I actually lived through a bedbug nightmare some years back. I thought I had a rash ... then I finally found one on me and we knew.
I lost all my furniture and bed and carpet and had to wash everything.
The exterminator used a pyrethrin-based spray and it took care of them.
However ... are they resistant to DDT? Because THIS is what they used to use before it was banned, right? I can understand banning it OUTSIDE because it caused bald eagle eggs to have shells that were too thin ... but inside? It seems as though common sense would say, “Ok... DDT works and we’re only going to use it inside... so let’s allow it.”
A bedbug sniffing dog was in my apartment some months ago and yippee...no bugs at all....
...but I also discovered that NOW they have a new heat treatment that let’s you keep your furniture.
That would have been good when I had them.
So can bedbugs become resistant to DDT? BTW, has Zuccotti Park become infested with bedbugs yet? Those filthy sleeping bags would make great homes for them.
That’s one of my concerns.
I have to travel a lot for my job so I stay in hotels/motels 2-3 nights a week.
I’m always worried I’m gonna bring some home with me.
(This would be far worse than when we had fleas in the house from our now departed cat.)
It turns out that isn't necessarily true.
Birds' eggs started to thin long before DDT.
DDT, Eggshells, and Me Cracking open the facts on birds and banned pesticides
It wasn't banned for "human health concerns" as the article says either.
It’s a good thing that those bed bugs, from millions of years ago, didn’t figure on the vacuum cleaner in their evolutionary development.
Enviromentalists invariably came up with this response to that point: "If we allow you to use it inside your home, any nesting bald eagles there will be jeopardized. No."