Frontline for humans? Prevention of human flea infestation.
May 31, 2013 2:13 PM Subscribe
Please help me prevent myself becoming regularly infested with human fleas.
I am a pale skinned, red haired native of the UK & have always been extremely attractive to biting insects. I plan to shortly go again to work for a charity serving poor communities in rural Romania. When I last did this (for several years) I had major problems with fleas & would like to find a better solution this time. The pertinent facts are as follows:
- I will have no pets & no carpets, which almost all the advice I can find from Googling is concerned with
- I am sure that the fleas are human fleas, not animal fleas, acquired from contact with people
- The fleas live on me & I can find them in my clothing if I sit still enough to feel them tickling me & look quickly.
- I seem to get a fresh infestation about every 6 weeks throughout the summer
- Previously the only way I could find to get rid of them was spend several hours putting all my clothes & bedding into plastic sacks & then the washing machine, having a deep bath, then spraying my room, bed, duvet, pillows etc. with insect spray.
This procedure is time consuming & means I touch & inhale a lot of insect spray, so I'd like to find a prevention method if possible.
I have seen this question from a few years ago suggesting that troops wore a flea collor in their belt. I have considered this & thought about dosing myself with Frontline but am reluctant to do this because I'm female & even though I'm getting on a bit now, it is still theoretically possible that I may have a child. I'm therefore reluctant to treat myself with any drugs not certified for human use. I would be happy to use medication or products that are intended for human use if it would address this problem. I've asked several pharmacists & a travel clinic but none of them have any experience outside of people travelling in typical vacation scenarios. Surely the armed forces & NGO staff in hot countries have come up with some tactics for dealing with this problem?
tl;dr I need a way to prevent myself getting infested with human fleas, rather than treating them once I have them, while working in a hot climate
I am a pale skinned, red haired native of the UK & have always been extremely attractive to biting insects. I plan to shortly go again to work for a charity serving poor communities in rural Romania. When I last did this (for several years) I had major problems with fleas & would like to find a better solution this time. The pertinent facts are as follows:
- I will have no pets & no carpets, which almost all the advice I can find from Googling is concerned with
- I am sure that the fleas are human fleas, not animal fleas, acquired from contact with people
- The fleas live on me & I can find them in my clothing if I sit still enough to feel them tickling me & look quickly.
- I seem to get a fresh infestation about every 6 weeks throughout the summer
- Previously the only way I could find to get rid of them was spend several hours putting all my clothes & bedding into plastic sacks & then the washing machine, having a deep bath, then spraying my room, bed, duvet, pillows etc. with insect spray.
This procedure is time consuming & means I touch & inhale a lot of insect spray, so I'd like to find a prevention method if possible.
I have seen this question from a few years ago suggesting that troops wore a flea collor in their belt. I have considered this & thought about dosing myself with Frontline but am reluctant to do this because I'm female & even though I'm getting on a bit now, it is still theoretically possible that I may have a child. I'm therefore reluctant to treat myself with any drugs not certified for human use. I would be happy to use medication or products that are intended for human use if it would address this problem. I've asked several pharmacists & a travel clinic but none of them have any experience outside of people travelling in typical vacation scenarios. Surely the armed forces & NGO staff in hot countries have come up with some tactics for dealing with this problem?
tl;dr I need a way to prevent myself getting infested with human fleas, rather than treating them once I have them, while working in a hot climate
Vacuuming is deadly to fleas at all stages:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071217111010.htm
posted by Dynex at 3:32 PM on May 31, 2013
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071217111010.htm
posted by Dynex at 3:32 PM on May 31, 2013
Apparently, "human flea" is a bit of a misnomer - the common flea uses many species of animal as a host, including chickens, dogs, cats, and rodents.
Since there are so many vectors that may lead to infestation, and since the flea lifecycle means that you're going to have eggs hatching regularly to cause recurring infestations, you might want to adopt some sort of concentric defense... Maybe somehow ensure wherever you're staying doesn't have any mice (would seem to be the chief vector)?
You can also pick up fleas from grass, so wear long shirt and pants?
Somehow protect clothes in bins or something?
