Bed Bug Treatments Throughout History

So, you have bed bugs. That sucks, but be grateful you live in an age where heat treatments, pesticides, and other methods exist to fix your bed bug problem. But did you know that bed bugs have been bugging us ever since we built the pyramids? The Egyptians were dealing with the bloodsuckers and, after that, pretty much every part of the world has had them. The Chinese had them as early as 600 AC, which makes me wonder what kinds of crazy things Genghis Khan did to try to conquer his bed bug problem. Italy was early to the party, getting them around 100 AC, spreading them across Europe.

And so long as they’ve been around, we’ve been killing them. But just like any other creature, bed bugs have tried to adapt, survive and overcome the things we do to get rid of them. But in the past few hundred years, we’ve moved from lighting our beds on fire with gunpowder, to more, reasonable techniques. But how have bed bugs adapted?

One of the first DIY techniques for eliminating bed bugs involved cleanliness and heat. For families in the mid-1800s, the dousing of bed frames with boiling water, or oil from animal leftovers, and a thorough cleaning afterwards. The basis for modern pesticide-like techniques occurred around this time as well, as early as 1896. By spreading the powder of the Pyrethrum flower on affected surfaces, bed bugs could be put at bay due to the plant’s insecticidal nature.

But when big cities started to become established in the early 1900s, bed bugs, of course, established themselves as big city problem. Central heating created the ideal year-round environment for bed bugs to live in, combined with buildings filled with both cracks and people, the bloodsuckers were living better than the tenants. Free food, plenty of places to sleep, and utilities included!

From 1910 to 1945, pesticide companies would advertise “Bed Bug Poison” made from a variety of concoctions which could include mercury, paint thinner, mothballs and more, with about the effectiveness you’d expect. For some tenants however, regular treatments would take place where poisons like phosgene, hydrogen cyanide and chloropicrin, once used against soldiers in WWI, were tested and used for the extermination of bed bugs. “Hey honey, the city guys just got done spraying tear gas in the bed room. Ready for a night cap?”

After years of dangerous chemicals and quack mixtures, several breakthroughs were made in the development of pesticides. DDT, invented in 1945, became the flagship bed bug killer on the market. Rooms treated with powders or sprays could be bed bug free for years thanks to its long-lasting residual effect. Its rapid adoption and excessive use quickly led to reports of resistance to it, and by 1947 the first case of DDT-resilient bed bugs was reported in Hawaii.

By 1956, the National Pest Control Association began recommending organophosphates like malathion as an alternative when dealing with bugs that didn’t die from DDT exposure. Organophosphates, a class of pesticides originally used as nerve agents in WWII, were initially quite effective against bed bugs by interrupting the normal actions of muscle control. In spite of their DDT resistance, bed bug populations would continue to decline from 1950 to 1970, aided by organophosphates and carbamates, a class of nerve agents with a similar mechanism.

The bed bug landscape changed in 1972 when DDT, once the flagship pesticide, was banned for use in the US. Naturally, organophosphates and carbamates would soon take its place, but the effectiveness of these would be affected due to pre-existing use. But for the next 20 years, these chemicals would be the most effective line of chemicals offence against bed bugs.

Around this time, the first generation of insecticides known as pyrethroids would be created as a non-toxic alternative to other pesticides in the 60s and mid-70s. Derived from the pyrethrum flower mentioned earlier, these posed little risk to humans, but were toxic to bed bugs and other insects, and were used in nets for bedding in parts of Africa and the developing world.

With international travel flourishing in the 90s, bed bugs would spread all around the world, taking

their resistances with them. In 1992, Imidacloprid, the first neonicotinoid was released on the US market after development a few years earlier, and became one of the most widely used pesticides worldwide. Naturally it was used on bed bugs during this time but by 2015 strains of bed bugs resistant to it had appeared in the US.

African bed bugs, having been exposed to pyrethroids, evolved genetic changes in their nervous systems that made them immune to most, if not all, chemicals of that class developed before then, and making future additions to that class much less effective. Deltamethrin is now of course entirely ineffective against them, and is no longer used for this purpose. But there are now strains resistant to the active ingredients of over-the-counter sprays like later generation pyrethroids like Tetramethrin & Phenothrin, as early as 2009.

Organophosphates & carbamates were rendered ineffective from a myriad of developments in bed bug physiology – they grew thicker skin (literally), making it harder to penetrate, and increased the enzymes responsible for the metabolism of whatever chemicals made it through. Their genetic structure changed as well, preventing the loss of muscle control that made malathion and others effective in the first place. Bugs are now resistant to both early iterations like Propoxur (1963) and Diazinon (1952), and later advancements like Fenitrothion (1975) and Bendiocarb (1980). But there are still products on the market, advertised as luggage & mattress kits, that are using the same ingredients since 1961!

Over the counter solutions don’t work either. This product uses a combination of pyrethroids, adulterants and growth regulators (designed to prevent babies from growing up and developing resistance). Look at that! The bar on the right are strains of bed bugs from 1970, all the others are much more recent. Less than 30% dead after a week in almost all cases!

Though new pesticides are being developed all the time, bed bugs will become resistant to those too someday, and the cat-and-mouse game gets harder each year. Thankfully, there are old methods that do actually still work. Though bed bugs have developed resistances to all families of pesticides, they have been shown to be unable to develop resistances to heat. Temperatures over 45 degrees Celsius kill bed bugs at all stages of their life cycles in less than 10 minutes of direct exposure.

At Bed Bugs Dead Bugs, we want to help you avoid spending thousands of dollars on full blown pesticide treatments, or just wasting $30 at the hardware store on a cheap spray that will leave you frustrated. Save your time, save your money, save your mattress, and save your sanity by renting a bed bug heater today from Bed Bugs Dead Bugs.