Denatured alcohol and kerosene from bedbugs are used by the people, perhaps more often than any other recipes. It is difficult to say how many private houses and apartments were doomed to a persistent stench due to the fact that the owners prefer these products to more modern and effective insecticidal preparations, but the fact remains: kerosene and denatured alcohol are widely used to kill bedbugs even today, with all their shortcomings.
And there are really many disadvantages of these funds:
- both kerosene and denatured alcohol have a strongly pronounced, persistent and unpleasant odor;
- both substances can harm the health of the person performing the treatment;
- Denatured alcohol and kerosene are very flammable - when treating a room from bedbugs, the risk of a fire in it increases.
However, with all these serious shortcomings, these funds also have the main advantage: accessibility. Both kerosene and technical alcohol can be bought almost anywhere, and the price for them is lower than the cost of even the cheapest insecticidal preparations.
But how effective kerosene and denatured alcohol are in the fight against bedbugs - you still need to figure it out ...
The effect of kerosene on bedbugs
Kerosene acts on bedbugs both as a deterrent and as a means of mechanical damage to their respiratory tract.
It is known that insects breathe through the so-called spiracles, which are found in large numbers on their body.Kerosene, being able to well wet the chitinous cover of the bug, easily envelops the parasites with a thin film, flowing into the spiracles and, thereby, clogging them.
That is, in fact, the bugs, upon contact with kerosene, die from a lack of oxygen - almost the same mechanism of action is observed when lice are removed with kerosene.
But all this is in theory. In practice, kerosene is far from being so effective against bedbugs. And that's why:
- To reliably destroy bedbugs, they must be literally doused with kerosene, since otherwise there is no guarantee that the parasites will be completely moistened with the substance.
- It is not difficult to douse an individual bug with kerosene or even spray liquid on a nest of parasites, but it is almost impossible to treat all the insects in the room in this way. This means that a significant part of the bedbugs in the room will still remain alive.
- And finally, kerosene is not able to destroy bedbug eggs.
As a result, bedbug kerosene can be used either as a deterrent - insects really shy away from its smell - or for direct treatment of discovered nests, when a large number of bedbugs can be poured over a small area with kerosene. But even here there are some nuances: bedbug nests are most often located on mattresses and in upholstered furniture, for which filling with kerosene will be the last step before throwing it away.
Review
“In our village, my grandfather lived like that, he only worked with such sadistic methods. It will not be mentioned on the forum how he drove rats, but he poisoned bedbugs with kerosene. And so that his house on the street stank like a canister. I don’t know if it helped him or not, but my grandparents started using Dichlorvos as soon as he appeared.They immediately said that it is much more efficient and simpler than kerosene.”
See also our bed bug experiments:We catch bedbugs and test different means on them - see the results...
Olga, Borisoglebsk
Therefore, for all its potential danger to bedbugs, kerosene is hardly worth considering as a tool that will help eliminate parasites in the house.
And further: Since bedbugs drink blood, can they carry AIDS or hepatitis from one person to another? Let's figure it out...
Denatured alcohol and its effectiveness
Denatured alcohol, despite completely different chemical properties, acts on bedbugs in almost the same way as kerosene, and has the same advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, due to its high volatility, denatured alcohol is generally less effective than kerosene (it will evaporate faster from the surface).
A bug that gets into a bottle of technical alcohol will certainly die.But the parasite, living in a room and slightly sprinkled with denatured alcohol, will come to its senses for some time, but will not die, and sooner or later will return to what it was decided to fight with it - it will again drink human blood.
How denatured alcohol and kerosene will definitely work against bedbugs
Denatured alcohol and kerosene from bedbugs work most reliably as repellents.
- If parasites have been found in the room, the sofa and bed should be carefully checked. If there are no bedbugs here, but they are hiding in other places, you just need to treat the furniture legs with kerosene or denatured alcohol. Until the remedy disappears, the bugs on these legs will not be able to crawl up and bite a person.
- If bugs are destroyed by thermal methods - boiling water and steam - then it is with the help of kerosene or denatured alcohol that they can be obtained from places that cannot be reached with a jet from a kettle. For example, kerosene can be poured behind the baseboard or into the cracks of the parquet, and then simply mechanically crush the insects running out of there or collect them with a vacuum cleaner.
Finally, with the help of denatured alcohol and kerosene (or turpentine), you can protect yourself for several days even in a seriously contaminated room - the floor around the beds and sofas is carefully processed by means of which linen and pillows are changed. Within three to four days, well-fed bugs will be afraid to run through the "barrier" and people will be able to sleep peacefully.
Review
“In our place, the bugs appeared somehow imperceptibly, they began to bite first me, then my husband. Even before the normal remedy, the plinth was poured with denatured alcohol - from there this muck climbed like pus from a wound. When my husband started to crush them, I almost threw up. I said that I would not survive this in the whole apartment. The stench was like at some service station.We ended up calling a team of exterminators, I went to my mother, and my husband stayed with them to supervise the work. When I returned, the bedbugs were gone.”
Inna, Stary Oskol
And it is absolutely certain that kerosene and alcohol work in conjunction with an effective insecticidal drug. So, for example, with denatured alcohol or kerosene, you can treat the most inaccessible places, driving insects out of there, and then poison them in open spaces with an inexpensive aerosol such as Dichlorvos-Neo or Raptor.
Important!
Popular folk recipes in which kerosene or methylated spirits are mixed with naphthalene are dangerous to use! Not only do the bases themselves irritate and even burn the respiratory tract, but naphthalene, according to doctors, can lead to the development of cancer. Such mixtures can be much more dangerous than bedbug bites.
And further: We got to the TOP remedy for bugs Executioner and tested it both in the tail and in the mane - watch the video...
Safety measures during work and disadvantages of the method
But if kerosene or methylated spirits have already been chosen to fight bedbugs (say, you decide to experiment), when using them, you should strictly observe safety measures:
- Wear a respirator and rubber gloves when working
- remove all people and animals from the treated area
- work away from sources of open flame.
It is impossible to treat clothes, carpets and upholstered furniture with kerosene or denatured alcohol - after that they may not be restored.
And if possible, it is better to do without kerosene and denatured alcohol at all. Still, with modern technology, these are no longer so much folk remedies as banal old-fashioned methods.
Today, there are many drugs for bedbugs, both safer and much more effective. Among them are Klopoveron, Get, Executioner, Agran, Xulat, Raptor from crawling insects, Kombat, Raid, Medilis-Ziper, etc.
Will karbofos help to completely get rid of bedbugs in the apartment?
A useful video with a visual demonstration of the work of the executioner insecticide
