Wash your hands immediately after touching, feeding, or caring for
Protect Yourself and Your Family from Germs
Do: Wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water right after handling your pets or anything in the area where they live and roam.
They can spread diseases such as rat bite fever and hantavirus. People can get sick from handling rats/mice, contact with their feces, urine or saliva, or from bites. You are more likely to come into contact with them when living in cars, RV's and outdoors. These important tips will help you stay safe and healthy.
Rats are very clean.
“People often think of rats as dirty sewer creatures, but they're actually quite clean and good about grooming,” Graham said. “In fact, rats groom more frequently and thoroughly than cats.”
Introduced rodents can: Carry diseases such as leptospirosis and typhus fever. Contaminate food with their hair, droppings and urine, resulting in food poisoning and spoilage.
There are disease concerns with both wild (rats, mice) and pet (rats, mice, hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs) rodents and rabbits. They can carry many diseases including hantavirus, leptospirosis, lymphocytic choriomeningitis (LCMV), Tularemia and Salmonella.
Step 1: Put on rubber or plastic gloves. Step 2: Spray urine and droppings with bleach solution or an EPA-registered disinfectant until very wet. Let it soak for 5 minutes or according to instructions on the disinfectant label. Step 3: Use paper towels to wipe up the urine or droppings and cleaning product.
There is no specific treatment, cure, or vaccine for hantavirus infection. However, we do know that if infected individuals are recognized early and receive medical care in an intensive care unit, they may do better.
The risk of acquiring hantavirus is extremely rare, even among people who are consistently exposed to mice and other rodents. The majority of exposures (70%) occur around the home. Hantavirus poses no significant health risk to WSU employees provided that simple precautions are followed.
If you have to touch a dead rat or mouse then you should always wear gloves and wash your hands thoroughly afterwards to prevent any infections from spreading. However, once again we strongly advise you not to touch it.
Do not kiss, nuzzle, or hold rats close to your face. This can startle your rats and also increase your chances of being bitten. Bites can spread germs and can make you sick. You don't have to touch pet rats to get sick from their germs.
Disease in people can range from no symptoms/mild illness to kidney problems, headaches, upset stomachs, and in severe cases bleeding from internal organs and the skin. While serious disease is rare, some studies suggest that 34% of pet rat owners will test positive for previous hantavirus infection.
Early symptoms include fatigue, fever and muscle aches, especially in the large muscle groups—thighs, hips, back, and sometimes shoulders. These symptoms are universal. There may also be headaches, dizziness, chills, and abdominal problems, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain.
Mice do not generally bite (unless handled), so that is not the risk. The biggest problem that turns them from a nuisance to a danger are the health risks they bring with them from diseases and parasites. Mice can contaminate food and food surfaces.
Always wash your hands before and after: Preparing and eating food. Treating wounds or caring for a sick person. Touching an item or surface that is frequently touched by other people, such as door handles, gas pumps or shopping carts.
Hantavirus: Once thought to be rare this disease has been identified in rodents across Australia.
Only some kinds of mice and rats can give people hantaviruses that can cause HPS. In North America, they are the deer mouse, the white-footed mouse, the rice rat, and the cotton rat. However, not every deer mouse, white-footed mouse, rice rat, or cotton rat carries a hantavirus.
Approximately 12 percent of deer mice carry hantavirus. The deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) is the primary reservoir for Sin Nombre Virus, the strain of hantavirus responsible for the human cases in Yosemite National Park, and most human cases in the United States.
The hantavirus is destroyed by detergents and readily available disinfectants such as diluted household bleach or products containing phenol (e.g., Lysol®). Choose an agent that is compatible with the item, object or area to be cleaned and disinfected.
Keeping your home clean, particularly your kitchen, discourages a rat infestation. Rats and mice will also rummage through trash to find food. You should cover and remove waste from your home to deter rats from exploring your garbage.
Anyone who comes into contact with infected rodent droppings, urine, saliva, nesting materials, or particles from these, can get hantavirus disease. Exposure to poorly ventilated areas with active rodent infestations in households, is the strongest risk factor for infection.
Infection with hantaviruses causing HFRS and NE affect the kidneys and can last from three days to three months for complete recovery. Symptoms may begin suddenly and include: fever. intense headache.
Rats are known for their highly sensitive sense of smell. During the trial, the mammals were presented with human urine samples, some of which came from lung-cancer patients. The rats were able to correctly spot which samples came from those with cancer nine times out of ten.