March 13, 2019 • 12 mins
We eradicated bedbugs so thoroughly in the 50s that generations who came later suspected they weren’t anymore real than jackalopes and snipes. But since we banned DDT, the pesticide that kills bedbugs best, they’re back again. And they’re terrible.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Josh, and this is short stuff. Okay, okay, bed
bugs gross the end. This is actually a request from
years back by our Disney buddy Brandon read we're finally
getting to it. I can't believe it hadn't didn't cover
(00:25):
this on a longer one, But now that I've read it, it's, uh,
usually like twelve minutes of material here exactly. Man. That's
why I languished for so long. But now finally that
we're doing short stuff, it's bed bugs. Time to rise
and shine. Right. So back in the day, um, there
used to be bed bugs. And then for a while there,
(00:48):
like in the nineteen fifties, um, we didn't have bedbugs
because we were pumping D d T into the house,
like basically dousing homes with poison. It wouldn't even bother
to leave. You just sit there and bake a cake.
Yeah yeah, and and everything would die and they were like,
that's great, everything's dead. And then people would be like, right,
(01:10):
I don't have any hair on my body, right, I
have cancer. So they said maybe we shouldn't pump D
d T into homes anymore, and they were like, you know,
that means bed bugs are going to come back, and
they're like, okay, we'll just deal with that. I saw
I saw mention somewhere. I think it was on a
history article. I can't remember that that some people didn't
believe they were real, like generations who were born after
(01:32):
they've been basically eradicated, but it never actually seen a
bed bug. I think they thought it was like a
jack loop or a snipe or something. Right, Well, if
you've been to New Yorker Philadelphia in the last like
twenty years, there's a chance that you know firsthand that
they're real, because those cities developed real problems with bed bugs,
and they think that they came back for a combination
(01:53):
of two reasons. One, the pesticides like DDT that we
were using were banned, not just discontinued, straight up band
You will be put in jail if you're a pest
control person using DDT. And then secondly, international travel became
more and more widespread. It wasn't just like a boat
trip anymore. It was a plane trip, and you could
(02:14):
spread bed bugs pretty fast. And the reason why they're
able to spread and um become a real problem is
because they are very very tough to get rid of
these days, since we've given up our number one enfource
or against bed bugs d d T. There's we'll get
to some ways to get rid of them later, just
suffice to say for now, they're very difficult to kill. Yeah,
(02:37):
so bed bugs, if you listen to our shows on
fleas and ticks, um, just get ready to be creeped
out again because, uh, they drink your blood, they eat
your body, uh, in your in your sleep. Uh, it's
really horrifying. They call them bed bugs because you can
find them a lot of times in your bed. But
they're not exclusive to beds. They can be anywhere. Are
(03:00):
in your apartment, they can be in your couch, Um,
they could be in the walls, they can be in
your clothes. Uh, they can be pretty much anywhere. Um,
if you're living in an apartment or you're staying in
a hotel in your next door neighbor has bed bugs,
then chances are they're going to make their way over
into your place as well. Yeah, because they're real tiny,
(03:20):
like adults are about a quarter of an inch long,
and they're real flat too. Yeah, like you can't, um,
you may not even see bed bugs. If you're like,
let me look on my sheets, you may see their poop,
which is a dead giveaway. It's rust colored. But these
these are these are tiny little things. Yeah, and so
they get everywhere they can hide very easily. And again
(03:42):
because you can't as fumigate um, like like baits and
traps don't work. Um. Most of the stuff we used
to kill them we don't use anymore. They're just really
difficult to get rid of. But they're really easy to
pick up. And one of the places where you pick
them up is a tell room. You can pick them
up for everywhere from the the mattress and the sheets, um,
(04:05):
to the luggage rack or the floor. UM. So you
want to be really I think a lot of people
investigate their hotel room before they unpack, and one of
the things you want to look for is along the
seams of the mattress and in the folds of the sheets.
Are looking for that rust colored poop or the former
shells of these things. Because they scurry away pretty fast
(04:27):
when they are found out, So you might not see them,
but you can see those telltale signs of them. I
have never looked for bed bugs in any hotel room.
I haven't either, But now that I know all this,
I don't know that I'm not going to do very certainly,
yes you will, um so while you're sleeping they um
like it tick or flee. They they will stick their
little syringe uh in their mouth and they will stick
(04:51):
it into your skin and they will suck your blood
for three to ten minutes. It's about all it takes.
