Cockroaches Are Attracted To Cardboard. Here’s Why.

You may want to recycle that stack of delivery boxes. No, really.

It turns out that cardboard is a common shelter for cockroaches, experts say.

“Cardboard is, interestingly, very attractive to cockroaches. It goes so far as the researchers who are doing work with cockroaches, we actually use cardboard as their harborage … that’s what we have them living in,” said Aaron Ashbrook, an assistant professor of urban and peri-urban entomology at Louisiana State University.

Now, not all cockroaches will make a home in cardboard, it depends on the species (more on that below). But the cockroaches that tend to infest homes unfortunately do like this material, and there are many reasons why.

First, cardboard is a food source for cockroaches, said Ashbrook. “I readily see it in my colonies. They will eat the cardboard. They will also consume the cardboard for water. So if it is wet, they can also get both food and water from cardboard,” Ashbrook added.

And since cardboard is absorbent, it can gather odors from their pheromones, too, which makes it an even more attractive surface, said Matt Frye, a rodent and structural pest management specialist at the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program at Cornell University.

Cardboard is also sound-deadening, said Frye, “So, if insects are in there and they’re moving around, you may not hear them.”

“Because people tend to store [cardboard] often in places that are overlooked or forgotten, they can be there for a long time and not be noticed, which allows their populations to grow and then spread,” Frye said.

And particularly with corrugated cardboard, which is the cardboard with ridges and grooves between its layers that most delivery packages come in, there is enough space for the cockroaches to actually live in those ridges and grooves, added Frye.

Seeing a cockroach scurry across your kitchen counter is gross for many reasons, and more importantly, is also a clear health hazard.

But, not all cockroaches carry the same risks as there are many different types of cockroaches. American cockroaches and German cockroaches tend to be the ones folks worry most about in their homes in the U.S.

The American cockroach is a big, reddish brown cockroach that is also called a water bug or a Palmetto bug, according to Frye, and they tend to live in sewers or damp environments. They are more common in warmer environments or during the summer months, added Ashbrook.

German cockroaches are more prevalent and more commonly found inside of homes, particularly in kitchens and in bathrooms, and tend to be a little smaller than American cockroaches and exist across the country.

But, both are “mechanical disease vectors. They typically inhabit unsanitary environments, whether that be sewer drains or decaying matter,” said Ashbrook.

Then, they crawl into home settings and often head to food-handling surfaces where they defecate and vomit, Ashbrook added.

“And when they do that, that is then depositing those pathogens that they carry both on their bodies and in their bodies onto our food and onto our surfaces,” Ashbrook said.

In some cases, this can cause contamination in humans, he said. “Although we have not necessarily found a smoking gun implication of specifically German cockroaches causing disease transmission, there is the potential for salmonella, E. coli and noroviruses to be transferred by American cockroaches,” said Ashbrook.

The most common issue that comes from a cockroach problem in your home is allergies, said Frye, and this is especially true for German cockroaches.

“That is the most abundant cockroach that people deal with, and it has allergens that affect people … those allergens are associated with their feces, their droppings, as well as their exoskeletons,” noted Frye.

“To add to this health effect, cockroaches are actually much worse for children to be around, and there has been some research to show that if children are exposed to cockroach allergens and their body parts that contain the allergens that they can develop asthma,” said Ashbrook. “So, this doesn’t happen with adults, but it can happen with children.”

The likelihood of having a cockroach in your home depends on where you live.

People in standalone homes in suburban and rural areas may have cardboard stored in a basement and never have a cockroach issue while someone living in a city where there’s shared sewers, shared utility lines and shared walls may face a pest problem, said Frye.

Nonetheless, there are prevention methods you can tailor for your needs depending on your environment.

The first step is awareness, said Frye. Once you understand that you could have cockroaches in your cardboard boxes, inspect them regularly.

“Not just leaving the pile there forever, but going down there and turning on the lights, and if you see things skitter, then you know that you might have to take action to address a pest issue,” Frye said.

While it’s wise to seal cracks and crevices in your home, it may not prevent a cockroach from getting in.

“An adult American cockroach can actually fit into a gap that is as high as two pennies stacked together,” said Ashbrook.

You can also spray preventative insecticides at the entry points of your home, “so that if a crawling insect were to try to get into the structure, they would contact that insecticide and then die.”

It’s also important to regularly clean your home, properly store food and take out the trash regularly, Ashbrook said. Cockroaches are attracted to decaying matter and food odors, which can all be found in a kitchen.

If your cockroach problem gets really bad, you can have a pest control company step in, too, Ashbrook added.

“The one thing that is important to know is that correct identification is really important,” said Frye. “There are a lot of cockroach species that can turn up in homes. There’s some that can actually fly to your lights at night if you live near a wooded area, and they can get into your home, but they do not infest homes.”

To figure out if you have a problematic cockroach in your home, you should aim to get correct and unbiased identification, Frye noted. You can do this by getting in touch with the land grant institution in your state, said Frye.

You can find this by searching “land grand institute” and your state to find a location near you. You’ll likely be able to send them pictures of the pests or visit them in-person with samples. They can help you determine if you’ve got a problem on your hands or a one-off bug.

“So, that’s definitely something to be aware of — not every cockroach is one that’s going to infest your home,” Frye said.

Ashbrook added that “there are a lot of cockroaches as well that aren’t as pestiferous as the American cockroach or the German cockroach.”

“A lot of them are just out in the environment, consuming decaying matter, and they don’t want anything to do with us,” Ashbrook noted. “However, those pest are of concern, and we should be aware of them and manage them when possible.”