Apparently salt works.
posted by KokuRyu at 3:33 PM on May 31, 2013 [1 favorite]
Since there are so many vectors that may lead to infestation, and since the flea lifecycle means that you're going to have eggs hatching regularly to cause recurring infestations, you might want to adopt some sort of concentric defense... Maybe somehow ensure wherever you're staying doesn't have any mice (would seem to be the chief vector)?
You can also pick up fleas from grass, so wear long shirt and pants?
Somehow protect clothes in bins or something?
Apparently salt works.
posted by KokuRyu at 3:33 PM on May 31, 2013 [1 favorite]
I think one of the reasons why vacuuming kills fleas is because the relative humidity of the interior of a vacuum bag will be quite low - the dust and dander will absorb water vapour, making things very dry.
posted by KokuRyu at 3:34 PM on May 31, 2013
posted by KokuRyu at 3:34 PM on May 31, 2013
DEET is the common active ingredient in every insect repellent I've ever heard of that was safe to apply to people. The Army version was called DEET because they didn't have use for a brand-name.
posted by Sunburnt at 3:38 PM on May 31, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Sunburnt at 3:38 PM on May 31, 2013 [1 favorite]
Yeah, there's no such thing as a human flea. Fleas are fleas.
* Bomb the house with a fogger-style pesticide.
* Do it again a week later, to get the more recently hatched fleas.
* Spray your backyard.
* If there's an animal around, use both Advantage/Frontline and a drug called Program.
Program is the key. Fleas go for blood in order to get energy to lay eggs, and then the adult flea dies of natural causes at the end of its life cycle. Program makes the eggs sterile. What you're doing is collapsing the entire population of fleas, rather than trying to kill each one individually with a pesticide.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:11 PM on May 31, 2013 [1 favorite]
* Bomb the house with a fogger-style pesticide.
* Do it again a week later, to get the more recently hatched fleas.
* Spray your backyard.
* If there's an animal around, use both Advantage/Frontline and a drug called Program.
Program is the key. Fleas go for blood in order to get energy to lay eggs, and then the adult flea dies of natural causes at the end of its life cycle. Program makes the eggs sterile. What you're doing is collapsing the entire population of fleas, rather than trying to kill each one individually with a pesticide.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:11 PM on May 31, 2013 [1 favorite]
I have heard good things about this household spray that kills fleas.
Furthermore there are essential oils that fleas apparently dislike, lavender and citrus for example, this won't kill them but repel them.
We used to spray DEET on our mosquito nets, hammocks and clothes when I was working in a tropical climate, but that was because of mosquitoes. DEET dissolves waterproof coating though.
You could spray some stuff (essential oils or an insect spray) around your house and maybe on your clothes (if you feel comfortable having some sort of "work outfit" that would be easier, washing gets the stuff out.) I would wear long sleeves/pants (sprayed) and change into another set of clothes at home.
Oh, lavender essential oil is toxic to cats, if there are many strays in your area maybe try the citrus first.
posted by travelwithcats at 5:41 PM on May 31, 2013
Furthermore there are essential oils that fleas apparently dislike, lavender and citrus for example, this won't kill them but repel them.
We used to spray DEET on our mosquito nets, hammocks and clothes when I was working in a tropical climate, but that was because of mosquitoes. DEET dissolves waterproof coating though.
You could spray some stuff (essential oils or an insect spray) around your house and maybe on your clothes (if you feel comfortable having some sort of "work outfit" that would be easier, washing gets the stuff out.) I would wear long sleeves/pants (sprayed) and change into another set of clothes at home.
Oh, lavender essential oil is toxic to cats, if there are many strays in your area maybe try the citrus first.
posted by travelwithcats at 5:41 PM on May 31, 2013
Maybe you could dust your clothing/around your bed/etc with diatomaceous earth? It's a mechanical pesticide, which is to say a very very fine powder that gets into their joints and other areas of their body and kills them.
posted by corn_bread at 6:40 PM on May 31, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by corn_bread at 6:40 PM on May 31, 2013 [1 favorite]
It is not good to inhale diatomaceous earth, according to my vet. I doused my house in a desparate attempt to control my dogs flea allergy and ended up not being able to breathe in my home. It was also hard to get rid of once it got into everything.