You're not gonna feel it necessarily. It's really an annoyance.
It's not gonna like um like, it doesn't give you
a disease, but it uh, it can give you like
a rash, and it can make you itchy, and it
might swell up just a little bit, but a little
(05:13):
anahistamine and you're probably fine. So it's not like some
big disease vector. But it's still creepy. Nonetheless, No, and that,
but that's really important to say. Like they've never traced
the transmission of a disease from bed bugs humans. We
have never found it, but they they do. They are
a pain and they are a kind of mosquito bity
(05:34):
like you're saying, um because of that allergic reaction, but
they're they're just kind of I think one of the
things that you're like, I don't want to live with
bed bugs, even if I'm immune. Some people are immune
to their bites, but um, like they they at least
don't have an allergic reaction, right, Um, which I guess
is the same thing. But nobody is going to find
(05:54):
out that they have bed bugs and be like, well,
what are you gonna do? I guess I'll just live
with it. So you've got to get rid of bed bugs.
And like we said, it's really hard. But in true
stuff you should know spirit, we say, never give up,
and we're going to come back after this message and
teach you how to get rid of bed bugs if
you are an unfortunate soul who has bet bugs. All right, So,
(06:40):
one thing we did not mention was that once a
bed bug feeds, they can go a full year without feeding.
So if you move into a place that like no
one's lived in for eight months, doesn't mean there aren't
bed bugs there. Um, if you live in a place
that's super clean, that doesn't mean there aren't bed bugs there,
(07:00):
because it might help if it's really gross and trashy,
but it's certainly not a prerequisite. If you stay in
some fancy hotel, there might still be bed bugs. Yeah,
because I mean they're not associated with filth. They don't
feed on filth or trash. They feed on human blood
and um, those that trash or whatever gives them more
places to hide. But it's not a requisite for a
bed bug problem, right, So if you find out you
(07:22):
have bed bugs. Um. And by the way, you can
look up online generally and find out about hotels before
you go into the room. Great, you can do some
googling and be like, just type in bed bugs and
like hotel blank. Oh, I'll bet hotels take that very serious. Think. Yeah.
So if you do find bed bugs though in your home, um,
(07:44):
there's a lot of things you can try. Uh. If
you if you can bake your home in an oven,
there's a thing, you know, there's a thing at d
and twenty degrees. They can come in there and and
crank it up and essentially kill them with either heat
or cold above one below thirty two fahrenheit. Yeah. So
if you just have isolated a big bed bug infestation
(08:05):
to like your clothes or your bedding or whatever, you
can throw it in the dryer on high heat for
like a couple of hours and you're gonna kill every
bed bug in there, um, in every stage of of life. Um,
But you can't do that with like your whole house
or your couch or whatever. So they actually sell machines
that you can hook up to a house. You seal
the house, and you pump peat into the house, and
(08:28):
you bake the contents of your house for a couple
of hours, and because you've raised the temperature of every
nook and cranny in your entire house, you kill every
single bed bug that's in that house. But it's quite
expensive to have done. Sure, Um, if you want to
go the cheaper route, Uh, you should laund to your stuff. Sure,
(08:49):
the dryer works, but I would wash it on. If
you have a sanitize setting, definitely do that all your clothes,
all your sheets, all your towels, all anything. Um. If
you have like area rugs that you're not super attached to,
maybe just throw those out. Sure, if you want to
go through the trouble of cleaning them, that's fine. Um.
(09:10):
You can also suffocate them so you can seal a rug.
I guess you can always do that with a rug
or a mattress see loon plastic and that will supposedly
suffocate them. If you have one of those euro sealers
or a vacuum sealer things that you like store blankets
in under the bed. If you have one of those,
that helps a lot, because those things can go for
(09:32):
a while depending on when they last eight without you know,
a lot of air, And what seems like very small
amount of air to us is a lot to a
bunch of bedbugs. So you want to suck as much
air as you can out of the plastic. And even then,
I didn't see anything definitive about how long they last
or how long it takes to kill them. Yeah, that
one seems a little like I don't know if I
would depend on that one. Okay, Um as like the
(09:55):
final solution you know, uh, you can use You can
do all this stuff in concert with insecticides if if
you're down with that stuff in your house, Um, that
will help for sure. Um. There are dust insecticides, which
um generally aren't as toxic. Um. There are contact insecticides
(10:16):
with are way more toxic. I would say, Yeah, ones
made from chrysanthemums. Oh that's nice. Yeah, I thought so too.
