Insects in the City: Guidelines for killing bed bugs in laundry

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The nice thing about an emergency pest problem, like the current bed bug epidemic, is that such problems attract a lot of attention from the research community. A few weeks ago I reported new research from the Wang laboratory at Rutgers University on some interesting facts about bed bug infestations in high rise apartments. In the same journal two British scientists from the University of Sheffield, R. A. Naylor and C. J. Boase, report on another aspect of bed bug management...how to kill bed bugs in bedding and clothing using laundering procedures.

Knowing how to dis-infest clothing is important to pest control, because, as the authors so carefully explain, bedbugs "may seek harborage among clothing stored close to the bed, or may be entangled with bed linen while it is being changed. " And, "once associated with clothing or linen, there is a risk that bed bugs may then escape insecticide treatments, and may be transported to new locations."

Although there have been many recommendations on the Internet and in print concerning how to dis-infest laundry, Naylor and Boase point out that such recommendations are often vague or conflicting and have been based on little formal research. So they set out to look at the temperatures and conditions necessary to ensure 100% mortality of adult, nymph and egg stages of bed bugs.

To do this they took laboratory reared bed bugs and sealed them in cotton bags. These bags were then placed among sheets or in the pockets of clothing to assess mortality of standard cleaning methods. The results were enlightening and should help in recommendations for how your customers can ensure maximum effectiveness of methods to disinfest household articles.

A summary of the results of this study include the following:

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Insects in the City: Guidelines for killing bed bugs in laundry

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