How about an essential oil like peppermint or lavender. Deet also works but it's Deet and I can only put so much of that stuff on before it creeps me out.
posted by cairnoflore at 8:01 PM on May 31, 2013 [1 favorite]
How about an essential oil like peppermint or lavender. Deet also works but it's Deet and I can only put so much of that stuff on before it creeps me out.
posted by cairnoflore at 8:01 PM on May 31, 2013 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Many thanks for all the helpful suggestions so far. I'm really keen to know if anyone has heard of any equivalent to Frontline / Program or flea collars which are for humans?
To be clear - I am picking up the fleas from poor children & they are living on me. I'd like to not limit my contact with the children in order to avoid fleas. I'd also quite like to not cover myself in DEET everyday for the whole of the summer months. We've come up with other solutions to avoid dousing our pets in insecticide everyday, why not humans?!
posted by cantthinkofagoodname at 11:36 PM on May 31, 2013
To be clear - I am picking up the fleas from poor children & they are living on me. I'd like to not limit my contact with the children in order to avoid fleas. I'd also quite like to not cover myself in DEET everyday for the whole of the summer months. We've come up with other solutions to avoid dousing our pets in insecticide everyday, why not humans?!
posted by cantthinkofagoodname at 11:36 PM on May 31, 2013
Best answer: Technically, Frontline is dousing your (and my) pet in insecticide. The active ingredients are basically insecticides that are absorbed into the oil glands in animal skin, which then secretes on to skin and fur over the course of a month, bestowing its pest-killing properties. Technically the pests still bite but they die and fall off before latching-on long enough to transmit disease/ reproduce etc.
All this to say, I'm afraid this is why the human workaround is topical application of insect repellent such as DEET (DEET is a repellent not an insecticide). If it helps your squick factor, keep in mind two things: DEET comes in different concentrations (which correlates with longevity of effectiveness) and can be applied to your clothes and not just to skin.
If the temperature allows, I would wear long pants and long-sleeved shirt. Spray a lower concentration of DEET on the upper body and use as high a concentration as possible on your shoes, socks, and pant legs. Use a hippie repellent on exposed skin such as the face, neckline, hands, wrists.
Also you can purchase repellent-treated clothing.
I would be more creeped out applying Frontline to myself rather than applying DEET everyday
posted by kitkatcathy at 3:15 AM on June 1, 2013
All this to say, I'm afraid this is why the human workaround is topical application of insect repellent such as DEET (DEET is a repellent not an insecticide). If it helps your squick factor, keep in mind two things: DEET comes in different concentrations (which correlates with longevity of effectiveness) and can be applied to your clothes and not just to skin.
If the temperature allows, I would wear long pants and long-sleeved shirt. Spray a lower concentration of DEET on the upper body and use as high a concentration as possible on your shoes, socks, and pant legs. Use a hippie repellent on exposed skin such as the face, neckline, hands, wrists.
Also you can purchase repellent-treated clothing.
I would be more creeped out applying Frontline to myself rather than applying DEET everyday
posted by kitkatcathy at 3:15 AM on June 1, 2013
Best answer: The active ingredient in most repellent-treated clothing is permethrin. You can purchase permethrin sprays to apply to your own clothing (US and UK products) and it lasts for a few washings.
I learned about the sprays last year from a metal-detecting friend who uses it to kill ticks but it does work for fleas. It is highly toxic to cats and fish, and should never be applied directly to people's skin.
posted by bCat at 3:58 AM on June 1, 2013
I learned about the sprays last year from a metal-detecting friend who uses it to kill ticks but it does work for fleas. It is highly toxic to cats and fish, and should never be applied directly to people's skin.
posted by bCat at 3:58 AM on June 1, 2013
Another experimental idea that just popped into my head: would it be possible to use flea shampoo (for humans or pets) on a daily basis (for hands & body)?
posted by travelwithcats at 4:50 AM on June 1, 2013
posted by travelwithcats at 4:50 AM on June 1, 2013
Best answer: Stewed a little bit on this one overnight.. Yes there are human fleas, and if you're finding that you're actually getting infested rather than just bitten when around animals, they're the ones you're likely to be dealing with.