Which one the contact the pirate throids? Yeah, the contact
in secticide. Uh, and then you could, like, if push
comes to shove, like you should hire a person if
(10:36):
you have the means. I don't know if I would
tackle this on your own. If you have the money
to hire a professional, just go that route and they'll
do all this stuff. But those are some tips, like
if you want to go the less expensive route. Yeah,
and there's one other thing that we need to say. UM,
if you throw out that area rug or if you're
like I just can't live with this this couch anymore, UM,
(10:59):
don't just like put it out in the curb, because
the people will come along and say, that's a pretty
nice couch. I think I'll take that, it's a pretty
nice area rug. I think I'll take that, and then
they have a big bug problem of their own. You
don't want to wish that on anybody else. So it's
common UM advice that if you're going to throw this out,
throw out a couch or an area rug or whatever
you want to make it unattractive, like slash it up,
(11:22):
throw paint on it, do something to make it so
that no one wants it any longer, maybe even right
like bed bug infested or something on it, so that people. Notice,
you're clear because you don't want to transfer your big
bug problem. You're not that kind of jerky listen to
stuff you should know. Yeah, I'm not going to subscribe
to that, uh, because I don't want to see furniture
(11:43):
in a landfill. So what are you gonna do? Hang
onto it and just kill the stuff? Yeah? Sure, okay,
I'm with you on that, but I'm I'm not going
to put a couch in a dumpster. Let's just s
I'm with you, man. But for the people out there
who are like, I can't deal with this, I have
to get rid of it. Sure, make sure you make
it so that no one would want that couch anymore. Okay,
(12:05):
make sure it has to go in a dumpster, right right? Basically, uh, chuck,
you got anything else? I got nothing else? All right? Well,
if you want to get in touch with us and say, hey,
I really like these short stuffs, here's why. You can
send us an email, Wrap it up, spank it on
the bottom, send it off to Stuff podcast at how
stuff works dot com.
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Josh, and this is short stuff. Okay, okay, bed
bugs gross the end. This is actually a request from
years back by our Disney buddy Brandon read we're finally
getting to it. I can't believe it hadn't didn't cover
(00:25):
this on a longer one, But now that I've read it, it's, uh,
usually like twelve minutes of material here exactly. Man. That's
why I languished for so long. But now finally that
we're doing short stuff, it's bed bugs. Time to rise
and shine. Right. So back in the day, um, there
used to be bed bugs. And then for a while there,
(00:48):
like in the nineteen fifties, um, we didn't have bedbugs
because we were pumping D d T into the house,
like basically dousing homes with poison. It wouldn't even bother
to leave. You just sit there and bake a cake.
Yeah yeah, and and everything would die and they were like,
that's great, everything's dead. And then people would be like, right,
(01:10):
I don't have any hair on my body, right, I
have cancer. So they said maybe we shouldn't pump D
d T into homes anymore, and they were like, you know,
that means bed bugs are going to come back, and
they're like, okay, we'll just deal with that. I saw
I saw mention somewhere. I think it was on a
history article. I can't remember that that some people didn't
believe they were real, like generations who were born after
(01:32):
they've been basically eradicated, but it never actually seen a
bed bug. I think they thought it was like a
jack loop or a snipe or something. Right, Well, if
you've been to New Yorker Philadelphia in the last like
twenty years, there's a chance that you know firsthand that
they're real, because those cities developed real problems with bed bugs,
and they think that they came back for a combination
(01:53):
of two reasons. One, the pesticides like DDT that we
were using were banned, not just discontinued, straight up band
You will be put in jail if you're a pest
control person using DDT. And then secondly, international travel became
more and more widespread. It wasn't just like a boat
trip anymore. It was a plane trip, and you could
(02:14):
spread bed bugs pretty fast. And the reason why they're
able to spread and um become a real problem is
because they are very very tough to get rid of
these days, since we've given up our number one enfource
or against bed bugs d d T. There's we'll get
to some ways to get rid of them later, just
suffice to say for now, they're very difficult to kill. Yeah,
(02:37):
so bed bugs, if you listen to our shows on
