If you have ever experienced bed bugs, you will have many questions about how to get rid of them. One of the main things we have seen asked is: Does alcohol kill bed bugs? Well, that is what we are going to take a look at in today’s article. Keep reading to find out the answer.
Bed bugs are small insects that, most of the time, live on furniture and bedding. They have bites that become itchy quickly, but the upside is that they rarely cause other health issues. However, if you have had them, the bites and itching are enough to frustrate you at trying to remove them from their homes. Not to mention the “squirm factor” that sleeping with bugs has.
Although they have the name bed bugs, that is not the only place they hide. They use anywhere they can to keep themselves safe, such as bed frames, mattresses, bedding, clothing, other furniture, behind pictures, and loose wallpaper.
Therefore, you can see why people get frustrated and want a quick way to kill off an infestation.
Does Alcohol Kill Bed Bugs?
Does alcohol kill bed bugs? Yes. But is it your best choice? No. Keep reading to find out why. There are two ways in which rubbing alcohol can kill bed bugs. They are:
- Rubbing alcohol is a solvent. – The word solvent is used for known chemicals to dissolve or dilute other substances. Bed bugs, along with a lot of other insects, have an exoskeleton.
Their primary bodily support is outside their bodies, unlike mammals, which have an interior or endoskeleton. Solvents are known to dissolve the exoskeleton of the bed bug. Thus rendering them pretty useless, if not killing them altogether. - It is also a desiccant. – A desiccant is a substance that absorbs water from its surroundings. You find them in packages inside items that need to be kept dry. As with all creatures on the planet, bed bugs contain a high amount of water.
Therefore, using a desiccant to remove water will help to kill them. However, studies have shown that “The survival and water loss profiles showed that starved C. hemipterus started to die after losing 35–45% of their body weights”.
As you can see from the abstract, only starved bed bugs started to die, even after losing a significant percentage of their water. Therefore, it stands to reason that if they get to feed before or after rubbing alcohol, they are much less likely to die from dehydration.
Also, exoskeletons do not grow with the bed bug’s body; they must shed their skeleton to reveal a new one underneath. So, if the alcohol only removes the outer layer of the exoskeleton, you are not likely to harm the bed bug too much, let alone kill it.
Benefits of Rubbing Alcohol to Kill Bed Bugs
Even though we have gone through some of the main points of using alcohol to kill bed bugs, we still need to look at the main benefits:
- Cost. – Isopropyl is relatively cheap in comparison to other pesticides.
- Availability. – It is also readily available in almost every drugstore in the country.
- It can be effective. – Will kill bed bugs.
While reading this, you may think, if it kills them and is easy and cheap to get, why isn’t everyone using it to remove their infestation? Well, the answer to that lies in the disadvantages that using it holds.
Disadvantages of Isopropyl to Kill Bed Bugs
As with everything, I am afraid that there are certainly some disadvantages to using rubbing alcohol to kill bed bugs:
Direct contact is required
Bed bugs are amazingly good at their job. They are nocturnal creatures; they hide exceptionally well during the day and only appear at night. Therefore, getting direct contact with them using alcohol is pretty tricky. As you have seen earlier in the article, they hide in many different places:
- Cracks in furniture.
- Behind wallpaper rips.
- Electrical outlets.
- Behind doorframes.
- Anywhere else, you can think.
As you can see from where they hide, it will be almost impossible to get alcohol into some of those places. Even if you do, you may ruin your furniture or wallpaper. Putting it into places like electrical outlets could also be downright dangerous. Also, as direct contact is required, you will only ever be able to kill the ones you can see or get to quickly. Therefore, any of the “hiding” bugs will survive.
Effectiveness
As you have seen from the link at the beginning of the article, you need to have some pretty specific conditions for alcohol to kill bed bugs. Not to mention those, though, the effectiveness of even direct contact is questionable. Rutgers University has done tests on using rubbing alcohol to kill bed bugs. Their research showed that the two most common concentrations of rubbing alcohol (70% and 90%) didn’t kill more than 50% of the bedbugs.
Although bed bugs are slower to reproduce than other insects, female bedbugs still lay about one egg daily. Let’s make a quick, makeshift scenario:
If the average mattress contains 60 bedbugs, half female, you will have 30 eggs produced daily. If you use rubbing alcohol to try and kill them, but it only eradicates 50%, you will still be left with 30 bugs, with 15 females. The next day, you will have 15 more eggs. So, from 60 bugs yesterday, you have 45 today. So, killing all the bedbugs in one mattress will mean treating it daily for about a week. And that is just your mattress.
Isopropyl is Highly Flammable
In December 2017, a woman tried to get rid of her infestation of bed bugs using alcohol in an apartment block in Cincinnati. Needless to say, it did not end well. The rubbing alcohol got ignited by a nearby heat source and set the apartment block on fire, leaving many people without homes. You may think that you will be more careful when trying it yourself. However, looking at the other disadvantages, is it worth the risk?
It is not just the liquid of the alcohol that is flammable; it is the vapours, too. Therefore, there are many ways to ignite those vapours in the home. Even some of the mist getting into the back of a tv could be extremely dangerous. So please, don’t use it.
Does Alcohol Kill Bed Bug Eggs
In the first sections of this article, we told you how rubbing alcohol kills bed bugs. The solvency and desiccant action of alcohol will also destroy the produced eggs. However, after reading the rest of the article, do you think it is the right thing to use? Hopefully not.
What Should You Do About Bed Bugs? – Alternative DIY Solutions
High heat treatment:
Launder-infested clothing or linens at the highest temperature recommended by the manufacturer and dry them at the highest allowed temperature.
Vacuuming:
Use a vacuum cleaner to remove bed bugs from furniture, upholstery, or carpets. Cover the nozzle attachment with a stocking to prevent vacuum infestation.
Steam cleaning:
Steam, at around 212 degrees Fahrenheit, can instantly kill bed bugs. Using a steamer on cracks, crevices, and seams in furniture, bedding, or other upholstered surfaces can help reduce bed bug populations.
Essential oils, Premo Guard Bed Bug, and Pest Peeve are all viable natural solutions for getting rid of bed bugs. Give these alternatives a try for effective results.
Conclusion
Although rubbing alcohol or Isopropyl may seem easy to remove bed bugs, it’s not. There are far too many disadvantages to using it even to bother trying. While the cost of some of the products designed to remove them may be higher than alcohol, they are certainly not better.
If you have a bed bug infestation, many products are available on the market, such as Bed Bug Killer Sprays that do great jobs at getting rid of infestations without the risks.