Beyond that, you might want to think about this strategically. On occasions when I've worked in areas where the mosquitoes, sandflies, ticks, lice, fleas and mites (chiggers) carry diseases that kill people, we've tended to take fairly extreme precautions. But there's been a distinct method to our madness..
Looking at armed forces and CDC advisories, Romania doesn't seem to have a lot of the really nasty arboviruses or anything, but it has some.
Anyway, full scale precautions go something like this -
1. If culturally appropriate consider shaving. Everything. A head scarf or hat might help to deal with the weirdness of being bald. If you're unwilling to shave, think about cutting your hair very short. It just means less environment on you for bugs to live in and less use of toxic shampoos.
2.. On arrival, sterilize your living quarters. Vacuum, clean and spray with a residual insecticide. Flea or cockroach bombs might do the trick. The idea is that spraying infrequently with something residual is better for you than having to spray every time you come home.
3. Furnish minimally with materials that won't harbour live arthropods/insects or their eggs. Avoid carpets, use hard furniture (at least as much as you can stand). Spray your mattress and pillow, wrap both in bed bug style rubber casings.
4. Sleep under a permethrin treated mosquito net (camping stores, travel medicine clinics) - buy a noseeum grade mesh one with really small holes. Tuck it in tight around your bed before you sleep. It'll both kill things trying to get in and anything that jumps off you and hits the mesh at night.
5. Do use permethrin treated clothing. Be aware that it can be a whole cheaper buying permethrin powder from vets and treating your own clothes than either buying pretreated clothing, or buying powder from travel medicine clinics or camping stores.
6. Unless it's culturally inappropriate (or just too hot) when working, blouse your boots, tuck your shirt in, button up your collar and cuffs.
7. Keep (multiple) separate sets of work and home clothing. Treat both, but change the moment you get home, and place your work clothing in a well sealed container that you've previously treated with the same residual insecticide you used in your house/flat/hut/tent.
8. Wash yourself immediately after getting home. Lice shampoos are good for this, but they are all toxic (as is just about everything recommended here) and you shouldn't be using any one chemical category of shampoo consistently. Rotate through them. From personal experience, the one "hippy" version that seems to work fairly well is tea trea oil based shampoo. Getting one that's strong enough to work and still be a little bit residual, but not over the top (in terms of toxicity or smell) is the trick.
9. Change into home clothes for evenings. Treated light cotton or silk is good in warm environments.
10. The idea with points 7, 8, and 9 is to maintain a kind of sterile field between outside your home and inside. It's never completely possible, but to the extent you can make it work, it does substantially reduce risk.
11. Be aware that permethrin is toxic when wet, will wash out of your clothes fairly rapidly, and that you'll need to retreat everything from time to time. Take (or arrange to have delivered) spare sachets of powder, and wear rubber gloves when you're treating your clothes and netting. Dispose of your soaking water away from anywhere it might get into water courses. Be aware that sweating heavily in permethrin treated clothing wets it so you can expect additional risk of toxicity if you're in a hot environment.
12. DEET is definitely the go as a repellent. But it is also toxic when used long term, in high concentrations and over large areas of your body. Try to use your clothes as your main defence, and apply the DEET only on exposed areas of skin. Again, rotate occasionally to a hippy repellent like tea tree oil or pyrethrins (but note that even tea tree oil and the pyrethrins are toxic in very high doses.)
13. If you have a specific zoonotic or vector borne disease prevalent in the area in which you'll be working, consider taking a prophylactic treatment if one's available. This is something you need to talk over with a doctor, preferably a travel medicine specialist, because they'll be up to date on what's bad where you're going, and will be able to help you weigh the risks of the disease v. the medication.
14. Yes, there may be a Frontline for people. It's Ivermectin. It can be used topically or internally. But internal use for just about anything except worms and river blindness is not FDA approved, way off list, and potentially a really really bad idea. Even regular external use may be dangerous. Talk to a doctor.
posted by Ahab at 5:07 PM on June 1, 2013
Beyond that, you might want to think about this strategically. On occasions when I've worked in areas where the mosquitoes, sandflies, ticks, lice, fleas and mites (chiggers) carry diseases that kill people, we've tended to take fairly extreme precautions. But there's been a distinct method to our madness..
