pest | Anchorage Alaska Living

Pest problems like bed bug infestations in hotels and cockroach sightings in restaurants make headlines and garner attention. Many homeowners don’t know how to properly identify a pest infestation, that even if the problem is identified, it’s already too late. Here are some tips on how to properly identify and prevent common pests:

Identifying Pests

Many bugs are important to the ecosystem and life cycle, but not all of them are good. Most especially those spread diseases and may damage your garden and home.

Wood eating termites can destroy your home by eating away at the foundation. You can see them flying in swarms, and they often leave mud tubes on the outside of your home. Have you noticed a hollow sounding wood floors or cracking/peeling of paint? These may be signs that you might have a termite infestation. Subterranean termites are most often found in the warm, humid southern states between Florida and California. As damp wood termites attack in the Northwest, Midwest and Northeast.

Disease-carrying rodents can nest in your home and eat just about anything that’s easily accessible to them. House mice are typical in farming communities while Norway rats live and thrive in populated areas. Farming communities have house mice while Norway rats live and increase in populated areas. Most rodent infestations are identified by droppings, footprints, odors and scratching or gnawing sounds coming from interior walls or attic. With this, you can find a pest control professional to help you.

Global Warming and Pets

As the Earth warms, insect populations will continue to grow. The increased population of ticks alone has led to a record-high amount of Lyme disease cases. As warmer temperatures spread across the globe, illnesses previously limited to warm-weather regions, like West Nile and Dengue Fever, will spread across the continents and infect the human population. As the winter season gets shorter and shorter each year, bugs, such as disease carrying ticks, are coming out of their dormant stages earlier and leaving later in the season.

Change is already happening around us. For example, the green shield bug was found previously only in North America, the Mediterranean, Africa, the Middle East and Australia. But recently, the bug has been showing up in the United Kingdom, a region that was once too cold to support this kind of bug. According to Earths Friends, although there is nothing to worry about this bug because it does not spread disease, English farmers have already reported damage to their crops.

Pesticide and Chemical Usage

We use pesticides everywhere including parks, schools, homes, agricultural fields and forests. This could be roaming around in the water, and food we consume, and in the air we breathe. There’s a study released in 2010 from The University of Montreal and Harvard that pesticides in vegetables were linked to ADHD in children. Even the Public Health Institute found that children whose mothers were exposed to organochlorine pesticides were six times more likely to have autism, according to Toxics Action Center. It can cause cancers in humans and upset the endocrine system, which can inflict disorder on the reproductive system, the regulation of hormones and embryonic development.

Not only are we affected by these pesticides, even the environment has problems with these unwanted chemicals. Scientists have discovered that pesticides weaken the plant’s immune systems and reduce concentrations of essential nutrients. One important fact about pesticides overuse on farmland is that it destroys essential soil microorganisms, worms and beneficial insects, claims Toxics Action Center.

Use only pest control products that are registered by the Environmental Protection Agency and are committed to eco-friendly business practices.