Pests damage crops and human dwellings and spread diseases like rat-borne hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, leptospirosis, and salmonella.

Springfield MO Pest Control involves exclusion, suppression, and eradication. Most pest control companies offer services for ants, rodents, and cockroaches. Some handle more specialized pests, like termites and bed bugs.

Pest control aims to protect the environment, human health, and property from insects, rodents, and other critters. Pests aren’t just annoying; they can damage homes, destroy crops and introduce allergens and asthma triggers into buildings. Getting rid of pests is often expensive and time consuming. Preventing pest infestations is a much better alternative.

Prevention involves avoiding attracting and providing shelter to pests. It also includes removing their food, water and other essentials. This includes storing food in tightly closed containers and regularly emptying trash cans. Keeping the outside of your home and yard clean is another preventive measure. This includes removing woodpiles away from your house, fixing leaky pipes and clogged gutters, and mowing the lawn regularly.

You can also help prevent pests by modifying entryways into your home. Using screens on windows, closing gaps around doors and sealing cracks in walls can help keep pests out.

Regular pest inspections can also prevent an infestation from occurring. These inspections should focus on the foundation, siding, roof and utility lines for signs of pest activity. Pests can enter through tiny openings that are difficult to see, but are obvious to pests: ants, for example, have five times as many odor receptors as humans, according to Terminix. They can smell your leftover apple pie from a long distance, so be sure to store food in odor-blocking, securely sealed containers.

Other steps include reducing the pests’ ability to reproduce, change their environment and use their resources. This is called integrated pest management (IPM). The key to IPM is scouting, monitoring and threshold-based decision making. A few gnats flying around your backyard probably don’t warrant action, but a large infestation of Japanese beetles might.

Methods for IPM are typically non-chemical and include introducing natural enemies, changing cultivation practices, the use of resistant plants and biopesticides such as nematodes that kill insects in the soil. Chemical pesticides are used only when the situation calls for it, and are always aimed at controlling the pest to a level that is acceptable without causing unacceptable harm to people or the environment.

Suppression

Pests such as rodents, ants, insects and flies can destroy plants, contaminate food and cause discomfort to humans. They can also transmit diseases and harm the environment. There are several different methods of pest control including prevention, suppression and eradication. Prevention involves preventing pests from entering the home or business. This can be done by sealing cracks and crevices, putting screens on windows and doors, and keeping food in airtight containers. It also involves removing a pest’s habitat by clearing debris, cleaning up garbage and keeping the place clean.

Suppression refers to reducing the number of pests or their damage to an acceptable level. This can be done using physical or chemical means. A physical approach can include putting up traps or bait stations. A chemical approach would involve ultra-low volume fogging or a more extreme method of fumigation. Integrated pest management (IPM) is an ecosystem-based strategy that monitors the problem, studies it and selects the proper control measure needed per the tolerance level of the area.

IPM strategies can help prevent pest infestations from occurring in the first place. This includes carefully inspecting all inbound food products for things like small holes in packaging, webbing, casings and live or dead insect and rodent pests; practicing FIFO (first-in, first-out); and making sure all new equipment is properly cleaned and serviced before being placed in use.

Preventing a pest infestation before it occurs saves time, money and staves off stress. Taking these steps will also ensure that any pests that do make it into the establishment do not become a serious health or safety threat.

Clutter provides a great hiding place for many types of pests. Ensure that rooms are kept clean, especially kitchens and bathrooms. Keep garbage cans covered and take out trash frequently. Wipe down counters, table tops and the wall areas around stoves as often as possible. In apartment complexes, report any leaky faucets or broken pipes to management so they can be fixed. Keep food in refrigerators or cabinets, and do not leave it out on the counter. Also, report any cockroaches or mice to management so they can be caught and euthanized before the infestation grows.

Eradication

Pests like ants, beetles, caterpillars, flies and mosquitoes can cause food contamination. In addition, cockroaches and rats carry diseases that are hazardous to human health. Their droppings can also trigger allergic reactions in people. Damage caused by these insects can be expensive to repair.

Prevention of pests is one of the main ways to reduce costly repairs and losses in business operations. One of the first steps is inspection, which can help determine the extent of the problem and identify where it’s coming from. Other preventive measures include denying pests access to food, water and shelter. In addition, removing any attracting elements such as moisture and odors can help.

Another way to prevent pests is to use baits and traps, and if necessary, spray with pesticides. However, the most important step is monitoring to track the progress or need for further actions. This includes checking if baits are being used properly, and that the chemicals are effective. It’s also important to make sure that any chemicals aren’t affecting anyone or anything else in the area.

Using pesticides to eradicate pests isn’t always successful. This is because most pesticides don’t kill off all stages of the insect or all of them at once. For example, flea treatments may only kill adult fleas, leaving eggs and larvae to develop into new pests.

The best pest control methods are those that target the entire life cycle, rather than just the adults. This may be done with nematodes or parasitic fungi, which are less toxic to humans than conventional pesticides.

The goal of eradication is to get to the point where no microbes are being transmitted. This requires a precise understanding of the ecology of disease transmission, which is highly variable in varying environments. Achieving this objective will require rigorous monitoring and certification, including independent verification of eradication (Dowdle 1998; Quadros 2002). The Smallpox Eradication Program is considered a model for other disease eradication efforts, such as Guinea worm and polio.

Biological Control

The use of living organisms to control pests by parasitism, predatory action or pathogens. Biological control has been defined (by Copple and Mertins) as “man’s exploitation of organisms that are natural enemies of pest insects or their environment to reduce their populations to economically significant levels.” Examples include the beetles that suppress codling moth, gypsy moth and cereal leaf beetle, fungi that suppress stored grain insect infestations, and viruses that infect and cause disease outbreaks in caterpillars.

Biological controls are most often used with invasive species that have become a nuisance or a threat to crops and ecosystems because they lack natural enemies in their new environments. Some pests have been intentionally introduced to areas where they are not native to help control other invasive species, such as the alligator weed (Alternanthera philoxeroides).

When pests have no natural enemies, they tend to have explosive population growth and can eventually be regarded as a serious economic crop pest, such as the gypsy moth and cassava mealybug in North America and Latin America, respectively. In these cases, it is possible to reintroduce the natural enemies of the introduced pests to suppress their populations and keep them at low densities, thereby eliminating the need for conventional control methods.

To develop a biological control program, the native habitat of the pest must be studied to find its natural enemies. Exploration may involve visits to the countries of origin of the pest, where natural enemies might be found, or the natural enemies may be imported for study and augmentation in the United States. In either case, the imported natural enemies must be subjected to a quarantine period to ensure they do not introduce unwanted diseases, parasitoids or competitors into the area.

Farmers and gardeners can support the reintroduction of natural enemies by providing suitable host plants for these organisms. They can also encourage the occurrence of natural enemies in their fields or gardens by judicious and careful use of nonpersistent pesticides that do not kill these beneficial organisms or damage the host plants upon which they prey.