turning bedbugs into deadbugs

koeselitz — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 12:00:58 -0800

Bedbug problem-- at the end of my rope. Help! DDT? Other solutions? About two weeks ago, which was a month after we moved into our apartment (in Brighton, MA), my girlfriend and I realized we had bedbugs. We're pretty clean, and we hadn't been there long, so the only signs were the bites and two bugs we found. We immediately did everything you're supposed to do-- plastic-bagged everything, threw away our furniture (an easy chair and a futon-- both the mattress and the frame), pulled everything away from the wall and had the exterminator come, and dry-cleaned or laundered every piece of fabric we own. Yesterday, three days after the extermination, we realized that we're still getting bitten.

Everything we read about these things seems to be true-- they're tenacious little fucks. They're making our lives somewhat miserable, and I can't really live like this anymore.

At this point, I want to try DDT. I know DDT is illegal for agricultural use, but I also know that it's not the most dangerous thing in the world for people, only mostly just for birds. I'm willing to be as safe as possible, but I need these buggers gone. Has anyone ever done this? What is the legality of this solution? What is its safety? I have a pet cat; will this just kill her (I imagine not, as I've heard that it's even relatively safe for mice)? How do I go about getting DDT? Are there any other sure ways?

(Also, by the way, I should remind everybody, given the question, that advising people to do illegal things on metafilter is usually a bad idea. My email is in my profile.)

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turning bedbugs into deadbugs