Known vectors for disease, cockroaches carry infectious bacteria and other disease organisms on their bodies and in their feces that can pose significant human health risks when transferred to food and food preparation areas during nocturnal foraging. If cockroaches invade your Monmouth NJ home or Ocean County apartment, they could expose your family to food poisoning, dysentery or diarrhea. While that seems dire enough, in New Jersey’s urban areas cockroaches pose an even more insidious threat to children.
Cockroaches are the No. 1 cause of childhood asthma in New Jersey’s metropolitan areas. Cockroaches produce irritating allergens on their bodies and in their feces. German cockroaches in particular, the most common cockroach species found inside New Jersey homes, produce prodigious quantities of allergens. Dried roach feces and decaying body parts from dead roaches combine to create a biological dust that releases these allergens into the air where they can trigger potentially life-threatening asthma attacks and other respiratory problems every time a child takes a breath.
Masters of survival, these nighttime scavengers feed on a wide variety of plant and animal material and will eat anything humans eat and quite a bit of things we find indigestible, including cosmetics, potted plants, wallpaper paste, soap and paper products, which is the reason cockroaches are so often discovered harboring and foraging in New Jersey kitchens and bathrooms.
Cockroaches can reproduce as frequently as every 20 days, making them a challenge to exterminate. Successful extermination of cockroach infestations requires a combination of exclusion, monitoring and professional extermination methods by an experienced Monmouth County NJ cockroach exterminator.