Question from april hendrik
We recently found bed bugs in our home. They are a serious problem! It is very difficult to eradicate them and then it is easy to be re-infested. We live in a city that is the worst for bed bugs, west of the Mississippi. Two libraries have had infestations recently. My daughter told me that a friend of hers, who lives in an apartment, has bed bug problems. Bed bugs can also hitchhike on clothing, shoes and purses when a person is out and about. Our daughter brought them into the house after travelling this summer.
So we’re treating the present problem and trying to make our home bed bug unfriendly for the future.
I would like to buy mattress encasements that are bed bug proof and non-toxic. They can bite through a “normal” encasement and can wriggle through the zippers. The ones that I have found that are bed bug proof, have polyester or vinyl in them and have “water-proof” on the label. I don’t think that cotton barrier cloth would do the trick. I do not want bed bugs hiding in my mattress and boxsprings and biting me at night!
Another thing that is recommended is large Ziploc bags for storage of bedding and clothing, also plastic storage containers, sealed with duct tape for longterm storage. There are other “bags” made of plastic or vinyl for putting in drawers. I haven’t heard of any nylon containers or bags that are bed bug proof.
I need to make my home bed bug “safer” but as non-toxic as possible. It has been very expensive to treat for them. We used thermal treatment for the house and yet even that is not foolproof, so we have an eye out for them. We threw away two couches because they were older and infested.
Do you have any suggestions for mattress encasements and bug proof storage of clothes, etc.? This is a very horrible situation we’re trying to deal with, without “plasticiizing” the whole house.
Debra’s Answer
If you need to encase things in plastic, polyethylene is the safest plastic. I don’t have any information on whether or not it would be bedbug proof.
Something that would probably be bedbug proof is Reflectix. It’s sold at Home Depot and Lowe’s. It’s made for insultation, but you can use it for anything. It is a sheet of foil sandwiched between two pieces of polyethylene. If you were to wrap your mattress in Relectix and hold it together with foil tape…I don’t see that a bed bug could get in or out.
I’d think that a mattress would mold if completely sealed in plastic. But that’s just a guess— a mattress need to breathe.
I bought a Verilux UV Vacuum from Amazon years ago for sofa and bed mite allergy control. I never had bed bugs but they claim the UV kills them. I just looked online at Amazon and there are many UV Vacs now since I purchased mine.
‘National Allergy’ see web site, sells zippered cloth only mattress and pillow encasings that are bed bug and dust mite proof. Fabric is tightly woven , no plastic.