Borax recommended for use against bugs

In the New York Daily News, a letter by Howard Scott Pearlman extols Borax:

"Borax has the ability to get on insects' skin and then suck the moisture out of their bodies. If you do laundry with borax soap powder, your clothes and sheets get a borax residue on them. Unsuspecting bedbugs pick up that residue and take it back to their nests, where all their nasty little friends meet Mr. Borax, dry out and die. Borax soap powder can also be sprinkled on carpeting and left for days, providing you do not have small children or pets that will eat it."

27 January, 2011.

It may or may not work, I would assume that they would get hungrier (or thirstier...) and go for more blood...on average adults eat once a week. They can fast for over a year.

Vaguely I recall borax being illegal to use in New York as a powdered bug deterrent, but I am not sure. But this is worth knowing about. My own flat has seen a decrease in the bugs, which I attribute to more use of ziploc bags and therefore loss of habitat.

Also, is this a free ad for a product - or is it reality? I wonder if it only makes the critters hungry, and rather than dry out and die, they just go for more blood. At least Mr. Pearlman is not selling us on DDT.

Harmful chemicals used in New York to combat bedbugs

The following is a list of the chemicals that Superb Pest is using at the Vigilant Hotel in NYC. It seems every time they spray there are more bugs! Some of these may well be harmful to humans. Most chemicals used in the industry do nothing to combat bedbugs, it is heat that gets them going. People spend lots of money on sprays, and this keeps useless chemicals in manufacture and useless people get wealthy. We may have a health problem on our hands in the future with all these pesticides in the environment.

One this for sure is, NYC is now a haven of bedbugs and it is losing its tourism industry. Places like the Vigilant Hotel are part of the cause, but the city does not have the wherewithal to close them down. Instead, it gets sprayed with chemicals that may add to the problem, and idiots are campaigning for DDT.

Tempo Sc EPA # 432-1363 The active ingredient is beta-cyfluthrin, a new synthetic pyrethroid and one of the stereoisomers of cyfluthrin; it is a good insecticide for mosquito control. However, care should be exercised while using it as a larvicide in breeding habitats considering its toxicity to fish.
Gentrol EPA # 2724-351 The active ingredient is hydroprene, which interferes with normal juvenile hormone levels within the insect, creating an imbalance at critical periods in insect development and maturation.
Sterifab EPA # 397-13 Active ingredients are 3-phenoxybenzyl D-cis, trans 2.2-dimethyl-3-(2-methylpropenyl) cyclopropanecarboxylate, isopropyl alchohol, didecyl dimethyl ammonium chloride n-alkyl and dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride.
Ecopco D.x EPA # 67425-16 The active ingredient is 2-Phenethyl Propionate, a botanical insecticide, which all dealers refuse to sell to users in New York State.
Demon ultrawet powder EPA # 432-1304 The active ingredient is cypermethrin, a synthetic pyrethroid used as an insecticide in large-scale commercial agricultural applications. It behaves as a fast-acting neurotoxin in insects. Cypermethrin is highly toxic to fish, bees and aquatic insects, according to the National Pesticides Telecommunications Network (NPTN). Excessive exposure can cause nausea, headache, muscle weakness, salivation, shortness of breath and seizures.
D-force-Hpx EPA # 9444-217 The active ingredient is deltamethrin, which produces typical type II motor symptoms in mammals. Type II symptoms include a writhing syndrome in rodents, as well as copious salivation. Acute exposure effects in humans include the following: ataxia, convulsions leading to muscle fibrillation and paralysis, dermatitis, edema, diarrhea, dyspnea, headache, hepatic microsomal enzyme induction, irritability, peripheral vascular collapse, rhinorrhea, serum alkaline phosphatase elevation, tinnitus, tremors, vomiting and death due to respiratory failure. Allergic reactions have included the following effects: anaphylaxis, bronchospasm, eosinophilia, fever, hypersensitivity pneumonia, pallor, pollinosis, sweating, sudden swelling of the face, eyelids, lips and mucous membranes, and tachycardia. Studies have shown many cases of dermal deltamethrin poisoning after agricultural use with inadequate handling precautions, and many cases of accidental or suicidal poisoning by the oral route at doses estimated to be 2- 250 mg/kg. Oral ingestion caused epigastric pain, nausea, vomiting and coarse muscular fasciculations. With doses of 100-250 mg/kg, coma was caused within 15-20 minutes.

