Do You Have Chiggers Crawling in Your Grass? Here’s What To Do

In Ohio, chiggers can be a real problem, especially for property owners who are dealing with a chigger infestation. Also referred to as berry bugs and harvest mites, chiggers are similar to ticks in the sense that they are quite small and can bite people and pets. If you think chiggers are overtaking your property, there are three things you need to know: what exactly is a chigger and how you can identify them, how you can get rid of chiggers on your property, and how you can keep chiggers from coming back.

What are chiggers?

Chiggers are a close relative of ticks and are nearly microscopic. Because they are so small, they can be difficult to spot, but their distinctive bright reddish-orange color sets them apart from other mites. Chiggers bite both people and animals as a source of food. Even though they are tiny, their bites can pack a punch by causing severe itching and/or a skin rash. Chigger bites are itchy, red bumps that can look like pimples, blisters, or small hives and are typically found around the waist or ankles. Chiggers are attracted to people for the same reason that mosquitoes and ticks are attracted to us; because we produce carbon dioxide when we breathe, which attracts bugs like chiggers to want to bite us. Chiggers usually favor conditions such as moist, bushy areas to live and nest, which is why they can often be found in yards.

How do you get rid of chiggers?

The best way to get rid of chiggers from your property is to hire your local lawn care professionals to treat your lawn. They have the knowledge and the highest quality chemical treatments to safely and efficiently eliminate chiggers from your property. When a lawn care company comes out to your property, they will first do an inspection to make sure that you are dealing with a chigger infestation. Next, they will spray your lawn with a high-quality insecticide that is designed to kill them off. Once they are finished, you should be able to use your lawn without having to worry about these pests biting you, your loved ones, or your pets.

Chiggers can lay one to five eggs per day, so if you don’t act fast, they can quickly take over your lawn!

How can you prevent chiggers?

The best way to prevent chiggers in the first place is to enroll in an ongoing chigger control program that continuously offers treatments. Treating for chiggers regularly is the only way to keep them away for good. When enrolling in a chigger control program, you’ll want to make sure that the company you are working with will offer multiple treatments throughout the entirety of the chigger season. You will also want to make sure that each treatment will last until the next one is applied to ensure that there is no lapse in coverage.

There are also a few things that homeowners can do to supplement these treatments. For example, mowing your grass and trimming back shrubs and brush frequently will limit the shady, bushy areas that chiggers thrive in. Also be sure to regularly clear leaf litter from your yard as moist, dark piles of leaves are conducive to chigger activity.

Give us a call to schedule our chigger control service!

Nobody likes unwanted visitors, especially when those visitors bite! If you suspect that chiggers are overrunning your property, turn to the professionals at Free Spray Lawn Care. Our lawn care professionals will quickly and safely end the infestation so you and your loved ones can get back to enjoying your yard. We offer our chigger control service to property owners in Mansfield, Wooster, Strongsville, OH and throughout the surrounding areas. Give us a call at 419-529-5296 to schedule our chigger control service today.

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Chigger Bites (for Parents) – Humana

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What Are Chiggers?

Chiggers (also called harvest mites or red bugs) are tiny red, biting mites. Their bites aren’t painful, but do cause intense itching.

Chiggers are members of the arachnid family (the same family that includes spiders and ticks). They are smaller than a period at the end of a sentence. Most can only be seen with a magnifying glass.

Chiggers are found all over the outdoors, including in grassy fields, along lakes and streams, and in forests. It’s the baby chiggers that bite people and animals.

How Do Chigger Bites Happen?

After hatching, baby chiggers wait on plants for people or animals to pass by. When they do, the chigger attaches to them using tiny claws. Once attached, it pierces their skin and injects its saliva (spit). The spit contains digestive juices that dissolve skin cells. The chigger then eats the dissolved cells, which provide the protein it needs to grow into an adult. After a couple of days the chigger falls off, leaving a red bump on the skin.

What Are the Signs of Chigger Bites?

Chigger bites are itchy red bumps that can look like pimples, blisters, or small hives. They are usually found around the waist, ankles, or in warm skin folds. They get bigger and itchier over several days, and often appear in groups.