Looking at armed forces and CDC advisories, Romania doesn't seem to have a lot of the really nasty arboviruses or anything, but it has some.
Anyway, full scale precautions go something like this -
1. If culturally appropriate consider shaving. Everything. A head scarf or hat might help to deal with the weirdness of being bald. If you're unwilling to shave, think about cutting your hair very short. It just means less environment on you for bugs to live in and less use of toxic shampoos.
2.. On arrival, sterilize your living quarters. Vacuum, clean and spray with a residual insecticide. Flea or cockroach bombs might do the trick. The idea is that spraying infrequently with something residual is better for you than having to spray every time you come home.
3. Furnish minimally with materials that won't harbour live arthropods/insects or their eggs. Avoid carpets, use hard furniture (at least as much as you can stand). Spray your mattress and pillow, wrap both in bed bug style rubber casings.
4. Sleep under a permethrin treated mosquito net (camping stores, travel medicine clinics) - buy a noseeum grade mesh one with really small holes. Tuck it in tight around your bed before you sleep. It'll both kill things trying to get in and anything that jumps off you and hits the mesh at night.
5. Do use permethrin treated clothing. Be aware that it can be a whole cheaper buying permethrin powder from vets and treating your own clothes than either buying pretreated clothing, or buying powder from travel medicine clinics or camping stores.
6. Unless it's culturally inappropriate (or just too hot) when working, blouse your boots, tuck your shirt in, button up your collar and cuffs.
7. Keep (multiple) separate sets of work and home clothing. Treat both, but change the moment you get home, and place your work clothing in a well sealed container that you've previously treated with the same residual insecticide you used in your house/flat/hut/tent.
8. Wash yourself immediately after getting home. Lice shampoos are good for this, but they are all toxic (as is just about everything recommended here) and you shouldn't be using any one chemical category of shampoo consistently. Rotate through them. From personal experience, the one "hippy" version that seems to work fairly well is tea trea oil based shampoo. Getting one that's strong enough to work and still be a little bit residual, but not over the top (in terms of toxicity or smell) is the trick.
9. Change into home clothes for evenings. Treated light cotton or silk is good in warm environments.
10. The idea with points 7, 8, and 9 is to maintain a kind of sterile field between outside your home and inside. It's never completely possible, but to the extent you can make it work, it does substantially reduce risk.
11. Be aware that permethrin is toxic when wet, will wash out of your clothes fairly rapidly, and that you'll need to retreat everything from time to time. Take (or arrange to have delivered) spare sachets of powder, and wear rubber gloves when you're treating your clothes and netting. Dispose of your soaking water away from anywhere it might get into water courses. Be aware that sweating heavily in permethrin treated clothing wets it so you can expect additional risk of toxicity if you're in a hot environment.
12. DEET is definitely the go as a repellent. But it is also toxic when used long term, in high concentrations and over large areas of your body. Try to use your clothes as your main defence, and apply the DEET only on exposed areas of skin. Again, rotate occasionally to a hippy repellent like tea tree oil or pyrethrins (but note that even tea tree oil and the pyrethrins are toxic in very high doses.)
13. If you have a specific zoonotic or vector borne disease prevalent in the area in which you'll be working, consider taking a prophylactic treatment if one's available. This is something you need to talk over with a doctor, preferably a travel medicine specialist, because they'll be up to date on what's bad where you're going, and will be able to help you weigh the risks of the disease v. the medication.
14. Yes, there may be a Frontline for people. It's Ivermectin. It can be used topically or internally. But internal use for just about anything except worms and river blindness is not FDA approved, way off list, and potentially a really really bad idea. Even regular external use may be dangerous. Talk to a doctor.
posted by Ahab at 5:07 PM on June 1, 2013
I sprayed myself with Frontline being infested with "human fleas", it seemed to be effective, I am not sure because they were so many that it was almost irrelevant.
I was abroad and exposed for long being near a animal farm, there were dozens of pigeons coming and going from the farm, my building was infested, it was a real mess, I had to keep working and I didn't know exactly what I was dealing with because that type of infestation is not so common any more as it was in the past.