fleas and ticks, um, just get ready to be creeped
out again because, uh, they drink your blood, they eat
your body, uh, in your in your sleep. Uh, it's
really horrifying. They call them bed bugs because you can
find them a lot of times in your bed. But
they're not exclusive to beds. They can be anywhere. Are
(03:00):
in your apartment, they can be in your couch, Um,
they could be in the walls, they can be in
your clothes. Uh, they can be pretty much anywhere. Um,
if you're living in an apartment or you're staying in
a hotel in your next door neighbor has bed bugs,
then chances are they're going to make their way over
into your place as well. Yeah, because they're real tiny,
(03:20):
like adults are about a quarter of an inch long,
and they're real flat too. Yeah, like you can't, um,
you may not even see bed bugs. If you're like,
let me look on my sheets, you may see their poop,
which is a dead giveaway. It's rust colored. But these
these are these are tiny little things. Yeah, and so
they get everywhere they can hide very easily. And again
(03:42):
because you can't as fumigate um, like like baits and
traps don't work. Um. Most of the stuff we used
to kill them we don't use anymore. They're just really
difficult to get rid of. But they're really easy to
pick up. And one of the places where you pick
them up is a tell room. You can pick them
up for everywhere from the the mattress and the sheets, um,
(04:05):
to the luggage rack or the floor. UM. So you
want to be really I think a lot of people
investigate their hotel room before they unpack, and one of
the things you want to look for is along the
seams of the mattress and in the folds of the sheets.
Are looking for that rust colored poop or the former
shells of these things. Because they scurry away pretty fast
(04:27):
when they are found out, So you might not see them,
but you can see those telltale signs of them. I
have never looked for bed bugs in any hotel room.
I haven't either, But now that I know all this,
I don't know that I'm not going to do very certainly,
yes you will, um so while you're sleeping they um
like it tick or flee. They they will stick their
little syringe uh in their mouth and they will stick
(04:51):
it into your skin and they will suck your blood
for three to ten minutes. It's about all it takes.
You're not gonna feel it necessarily. It's really an annoyance.
It's not gonna like um like, it doesn't give you
a disease, but it uh, it can give you like
a rash, and it can make you itchy, and it
might swell up just a little bit, but a little
(05:13):
anahistamine and you're probably fine. So it's not like some
big disease vector. But it's still creepy. Nonetheless, No, and that,
but that's really important to say. Like they've never traced
the transmission of a disease from bed bugs humans. We
have never found it, but they they do. They are
a pain and they are a kind of mosquito bity
(05:34):
like you're saying, um because of that allergic reaction, but
they're they're just kind of I think one of the
things that you're like, I don't want to live with
bed bugs, even if I'm immune. Some people are immune
to their bites, but um, like they they at least
don't have an allergic reaction, right, Um, which I guess
is the same thing. But nobody is going to find
(05:54):
out that they have bed bugs and be like, well,
what are you gonna do? I guess I'll just live
with it. So you've got to get rid of bed bugs.
And like we said, it's really hard. But in true
stuff you should know spirit, we say, never give up,
and we're going to come back after this message and
teach you how to get rid of bed bugs if
you are an unfortunate soul who has bet bugs. All right, So,
(06:40):
one thing we did not mention was that once a
bed bug feeds, they can go a full year without feeding.
So if you move into a place that like no
one's lived in for eight months, doesn't mean there aren't
bed bugs there. Um, if you live in a place
that's super clean, that doesn't mean there aren't bed bugs there,
(07:00):
because it might help if it's really gross and trashy,
but it's certainly not a prerequisite. If you stay in
some fancy hotel, there might still be bed bugs. Yeah,
because I mean they're not associated with filth. They don't
feed on filth or trash. They feed on human blood
and um, those that trash or whatever gives them more
places to hide. But it's not a requisite for a
bed bug problem, right, So if you find out you
(07:22):
have bed bugs. Um. And by the way, you can
look up online generally and find out about hotels before
you go into the room. Great, you can do some
googling and be like, just type in bed bugs and
like hotel blank. Oh, I'll bet hotels take that very serious. Think. Yeah.
