Health Care Professionals

Human health can be negatively impacted by certain insects, molds, fungi, bacteria and other organisms. Insects can act as transmitters or "vectors" of smaller disease causing organisms such as viruses and bacteria. Insects, mites, molds, fungi and others can also directly induce allergic reactions or act as asthma triggers.

Signs of common diseases are generally well known to physicians and nurses. Occasionally, symptoms caused by insect pests or pathogenic organisms vectored by insects may be obscure or unusual, therefore relatively unknown to many physicians. Others, such as lyme disease, may have so many individual variations that the symptoms may initially be attributed to other causes.

Management of these public health pests using IPM also requires careful considerations of the tools used to reduce the incidence of these organisms. Pesticides, antibacterial products, chlorine bleach and other chemical cleansers must themselves be carefully selected and properly used to protect from negative public health effects.
Pesticides are themselves toxic to many biological systems and symptoms of pesticide exposure often mimic other maladies. Routine use of antibacterial products can lead to resistant strains of bacteria. Chlorine bleach is very caustic and is implicated in the production of dioxins. Exposure to these and other environmental toxins are often difficult to diagnose and require careful questioning by the health professional.

Resources:
 Public Health Pest Problem Solver