so that action is taken only when the data indicate a need for it.
In addition to the benefits of reducing or eliminating pesticide use, IPM also offers many environmental and health benefits. The chemicals used in pesticides are toxic to some organisms, including humans. Some can cause respiratory problems, skin irritation or damage to the lungs and nervous system. Some can even be carcinogenic. To minimize risks, always have pest control professionals identify insects and other organisms, especially if they are unknown species or have not been previously recorded in your area.
Pesticides can be hazardous not only because they kill “pests,” but because they can harm other organisms, as well as humans and pets. In some instances, even small amounts of certain pesticides can have a negative impact on water quality, human health and the environment.
To help ensure the safety of NIH employees, students and visitors, a comprehensive integrated pest management program is implemented in all NIH occupied facilities. This includes monitoring and inspections of buildings and surrounding areas, record keeping, training staff, developing pest prevention strategies, and providing technical oversight of the program.
The Office of Pest Management Policy is responsible for communicating across NIH components to promote the development and implementation of integrated pest management strategies in biomedical research. It is the liaison to extramural research, federal agencies, universities and others on IPM issues.