So if you do find bed bugs though in your home, um,
(07:44):
there's a lot of things you can try. Uh. If
you if you can bake your home in an oven,
there's a thing, you know, there's a thing at d
and twenty degrees. They can come in there and and
crank it up and essentially kill them with either heat
or cold above one below thirty two fahrenheit. Yeah. So
if you just have isolated a big bed bug infestation
(08:05):
to like your clothes or your bedding or whatever, you
can throw it in the dryer on high heat for
like a couple of hours and you're gonna kill every
bed bug in there, um, in every stage of of life. Um,
But you can't do that with like your whole house
or your couch or whatever. So they actually sell machines
that you can hook up to a house. You seal
the house, and you pump peat into the house, and
(08:28):
you bake the contents of your house for a couple
of hours, and because you've raised the temperature of every
nook and cranny in your entire house, you kill every
single bed bug that's in that house. But it's quite
expensive to have done. Sure, Um, if you want to
go the cheaper route, Uh, you should laund to your stuff. Sure,
(08:49):
the dryer works, but I would wash it on. If
you have a sanitize setting, definitely do that all your clothes,
all your sheets, all your towels, all anything. Um. If
you have like area rugs that you're not super attached to,
maybe just throw those out. Sure, if you want to
go through the trouble of cleaning them, that's fine. Um.
(09:10):
You can also suffocate them so you can seal a rug.
I guess you can always do that with a rug
or a mattress see loon plastic and that will supposedly
suffocate them. If you have one of those euro sealers
or a vacuum sealer things that you like store blankets
in under the bed. If you have one of those,
that helps a lot, because those things can go for
(09:32):
a while depending on when they last eight without you know,
a lot of air, And what seems like very small
amount of air to us is a lot to a
bunch of bedbugs. So you want to suck as much
air as you can out of the plastic. And even then,
I didn't see anything definitive about how long they last
or how long it takes to kill them. Yeah, that
one seems a little like I don't know if I
would depend on that one. Okay, Um as like the
(09:55):
final solution you know, uh, you can use You can
do all this stuff in concert with insecticides if if
you're down with that stuff in your house, Um, that
will help for sure. Um. There are dust insecticides, which
um generally aren't as toxic. Um. There are contact insecticides
(10:16):
with are way more toxic. I would say, Yeah, ones
made from chrysanthemums. Oh that's nice. Yeah, I thought so too.
Which one the contact the pirate throids? Yeah, the contact
in secticide. Uh, and then you could, like, if push
comes to shove, like you should hire a person if
(10:36):
you have the means. I don't know if I would
tackle this on your own. If you have the money
to hire a professional, just go that route and they'll
do all this stuff. But those are some tips, like
if you want to go the less expensive route. Yeah,
and there's one other thing that we need to say. UM,
if you throw out that area rug or if you're
like I just can't live with this this couch anymore, UM,
(10:59):
don't just like put it out in the curb, because
the people will come along and say, that's a pretty
nice couch. I think I'll take that, it's a pretty
nice area rug. I think I'll take that, and then
they have a big bug problem of their own. You
don't want to wish that on anybody else. So it's
common UM advice that if you're going to throw this out,
throw out a couch or an area rug or whatever
you want to make it unattractive, like slash it up,
(11:22):
throw paint on it, do something to make it so
that no one wants it any longer, maybe even right
like bed bug infested or something on it, so that people. Notice,
you're clear because you don't want to transfer your big
bug problem. You're not that kind of jerky listen to
stuff you should know. Yeah, I'm not going to subscribe
to that, uh, because I don't want to see furniture
(11:43):
in a landfill. So what are you gonna do? Hang
onto it and just kill the stuff? Yeah? Sure, okay,
I'm with you on that, but I'm I'm not going
to put a couch in a dumpster. Let's just s
I'm with you, man. But for the people out there
who are like, I can't deal with this, I have
to get rid of it. Sure, make sure you make
it so that no one would want that couch anymore. Okay,
(12:05):
make sure it has to go in a dumpster, right right? Basically, uh, chuck,
you got anything else? I got nothing else? All right? Well,
if you want to get in touch with us and say, hey,
I really like these short stuffs, here's why. You can
send us an email, Wrap it up, spank it on
the bottom, send it off to Stuff podcast at how
stuff works dot com.
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