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Down here in the South (I live in North Carolina), people like to call them “Palmetto bugs”, as if that makes them a little less threatening. No, I always say, they’re cockroaches, they’re enormous, and they need to be destroyed immediately.
The reason I bring this up is because of some rather disturbing findings from a new study that shows German cockroaches (a species of cockroach) are developing cross-resistance to a number of insecticides. I don’t know about you, but that terrifies me.
The lead author of the study, Michael Scharf of Purdue University, said, “Cockroaches developing resistance to multiple classes of insecticides at once will make controlling these pests almost impossible with chemicals alone.” In other words, we might be f*cked.
The researchers behind the study tested different insecticides in apartments in Indiana and Illinois that were infested with cockroaches over the course of six months. No matter what combination of insecticides was used, the researchers could not reduce the size of the cockroach population in the apartments.
Tests showed that a large portion of the cockroaches and their offspring had become “essentially immune” to the chemical treatments. Female cockroaches can produce 200-300 offspring during their lifetimes.
Michael Scharf added, “We would see resistance increase four- or six-fold in just one generation. We didn’t have a clue that something like that could happen this fast.”
The authors of the study say that the results show that insecticides alone should not be relied on, but people should rather focus on chemicals combined with traps, vacuums, and overall improved sanitation to control cockroaches.
YUCK.