The specie that commonly infests pigs and other animals can easily infest humans, they are invisible to the naked eye unless they get really big. The kind that infested me was semi-transparent with a brownish head.
I also bought a big can of natural insecticide, called "Copyr Flyspray" it's pyrethrum, extracted from flowers. "Permethrine" should be the synthetic version of it.
Insecticide isn't the best approach to fight human fleas, you have to be really careful that they don't feed on you, you don't have a beard which is what they prefer but they can also feed on the pubic hair, the hair behind the neck, they will spread to the whole body even if you don't always feel them.
They can nest inside any wound, they give you a itch because they want the host to scratch and open the way to them. If the get inside it is very difficult to remove them. There are products for scabies that also work for flea nests. Another way to remove (and detect!) flea nests under the skin is with cotton and ammonia, careful with the eyes and not to inhale it. Ammonia isn't poisonous but it burns. In a concentration for home cleaning it won't harm the healthy skin but will melt the nests under it.
If you get infested outside of the house, remove all your clothes as soon as you get in and shove them in the freezer, then shower with ice cold water or boiling hot, stand on top of the drain. Do not walk around the house before you have cleaned yourself.
Bathing in hot water and salt will help to remove the eggs, to clear the skin. although bathing won't kill them and they will jump back on you from the water surface. The smaller the fleas, the hardest they drown.
Wash all the clothes in 60c and hoover the house continuously. If you don't have a vacuum cleaner use a duster like "swiffer" to remove all the fluffy stuff from the floors which they really like. Bleach the floors and every corner regularly.
50 fleas can turn into 250000 in one month, they key is not to give them a break, clean every bit of the body and the house.
Getting help from doctors can be really frustrating due to some misconceptions inside mainstream medicine, therefore if you do make sure that the doctor recognises your type of infestation and proves to know what he's talking about.
posted by Gioitaly77 at 11:57 AM on January 21, 2014
I was abroad and exposed for long being near a animal farm, there were dozens of pigeons coming and going from the farm, my building was infested, it was a real mess, I had to keep working and I didn't know exactly what I was dealing with because that type of infestation is not so common any more as it was in the past.
The specie that commonly infests pigs and other animals can easily infest humans, they are invisible to the naked eye unless they get really big. The kind that infested me was semi-transparent with a brownish head.
I also bought a big can of natural insecticide, called "Copyr Flyspray" it's pyrethrum, extracted from flowers. "Permethrine" should be the synthetic version of it.
Insecticide isn't the best approach to fight human fleas, you have to be really careful that they don't feed on you, you don't have a beard which is what they prefer but they can also feed on the pubic hair, the hair behind the neck, they will spread to the whole body even if you don't always feel them.
They can nest inside any wound, they give you a itch because they want the host to scratch and open the way to them. If the get inside it is very difficult to remove them. There are products for scabies that also work for flea nests. Another way to remove (and detect!) flea nests under the skin is with cotton and ammonia, careful with the eyes and not to inhale it. Ammonia isn't poisonous but it burns. In a concentration for home cleaning it won't harm the healthy skin but will melt the nests under it.
If you get infested outside of the house, remove all your clothes as soon as you get in and shove them in the freezer, then shower with ice cold water or boiling hot, stand on top of the drain. Do not walk around the house before you have cleaned yourself.
Bathing in hot water and salt will help to remove the eggs, to clear the skin. although bathing won't kill them and they will jump back on you from the water surface. The smaller the fleas, the hardest they drown.
Wash all the clothes in 60c and hoover the house continuously. If you don't have a vacuum cleaner use a duster like "swiffer" to remove all the fluffy stuff from the floors which they really like. Bleach the floors and every corner regularly.
50 fleas can turn into 250000 in one month, they key is not to give them a break, clean every bit of the body and the house.
Getting help from doctors can be really frustrating due to some misconceptions inside mainstream medicine, therefore if you do make sure that the doctor recognises your type of infestation and proves to know what he's talking about.
posted by Gioitaly77 at 11:57 AM on January 21, 2014
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Podkayne of Pasadena at 2:49 PM on May 31, 2013