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Pest Control Toowoomba

Report 2MiceNSW Health’s steps, quoted in full

Cleaning up after mice

Protect yourself first, then clean: NSW Health’s advice is gloves, waterproof clothing and footwear and covered cuts, then disinfectant or bleach on floors and benches, hot washing for exposed bedding and clothes, and soap on your hands at the end. Ideally, the person who handles dead mice is not pregnant or immunosuppressed.

General information, not medical advice. These are NSW Health’s steps, from its factsheet on staying healthy during a mouse plague, written for New South Wales and quoted here on a Queensland site. The factsheet is listed at the foot of this page.

The procedure

NSW Health’s steps, whole

Every step below is NSW Health’s own wording, in quotation marks. The first line is about who should do the job; the rest apply to dead mice and to anywhere mice have been.

  1. Who

    “Ideally, any handling of mouse carcasses should be undertaken by household members who are not pregnant or immunosuppressed.”

  2. “When cleaning up mouse carcases or working in areas where mice have been:”

  3. Protect

    “Wear gloves.”

  4. Protect

    “Wear waterproof protective clothing and footwear.”

  5. Protect

    “Cover cuts and abrasions with a waterproof dressing.”

  6. Clean

    “Mop floors and clean countertops with disinfectant or bleach solution.”

  7. Clean

    “Steam clean or shampoo upholstered furniture and carpets with evidence of rodent exposure.”

  8. Laundry

    “Wash any bedding and clothing with laundry detergent in hot water if exposed to rodent urine or droppings.”

  9. Finish

    “Wash hands with soap and dry your hands after completing the clean-up, and especially before eating.”

The reasons

Why each step is there

Each step lines up with a way that NSW Health’s pages say illness can pass from mice to people.

  • Gloves, dressings

    The bacteria behind leptospirosis may be in mouse and rat urine, and they get in through cuts and grazes, and now and then through the eyes, nose or mouth. LCMV usually comes from contact with the urine, droppings or saliva of infected rodents.

  • Waterproof clothing

    NSW Health’s leptospirosis fact sheet gives the same advice for outdoors: waterproof protective clothing and footwear, especially when walking in mud or moist soil.

  • Who does it

    There have been cases where LCMV infection in pregnancy led to fetal death or to conditions affecting the central nervous system, though NSW Health notes that infection in pregnancy has not been recorded in Australia.

  • Benches and floors

    Gut infections such as salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis and cryptosporidiosis can be passed on by rodents through direct contact or contaminated food preparation surfaces.

  • Soap

    Wash with soap, the leptospirosis fact sheet says, “as Leptospira bacteria are quickly killed by soap, disinfectants, and drying.”

  • The pantry

    The same fact sheet adds one line the clean-up steps do not: “Avoid eating food that rodents may have had access to.”

Where to clean

Finding where they have been

Droppings mark the places to start. The Queensland Government’s possum page describes rat droppings as black pellets about seven millimetres long, often found scattered around a sheltered feeding or nest site. Possum droppings are bigger, and tend to turn up beneath a tree the possum has been feeding in. the roof report compares the two.

Carpets and soft furniture count as well as hard floors: the steps above treat any upholstery or carpet “with evidence of rodent exposure”.

The tank

A mouse in the rainwater tank

NSW Health’s factsheet has a section for rainwater tanks contaminated by dead mice. In its own order, it says:

  1. Keep them out

    Tank inlets and overflows should have screens to keep out mice, other small animals and leaves, and the tank should be checked regularly for gaps.

  2. Boiling

    Rainwater can be disinfected by bringing it to a rolling boil and letting it cool before drinking; a kettle that switches itself off can do this.

  3. Chlorine

    NSW Health: “If you suspect that water in your rainwater tank has been contaminated, it can be disinfected with powdered swimming pool chlorine (calcium hypochlorite, 65% available chlorine) or liquid chlorine (sodium hypochlorite, 12.5% available chlorine). You should not use stabilised chlorine (chlorine cyanurates).” The amount depends on the tank’s size: NSW Health links ready reckoner tables from the factsheet to guide it.

  4. Sludge

    Any sludge in the tank should be removed by siphon, or by emptying the tank completely and cleaning it.

  5. Going inside

    If cleaning means entering the tank, NSW Health recommends a qualified professional tank cleaner, because cleaning water tanks carries health and safety risks such as working in a confined space.

For chlorine amounts, use the tables linked from NSW Health’s mouse plague factsheet rather than a guess.

Afterwards

When the job is done

If baits were laid while the mice were about, children and pets should still be kept away from those areas. And if anyone becomes sick in the weeks after possible contact with animal urine, NSW Health says it is important to tell the doctor about it. The mouse plague report covers who in a household is most exposed.