Last Updated: October 31, 2023
Ghouls and zombies don’t spook RHHD’s Environmental Health and Lead Safe and Healthy Homes teams. They’re too busy ensuring you have what you need to protect your home from outside invaders—like bats, rodents, or insects—or from dangerous toxins like lead. Here are some of their scariest facts:
- In their lifetime, female roaches can lay up to 400 eggs. Roaches have been found to carry up to three dozen different pathogens on their bodies which passively transfer to anything they walk on.
- Mice have terrible bowel and bladder control. In one day, they will leave behind thousands of micro droplets of urine and 40-100 droppings.
- Rabies may have played a role in originating the legend of vampires. The wandering vampire was said to attack people and animals, sometimes invisibly and sometimes in human or animal shape. These wandering vampires might have been people or animals with unrecognized furious rabies—the stage of rabies that produces violent symptoms.
- About half of the homes in the U.S. built before 1978 have lead-based paint. No safe blood lead level in children has been identified.
You can help RHHD make sure your house doesn’t become a haunted one! Fend off the creepiest and crawliest:
- Prevent pests from accessing their favorite things: food, water, and a safe place to curl up. Put food away, clean dirty dishes, and take out the trash regularly.
- Use a bleach/water solution or EPA-registered disinfectant to clean areas with dead rodents, dead insects, or droppings. And always wear gloves when cleaning up these contaminated areas.
- Keep your loved ones (furry or otherwise) safe by maintaining up-to-date rabies vaccines for your pets.
- Call RHHD’s Lead Safe program at 804-205-3727 (if you live in Richmond City) for information about testing your child for lead or assessing your home for lead risk. All Virginians can visit VDH’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program for additional resources.
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