Rubbing Alcohol for Repelling Bed Bugs is the focus of this article. Just like every other unfortunate occurrence, preventing bed bugs is better than seeking for solutions, but when you are unable to prevent it, early intervention is key to avoiding the consequent discomfort it brings when infestation has become severe. To a very small extent, rubbing alcohol can repel bed bugs, but when there’s an infestation, you’d need to hire a pest control professional.
Effect of Rubbing Alcohol on Bed Bugs
Rubbing alcohol kills insects in different ways. It has solvent properties as well as desiccating properties, which makes it a drying agent. When in contact with insects, rubbing alcohol dissolves their cells, causing them to die. In the case of bed bug eggs, rubbing alcohol acts as a drying agent, and dries the eggs up.
Insects are allergic to surfaces treated with rubbing alcohol; hence, people have long bought into the idea of using the substance as bed bug repellant.
This long-held belief was however countered when Changlu Wang and his team of researchers at Rutgers University, evaluated different substances used as bed bug repellants. They notices that after four days of spraying rubbing alcohol on bed bugs, only 50% of the insects died, while the other half remained unharmed.
Fighting Bed Bugs with Rubbing Alcohol
Only 91% isopropyl alcohol (and higher concentrations) will effectively repel bed bugs. Weaker solutions of isopropyl alcohol may also suffice to an extent when you spray it thoroughly on the infested surfaces.
For lacquered, colored and varnished bed sheets, mattresses and furniture, test spray a very small area and check the effect of rubbing alcohol on the surface, as the substance may leave marks and tend to bleach some colors.
If you notice that only your bed is infested, try as much as you can to keep the bed bugs localized there. You can place the bed on a slick and sticky surface that’ll be slippery for the bugs to crawl away from. You may also coat the legs of the bed with petroleum jelly, apply a trip of duct tape on the legs, or place the bed on a glass surface. All these measures ensure that the bed bugs don’t move away from the bed to other areas of the house.
Spraying the braiding of your mattress, the box spring and headboard kills and discourages bed bugs from crawling out to bite you. You may also apply it thoroughly on the top of your mattress and blanket in the day, and then allow them to dry before you go to sleep.
Applying rubbing alcohol on your body can help repel bed bugs from biting you, but have in mind that rubbing alcohol, just like other alcohol products, is highly flammable, so don’t smoke or go around open flames when you apply rubbing alcohol on your skin.
You’d need to also repeat these procedures several times, because rubbing alcohol easily evaporates; hence repeated treatment is needed before one can get reasonable results.
Have a Long-Term Plan
As much as rubbing alcohol helps control the spread of bed bugs, so you can have some space to sleep peacefully, it isn’t enough to eliminate them. Also, the more you rely on rubbing alcohol, the more the bed bugs start to move away from the bed to other targeted areas of the house, thereby making it difficult for a pest control professional to pin point the infested areas that should be the focus of when commencing extermination procedure.
Too much rubbing alcohol on your mattress can also react with the chemical components of the insecticides applied by a pest control professional, thereby reducing its efficiency. Therefore, for the best result, while you use rubbing alcohol for some days, to keep the bugs away so you can sleep, make plans to get an exterminator to exterminate the bugs the right way. For more articles like “Rubbing Alcohol for Repelling Bed Bugs” Click Here…