Some basic facts about bedbugs

It seems as if the press cannot get the story straight. For instance, on bedbugger.com, it is noted that CBC in Canada used an image of a beetle, and a rather nice golden one at that, who does not deserve to be tarred with the loser image of the bedbug, on their bedbugs story. Then ABC and CBS did the same; copying each others' mistakes.
We also hear that DDT is supposed to get rid of them; au contraire, they actually increased when DDT was used. One wonders if someone is trying to sell this illegal chemical. Use it and the Bald Eagle will be destroyed - it was banned for this very reason in 1972. It is also bad for humans.
Then there are all the ads for sprays; it has been proven that most of these do not work. Bedbugs are good at developing immunities.
Then we are told they can go without food for six months. Actually, they can go up to 15 months without a drop of our precious blood.
And it seems that they are nocturnal: no, they come out whenever they can, day or night, summer or winter, though they are somewhat of a warm weather fiend. They do not all hibernate in the winter, that is false.
And one more attempted falsehood is the insinuation that they come from the poor and/or immigrants. In reality, they seem to like the Upper East Side, the Hamptons, upscale clothing shops, rare book rooms, etc. Now they are in the Empire State Building.
Truth is that they find rich fabric, especially sumptuously pleated material, a good place to live.
And many journalists forget to check their reproductive rate, which beats rabbits any day; a female can lay up to 400 eggs in her lifetime, and they can reach sexual maturity at six weeks. In cosmopolitan places they start having their sexual adventures early, as there is plenty of human flesh to suck. So we need to get our facts straight and not waste time with ineffective sprays and false hopes that they will just go away during the day and all go to Florida for the winter. Unless prompt action is taken, they are here to stay.
By the way, I have written a letter to the New York Times in which I am giving my real name if they care to publish. Fear and social stigma are not for me, but for cowards and slumlords who do not bother to keep their buildings clean.

The NY Post on bedbugs: article by Paul Driessen

Today's NY Post had an article on bedbugs. Written by someone who may have never seen one - they still have not sent anyone round to see the seriousness of the situation of the building infested in their very neighbourhood...

Below is the post taken with permission from www.hempforvictory.blogspot.com

FOR SALE: DDT

The last post on this site mentioned New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser's pitch to sell DDT to America; it got taken off the market because it was dangerous, and was killing the Bald Eagle.

So no surprise that a guest columnist in the same paper is pitching the same product.

He too does it on the back of bedbugs - saying that yes bedbugs are a problem, and the city may not be doing enough about it, but there are many more people suffering from malaria.

Oh how philanthropic it all seems! How the devil appears as an angel of light.

Years ago, when I lived in London, I was a member of ALMA - the Angola-London-Mozambique-Association. We would hear the likes of WHO worker Louis da Gama who spent lots of time in these countries, and unlike Paul Driessen, who writes of bedbugs and malaria today, da Gama did not want to sell billions of people tons of DDT.

If the pesticide companies were so in earnest to treat malaria, they would put money into production of other products. Selling DDT to people sucks. But there are people who well nukes, explosives, child pornography, and, yes, DDT.

The US has a law against it for good reasons. As it has laws against selling nukes, explosives and child pornography.

But getting back to bedbugs. Driessen asserts that they do not kill. Maybe not. After all, they travel from person to person sucking blood. And they are prone to mutate, mainly against pesticides. DDT might only make them stronger.

On bugoutter.com there has been complaint that the Post does not take note of people calling and emailing about a problem building in New York that has up to 2 million bedbugs - with one person collecting 3600 in three months. So let's not think the Post gives a damn about New Yorkers - it is now basically telling them to stop complaining there are worse things.

But what about the livelihood of millions of New Yorkers? If bedbugs don't kill, having no income does. Bedbugs kill the tourism industry, but Driessen does not seem intelligent enough to mention that. He does not have bedbugs, and I bet he does not use DDT either.

I invite him and the Post to look at the problem realistically, and go to the buildings New Yorkers are now calling the Ground Zero of bedbugs.

And of course, I invite them to do an article on hemp too, but that would take a miracle. The paper likes to sell other things that are harmful.

By the way, no surprise that the article under Driessen's was titled "The Building Case for Bombing Iran."

Someone's got to sell those nukes, explosives and child pornography, even if they are illegal many places....

And of course, a few tons of DDT.