Rodent diseases
Rats and mice damage the structure of your property and nibble your food. But what’s worse is that they can cause serious rodent diseases.
Atticare is the premier provider of attic and crawl space services in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and New Jersey. We provide quality attic clean up and rodent proofing services and we’d like to share our knowledge with you.
How do rodents spread disease? In this post we cover it all, plus what diseases are caused by rodents.
That way you and your family can avoid both rat diseases and mouse diseases.
The idea of rodents in the kitchen just seems disgusting. As you’d imagine there’s a high risk of diarrhea and food poisoning.
Also there are several more serious diseases that are caused by rats and mice. And these can be viruses or bacterial infections. So your chances of getting sick from mouse droppings, bites and their mites are higher than you might hope.
Here’s a rundown of common rodent diseases.
Hantavirus is common throughout most of the USA and is spread by white-footed mice, deer mice, cotton rats, and rice rats.
You get hantavirus in several ways. Being bitten is the most obvious, but also through contact with their feces or urine. This even includes breathing in soiled dust.
Hantavirus has an extraordinarily long incubation period of up to 8 weeks, although you can get sick in the first week too. And here are the symptoms.
This one is a really dangerous disease spread by rats to humans. It’s a bacterial infection that can be fatal if not treated with antibiotics. Here’s what the symptoms look like.
The symptoms appear about 3-10 days after exposure, although they can be as late as 3 weeks.
And here’s how you get it.
This one’s another of the potentially fatal diseases spread by rats to humans.
Leptospirosis symptoms are vague, changeable, and hard to diagnose.
Alternatively, people with leptospirosis can be totally asymptomatic.
But if leptospirosis is diagnosed it needs to be treated or it can lead to kidney damage, liver failure, meningitis or respiratory issues.
You can get it through food or drink that has been contaminated with the urine of the infected rodents. Or if you’re working outside, contact with contaminated soil.
Normally the symptoms are like a really bad flu: fever, muscle aches and vomiting. However, for pregnant women it’s much more dangerous. LCM has been linked to the following.
It’s easy to catch LCM, unfortunately. For two reasons.
All you need to do is breathe in dust that’s contaminated with rodent urine or feces.
It’s spread primarily by the common “house mouse”. And the CDC estimates that about 5% of house mice in the United States carry LCM. This means your chances of getting sick from mouse droppings is higher than you’d like.
This is the name for the disease caused by salmonella bacteria. We normally associate salmonella with eating chicken or eggs, but it’s also among the diseases caused by rat droppings.
Below are the main symptoms that indicate you’ve ingested salmonella in your food or drink.
Salmonella isn’t usually deadly unless the patient has a weakened immune system.
Rodents tearing up your attic insulation to make nests is even less appealing when you consider the diseases they spread. So how do they do it?
You can get very serious viruses from breathing in dust that is contaminated with rodent urine or feces. They’re diseases caused by rat droppings, and also droppings from mice and muskrats.
Here are the viruses you can catch through dust.
Dust is hard to avoid so your chances of getting sick from mouse droppings are higher than other means of transmission.
As you can see, the list of what you can catch is no laughing matter.
For this reason, if you have more than a couple of rodents in your home, it’s best to hire a professional team to get rid of them.
The pros have specialist clothing to prevent scratches and bites completely.
Ticks, mites and mosquitos can be vectors of diseases spread by rats to humans.
It’s impossible to eliminate mosquitoes if you’re in New Jersey, the San Francisco Bay area, and especially in Los Angeles.
So it’s vital to get great rodent control as soon as you suspect that they’re in your home.
There are easy measures that you can take yourself to prevent rodent infestations.
Now you know the chances of getting sick from mouse droppings, scratches or infected bugs are considerable. So don’t risk putting your family at risk from diseases caused by rat droppings, dust or bites.
Atticare is a top-rated insulation contractor offering attic and crawl space services in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and New Jersey. And that means we deal with rodents every day.
Call our rodent removal experts today on (866) 692-5449 or contact us online.
This post was last modified on May 10, 2022 8:33 pm
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