Do mothballs or ammonia help repel bats?
Bats in Your Home
Bats cause many problems when they enter your home. They lee their droppings everywhere, making a mess of things. Their smell fills the entire house, which ruins your home's atmosphere. They even spread deadly diseases like rabies and histoplasmosis, which puts your entire household's lives in danger.
That's why you need a solution to your bat problem before things get out of hand.
Mothballs and Ammonia as Solutions
A lot of people recommend you use mothballs and ammonia to remove wild animals. They believe that because these tools are effective on small animals like moths and other insects, they'll also work on bats and other larger animals.
People expect the dangerous chemicals in these items to affect all the animals in the same way, making them dizzy and weak. Which then forces the animals to lee your home to feel better.
Yet this isn't how things really play out. These items simply don't work on bats, so trying to use them is a waste of time and effort. In fact, using these items can actually cause more problems than they solve.
Issues with Mothballs
Mothballs either contain naphthalene or para-dichlorobenzene, which are both toxic chemicals. These irritate moths and do a good job of repelling them, but these chemicals don't translate well to a bat.
For starters, a bat is much bigger, so you'd need a lot more mothballs to he the same effect. But that causes its own set of problems.
More mothballs mean more noxious gasses in the air. These will be able to affect you as much as the bats, which leads to the irritation of the eyes, skin, and lungs. If you spend too much time near mothballs, you'll also experience severe headaches, nausea, and dizziness. So you should oid using mothballs.
If you insist on using mothballs, your prolonged exposure to the toxic chemicals can result in anemia — a condition where your red blood cells die. This reduces how much oxygen your body can transport and use, which will affect you in many areas of your life.
Mothballs can also harm your family, and it's particularly dangerous for kids. As studies he shown that mothballs can damage a child's DNA. It can even cause cancer in anyone with prolonged exposure.
With all those health risks associated with it, mothballs just aren't worth using. Especially if there's no guarantee they'll even work against bats.
Ammonia
Ammonia might not be as dangerous as mothballs, but it is still not a good solution. For starters, ammonia smells awful. So using it would only add to the stench of the bats and make your home smell awful.
Yet that's not all. This chemical also has adverse health effects. Some common issues that arise from exposure to ammonia include burning in the eyes, nose, and throat.
If you don't get away from ammonia soon enough, the effects will get worse. The chemical might blind you, or it could do a lot of damage to your lungs. If you aren't careful, prolonged ammonia exposure can even lead to death.
So, like mothballs, ammonia has a lot of adverse effects that make it an undesirable solution. That's especially true since you can experience all these horrible consequences and still fail to remove the bats.
Professional Help
Since mothballs and ammonia don't work and are too dangerous to use, you should just call a professional. This method is simple but effective.
An expert has all the training and experience needed to remove the bats from your home without much trouble. It's safer than any other approach, as there aren't any noxious gasses involved. The professional can also guarantee better results than any repellent.
So if you're dealing with bats in your home, you should call a professional.