Chigger bites start to itch within hours of the chigger attaching to the skin. The itch stops after a few days, and the red bumps heal over 1–2 weeks.

If chigger bites happen on the penis, they can cause swelling, itching, and painful peeing. This is known as “summer penile syndrome.”

How Are Chigger Bites Diagnosed?

Doctors can diagnose chigger bites by looking at them and asking about a person’s recent outdoor activities.

How Are Chigger Bites Treated?

Unlike mosquitoes and ticks, chiggers don’t carry disease. So they are not harmful, only annoying. You can usually treat chigger bites at home:

• Scrub chigger bites well with soap and water to help remove any chiggers that are still attached to the skin.
• Holding a cool washcloth over the bites can be soothing.
• Calamine lotion or anti-itch creams can help with the itching.
• Antihistamines (allergy medicine) taken by mouth can sometimes help with itching, especially if your child has trouble sleeping at night.

Discourage kids from scratching at the bites because this can lead to:

• impetigo, a bacterial infection of the skin, with pus and crusts around the bites
• a larger area of increasing redness, swelling, pain, and warmth, called cellulitis

Keeping fingernails short can help prevent skin damage from scratching. Antibiotics may be needed if a skin infection does happen.

When Should I Call the Doctor?

Call your doctor’s office if:

• Over-the-counter creams or lotions don’t help the itching.
• A bite looks infected (watch for warmth, redness, swelling, tenderness, or pus).
• Your child has symptoms of “summer penile syndrome.”

Can Chigger Bites Be Prevented?

To help prevent chigger bites when enjoying the great outdoors:

• Apply an insect repellent with 10%–30% DEET.
• Clothes also can be treated with a specific insecticide (like permethrin) to help prevent bites.
• Wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants tucked into shoes, especially during hiking. This also can help protect kids from other biting critters like ticks and mosquitoes.
• Wash kids’ skin with soap and water when they come back inside. Wash all clothes in hot water and tumble dry on high heat before they’re worn again.

Chigger bites aren’t contagious, so kids can’t catch them from someone or give them to somebody else. They can still play sports and do all normal activities unless the itching makes them too uncomfortable.

Reviewed by: Yamini Durani, MD

Date reviewed: June 2023

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“For us, it’s Pearl Harbor.

” How a city in Ohio lives after a train derailment with toxic chemicals sign up for our newsletter “Context”: it will help you figure it out in events.

Image caption,

Many residents of East Palestine, Ohio, can now only drink bottled water – tap water causes strange symptoms

For John and Lisa Hammer, residents of a small town in East Palestine in the US state of Ohio, normal life ended on February 3 at 8:55 pm. At that moment, a train loaded with toxic chemicals derailed just a few meters from the building where their thriving garbage company was located.

This report was published in English, the original can be read here .

The Hammers have been developing their business for 18 years, going from five clients to more than seven thousand.

“It completely ruined our lives,” John tells the BBC, barely holding back tears. We talk to him in the parking lot outside his company office, where the smell of chemicals still hangs in the air after the disaster.

“I’ve already decided to get out of here,” he adds. “We’re moving. We can’t do this anymore.”

After a train derailment, rescue services had to release vinyl chloride, a toxic, colorless gas, from five tanks. Otherwise, they could explode.

Image copyright Reuters

John’s eyes are red and swollen – he believes chemicals released into the air after the crash in East Palestine are to blame.

But the couple told the BBC that they suffered even more psychologically.

“I can’t sleep at all. I’ve already been to the doctor twice, now I’m taking a sedative,” says John Hammer. “It’s ten times worse than just losing a livelihood. We built this business from the very beginning.”

Just like her husband, Lisa Hammer stays up all night thinking about what will happen to the company, her ten employees – and the whole city where she has spent 20 years of her life.

• Massive explosion in Bangladesh at a clothing warehouse for the West. More than 40 dead, hundreds injured
• A million babies a year are born dead because of polluted air, scientists say
• What happens in Armyansk, Crimea, after the release of harmful chemicals – they are now also planning to leave East Palestine.

  “I’m scared for the people who live here,” she says. “I don’t know anyone who can sleep well now, because literally everything is at stake. Business, health, and the health of friends.”

