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Rodenticides are a category of pest control chemicals intended to kill rodents. Rodents are difficult to kill with poisons because their feeding habits reflect their place as scavengers. They will eat a small bit of something and wait, and if they don't get sick, they continue. An effective rodenticide must be tasteless and odorless in lethal concentrations, and have a delayed effect. Anticoagulants are defined as chronic (death occurs after 1 - 2 weeks post ingestion of the lethal dose, rarely sooner), single-dose (second generation) or multiple of the vitamin K cycle, resulting in inability to produce essential blood-clotting factors (mainly coagulation factors II (prothrombin), VII (proconvertin), IX (Christmas factor) and X (Stuart factor)). In addition to this specific metabolic disruption, toxic doses of 4-hydroxycoumarin or 4-hydroxythiacoumarin and indandione anticoagulants cause damage to tiny blood vessels (capillaries), increasing their permeability, causing diffuse internal bleedings (haemorrhagias). These effects are painless[citation needed] and gradual, developing over several days. In final phase of the intoxication, the exhausted rodent collapses in hypovolemic circulatory shock or severe anemia and dies calmly. Rodenticidal anticoagulants are either first generation agents (4-hydroxycoumarin type warfarin, coumatetralyl; indandione type pindone, diphacinone, chlorophacinone), generally requiring higher concentrations (usually between 0.005 and 0.1%) and consecutive intake over days in order to accumulate the lethal dose, and less toxic than second generation agents, which are derivatives of 4-hydroxycoumarin (difenacoum, brodifacoum, bromadiolone and flocoumafen) or difethialone (4-hydroxy-1-benzothiin-2-one, sometimes incorrectly referred to as 4-hydroxy-1-thiocoumarin, see heterocyclic compounds).
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