Bed bugs are some of the worst household pests to have because they can completely ruin your sleep schedule. Along with this, bed bugs can be extremely difficult to eradicate because they spend the majority of their time hiding and can survive for weeks without eating, which makes it difficult to kill the infestation completely. In this article we’ll be discussing does lysol kill bed bugs? And if so, is it an effective bed bug treatment method that we recommend? Or are you better off with more traditional bed bug treatment options? Learn more below!
Does Lysol Kill Bed Bugs?
Yes, lysol does kill bed bugs because it has active ingredients such as ethanol, ethyl alcohol and isopropyl alcohol which is toxic to bed bugs and other insects. That being said, lysol isn’t a recommended bed bug treatment, because lysol only kills when a large amount is physically sprayed onto bed bugs.
What’s In Lysol?
Lysol is in just about every household in the country, so it’s safe to say it doesn’t contain any ingredients that are particularly harmful to humans, so how would it be harmful to bed bugs?
The most harmful ingredients to bed bugs that is inside lysol would be the ethanol and the isopropyl alcohol which is toxic to bed bugs, but not toxic to humans at this ratio. That being said, we definitely don’t recommend consuming or getting lysol products in your eyes.
Why Don’t We Recommend Using Lysol To Kill Bed Bugs?
Although Lysol does technically kill bed bugs, we don’t recommend you use it as a bed bug treatment plan.
Lysol kills bed bugs moderately effectively when Lysol is doused on the bed bugs directly. But because bed bugs are so good at hiding, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to directly spray every single bed bug in your home with Lysol.
Along with this, bed bugs can repopulate extremely quickly, so it’s very important to kill an entire colony at a single time, because if you don’t kill the entire population, then the remaining bed bugs will simply repopulate and you’ll be right back at step one.
What Bed Bug Treatments Do We Recommend Instead of Lysol?
Bed bug can be extremely difficult to completely eliminate because they are excellent at hiding, along with this, female bed bugs can lay between 1-7 eggs per day after feeding (1), which means they’ll reproduce extremely quickly if they aren’t completely eliminated.
Generally speaking, the best treatment option for bed bugs is going to be a heat treatment. Bed bug heat treatments such as using a bed bug steamer are more effective because the heat kills bed bugs who are hiding in the crevices that a traditional spray treatment can’t get into. This ensures that the entire colony of bed bugs is killed rather than just the ones you can see at the time of treatment.
If you don’t want to use a bed bug steamer, you can give a bed bug fogger a shot. Although these don’t use heat treatments, they do a better job of dispersing the treatment into all the areas that bed bugs might be hiding in compared to a traditional liquid treatment.
Final Thoughts On Bed Bugs and Lysol
Although it might be tempting to solve your bed bug infestation with Lysol since you probably have the product on hand, but it’s just not going to be an effective treatment! We recommend you use a more effective bed bug treatment rather than trying to do a DIY treatment.
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