Posted on 03/22/2017 8:03:33 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck
I have a buddy in rural Illinois who is living with and helping out his elderly mom, and he likes to cook. He cooks up a storm. They both enjoy the food.
The house they are in has begun to display a very bad bedbug infestation.
Both my buddy's mom and my buddy are freaking out. They don't have a lot of money but they are about to call Orkin.
I stopped to think about the science of bedbugs. Both my buddy and I did a lot of online research after discovering the infestation. But I think I have a scientific theory my buddy doesn't have.
According to a scientific paper I found that describes a study researching the repellent effect of DEET (as in Off! spray) upon bedbugs, the effect of DEET is balanced against the attractive effect of carbon dioxide. The conclusion was, as best I understood the implications, that 10% DEET would counterbalance the concentration of carbon dioxide in breath.
So that's good news for bedbug sufferers who have to survive it somehow. 10% DEET or more (and the sprays get a lot more concentrated than that) and the bedbugs are repelled from a person in spite of the attractive effect of that person's breath. A pain, but better than getting eaten up.
But then I started thinking about that carbon dioxide. And the way my buddy likes to cook on the gas stove in the place. And my brain went BINGO. What is the nominal "wattage" of a person? 80 watts at rest. What is the nominal "wattage" of a gas stove burner? 2800 plus (10,000 btu). And of a gas oven? Not sure, but it definitely is a lot. My conclusion is that if a bedbug smells carbon dioxide and it's lurking outside of an old, drafty house (and been dining on the blood of wildlife up to that point) it is going to think one gas stove burner smells like 2800/80 or 35 people. Might that seem better prospects to the bedbug than squirrels and raccoons and the like?
I've been urging my buddy to look into having the gas stove replaced with an electric one (with the appropriate wiring being done if necessary). I know he isn't a gas-only cooking snob; he used my own electric stove contentedly for years.
But what would FRee scientists think of this theory? I tried Googling gas stoves and bedbugs just for grins, and haven't seen a word about it.
I wonder if pestilences freak people out so much that they forget to reason? To the benefit of the business of exterminators? I'm suggesting to my buddy and his mom that they replace the stove as well as (if they must, and vacuuming and local spraying does not do enough) getting the house treated, so that the bedbug population isn't inadvertently replenished from the great outdoors in that drafty house.
My family, for many generations, have had gas stoves and NEVER has anyone of my immediate family members had ANY bedbugs; NOT EVER! And FYI....I live in the middle of the woods.
What time did happy hour end?
One other factoid my buddy turned up was that 1/6 of all homes have bed bugs. So maybe you are in the luckier 5/6. I’m not even sure all wild areas have them. If they cannot hide well enough during a cold freeze, they die.
For the bedbugs it apparently was 24/7
How about buying some foggers? These you can open and fill the apartment and let it stay for a few hours while you go out so you don’t breath the stuff, but the bugs do. It kills all bugs. Then you come back a few hours later, open all windows to air out the place.
Paranoid about bed bugs..hardly travel anymore
Sounds as plausible as anything... Tell your buddy to try this stuff.
https://www.diatomaceousearth.com/diatomaceous-earth-bed-bugs/
I understand many older people get them buying second hand stuff at a well known business. I don’t want to offend or admit to seeing it happen to a sweet old lady trying to stretch a dollar.
The web wisdom says that foggers don’t kill those bugs; the poison isn’t concentrated enough. Once they’re there, they have to be starved out (3 months at room temperature) or frozen out (well below freezing) or cooked out (well over 100F) or maybe directly sprayed out (a shag rug in the house is, I suspect, giving the bugs a snug place to live as well).
yeah I worry about hotels and motels....once in the room, I always pull the top spread away from where I’m going to sleep....I generally wash everything even if I didn’t wear it when I get home...
+1 on this ^^
Ny is infested with them...wouldnt be surprised if they were in the WH
If entrepreneurs can use redneck chemistry to whip up some crystal meth, my can't these folks whip up some DDT while they are at it? We have home brew beer, wine, whiskey, weed, meth, etc. Why can't these folks turn their lives around and put their skills to the service of all humanity?
People have a lot of shame hang-ups about bugs.
Bed bugs weren’t bed bugs before they were bed bugs, however. They were just another animal parasite.
There are predators of these things too, like centipedes and some spiders. Even cockroaches will eat them, making for an interesting competition in urban areas.
But our modern sanitation has gotten so good, ironically, that when people still do see bothersome bugs, they go EEK!
Leave Suitcase in bathtub. I want to go to vegas. Just going to mostly use stuff that I can throw away..like duffle bag type carry on.
That would be an interesting thing, and a lot more beneficial. The “official” story (Scientific American, which tends to be very trendy, e.g. supporting the global warming scare) is that the modern pyrethrin pesticides and DDT are about equally good. I don’t know to that depth. I think DDT got more of a bum rap than it deserved. It probably starved birds of their insect food when applied too broadly in nature, hence thinner eggshells and the like. There are places where insects are good, and it is silly to bug bomb those places. But that shouldn’t have ever kept it from being used in human dwellings. Sometimes the effects of these bans are very hard on people in the third world today.
Do people normally get bedbugs from natural wildlife around their house? I have never heard of that. I thought you normally get them from things to do with other people?
Freegards
Diatomaceous earth will kill the bugs. A good vacuuming will suck up the dead.
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