  As we climb a mountain of rubbish that rises not far from the burnt wreckage of wagons, Hammer compares the train accident here to the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

  Photo credit, Reuters

  Photo caption,

  Crash site

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  We quickly, simply and clearly explain what happened, why it’s important and what’s next.

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  He’s not the only one who thinks so. In the two days we spent in East Palestine, several locals told the BBC that they saw the train derailment as a critical moment in the city’s history. For the foreseeable future at least, their lives will be defined by what happened before and after this catastrophe.

  Federal and local officials advise residents not to drink tap water, but to buy bottled water. Authorities have said it’s safe to return to the city within days of the crash, but environmental experts aren’t sure the advice can be trusted.

  Substances released into the atmosphere after the crash (vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate) are hazardous to health and, in sufficient concentration, can cause various complications – from nausea to cancer.

  “For our city, it’s Pearl Harbor, or 9/11. This will always be remembered,” says local café owner Ben Ratner.

  In the case of Ratner, what happened led to a “curious combination” of experiences and sensations. Now he visibly shudders every time he hears the sound of a passing train, although he had not noticed such things before. And he adds that now the trains seem to him louder and more annoying than in the past.

  Image copyright, Getty Images

  Image caption,

  60-year-old car wash owner Ron Rafferty says he wears a mask at work because he fears for his health

  He says that his friends in East Palestine start to panic about everything and remain constantly on guard – feelings he compares to post-traumatic stress disorder .

  “It’s time for us to think about the long-term consequences for the psyche and emotional state of people,” Ratner says. “People have become worried when trains pass nearby, when their children go outside, when they let dogs out – and they accidentally get drunk on contaminated water. It’s all very serious.”

  Local children had only recently survived the Covid-19 pandemic, and now their lives have been turned upside down by yet another trauma, he said. “This could go on for generations,” he says. “It’s not just gas or clouds of chemicals. ”

  Johns Hopkins University professor Kiv Nachman told the BBC that the substances released into the atmosphere after the crash could significantly damage people’s health.

  “There is very little information about how people came into contact with these chemicals – through air, drinking water or soil,” says the expert.

  US Environmental Protection Agency chief Michael Regan visited eastern Palestine on Thursday to see for himself how the rescue operation is progressing, meet with local officials – and reassure residents that the government is doing everything possible for them.

  “We see you, hear you and understand why you are worried,” he said.

  The agency claims that no dangerous concentrations of toxic substances have been recorded in the atmosphere, and experts have checked the air in hundreds of residential buildings.

  In addition, both Senators from Ohio, JD Vance and Sherrod Brown, sent messages of support to the city’s residents. Gov. Mike DeWine has asked the federal government for help.

  Representatives of local water networks admitted that the Ohio River was polluted, but they say that the drinking water supply system was not affected.

  The author of the photo, Reuters

  Image caption,

  Residents of the town discussed problems with representatives of the authorities at meetings many times

  The head of Norfolk Southern, which owned the crashed train, understands that people are tired of what is happening, afraid of the consequences, they “have a lot of unanswered questions.”

  But at the same time, representatives of the railway company on Wednesday refused to meet with the population of Eastern Palestine, citing security concerns. And this could not but anger the locals even more.

  Many in the city believe that no amount of words will now help to remove the mistrust and anger that has reigned in East Palestine.

  Some say that neither inspectors nor any other officials contacted them – and this is almost ten days after the crash.

  “No one came to visit us, no one asked us anything. No one checked anything. Not at all,” says Kim Hancock, who lives about a mile from the crash site.

  “How can they say it’s not dangerous here? It’s not real,” she says. “I’m not stupid. I saw a cloud of smoke pass over my house.”

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  News at 20:00 last full issue watch online

  February 16, 2023
  21:38

  Denis Davydov

  While Europe, within the framework of the tenth package of anti-Russian sanctions, calls for serious consideration of providing Ukraine with missile systems, fighter jets and helicopters, an American National Guard helicopter crashes on a busy highway in Alabama. Everyone who was inside the collapsed Black Hawk died, and the fire was extinguished for more than 5 hours. Where and why the helicopter was flying, the aviation services do not report, but they are afraid in social networks: what if they mistook it for a Chinese one and shot it down?!

  Two large-scale chemical accidents are shrouded not only in smoke from the fire, but also in mystery. But if a warehouse with plastic is just burning in Florida, then Ohio is already on the verge of an environmental disaster, which the White House does not comment on.

  The explosion was filmed from different angles, because the explosion is controlled. Dozens of cameras followed a black poisonous cloud covering for many kilometers many towns in Ohio and neighboring Pennsylvania. The authorities did not come up with anything better – they decided to set fire to tanks with chemicals that had derailed near the town of Eastern Palestine. Residents were carefully evacuated, but on the second day, as soon as the smoke cleared, the care ended – everyone was offered to return home.

  “We smelled chemicals when we were driving towards the city. I have a chemical burn on my face, a rash. The fish died in the streams, there are multi-colored oil stains on the water, the constant smell of burnt plastic. Our dog is lethargic, he constantly vomits. Terrible things are happening here “, says one of the locals.

  The train that brought so many troubles to these parts was carrying a whole periodic table: ethylene glycol ether, isobutylene, butyl acrylate, but most importantly, vinyl chloride. A colorless gas that decomposes into hydrogen chloride and phosgene when burned. Phosgene poisoned people in the First World War. Of the 150 tanks in the train, 50 derailed.

  Those who decided to set it on fire have their own truth – they were afraid of an uncontrolled explosion. Tanks could break, and pieces of metal, like shrapnel, would mutilate everything around for several kilometers. Now they cheerfully report that there are no casualties and destruction.

  “If I were there right now, I would drink water there. Yesterday, when our chief physician advised drinking only bottled water, he simply did not know the results of water tests. Today we have them,” said Mike Devine , Governor of Ohio.

  Governor giving advice from the state capital, hundreds of miles away from the crash site. For two weeks, he never appeared at the overturned tanks. The authorities pretended that nothing terrible had happened.

  “They are happy when they collect our taxes. Governments are happy to spend trillions of dollars around the world on their military operations, just leaving ordinary people. People like these poor East Palestine in Ohio,” said US politician Tulsi Gabbard.

  Residents heard the first official messages that it is better to drink bottled water only on the 10th day after the accident. “The EPA didn’t seem to be doing any water tests, and the railroad company that made it happen hired some office to do all the tests. It’s the same type of office that BP hired. Remember, 12 years ago they told us that the water in the Gulf of Mexico is in perfect order after BP’s towers with trillions of tons of oil flew into the air?!” says one of the locals.

  What happened in Ohio, how serious the damage, whether there will be compensation – a queue for answers to these questions lined up at the school gym, where the townspeople gathered. But no one came to see them. The management of the railway company sent a letter – they are afraid for the safety of their employees, so somehow without them. The only representative of power was the local mayor, who is also a local resident. “I’m just the mayor of a town of 4,700 people. If you think I can fight the railroad giants and the federal government, then you’re out of your mind. I need help. I’m not ready for this,” he said.

  The railroad company sent one check for $1,200,000 to the entire city.

  “That’s not enough! Maybe this is just the beginning. Help is needed now from different places. Many are responsible for what happened. I was told that the bearings of the train overheated. Why did they overheat? Maybe because they were not properly maintained ?! All this needs to be investigated,” said Brad Venstrup, a member of the US House of Representatives from Ohio.

  Just a month and a half ago, railroad workers complained about how companies cut staff, those who stay, lengthen shifts, and even lengthen trains, giving a damn about the safety of transportation. There were more accidents under the new Minister of Transport. Biden gave the job to Pete Buttigieg. The pride of the administration is the first openly gay minister. In his speeches, he does not even mention the disaster in Ohio. Other issues matter.

  “From generation to generation, we’ve heard too many stories about infrastructure when a neighborhood of color finally gets a project, but everyone who works on this project, doing well-paid jobs, looks like they’re not from the area” said Pete Buttigieg.

  Neither Secretary of Transportation Buttigieg nor President Biden came to Ohio and commented on the catastrophe extremely sparingly. Journalists suggested that if the tragedy with the train happened not in the United States, but in Ukraine, the American authorities would have shown greater sensitivity.