The best gross-out story in the NYT and the New Yorker so far this year is the explosion of the bedbug population. If you don't want this leech of a guy (looking cute, left) to sleep with you, be brutal and arm yourself. But how? High-priced hotels harbor them. You might pay a pro thousands of dollars to rid your home of bedbugs, only to find the nocturnal suckers drinking your blood when the lights go out again.
What does this have to do with green technology? Ultra-lethal DDT wiped out these vampires during WWII but that poison, now banned, also kills children and any other living things. Our hygiene-obsessed, itch-averse culture faces some big challenges of eliminating pests without eco-poisons. Bedbugs laugh at store-bought bug killers, and entomologists say that less toxic alternatives, baking soda, and vaseline are a joke. These critters can starve a year and survive.
The greenest, least dangerous way to get rid of broods of bedbugs? Freeze them. So take heart, New Yorkers, just leave your windows open this winter and hope for the best. See the Bedbug Blog and a picture by me blog for some Big Apple dwellers' brave, graphic confessionals of their experience fighting the beasts as well as support group links.
and it's not just in NYC:
http://www.sfbg.com/40/10/news_bedbugs.html
Posted by: elsa | 2005.12.20 at 05:49 PM
Thanks for the link!
Posted by: Caryn | 2005.12.09 at 09:02 PM
That's really, really gross -- I'm so glad I don't live in NY right now --
Posted by: green LA girl | 2005.12.03 at 07:26 PM
oh yeah, you were probably joking...i was in a hurry
Posted by: elsamary | 2005.12.01 at 05:11 PM
Hey Katz! My 90 y.-o. entomologist Grandpa fought malaria in WWII by killing mosquito populations in Brazil. He talks about how a tiny droplet of DDT in a room-size aquatic tank exterminated everything within inside within hours. ouch. not what you want to spray around a house.
Posted by: elsa | 2005.12.01 at 11:43 AM
Dunno, Else, maybe a little DDT wouldn't be such a bad thing here. Did wonders for malaria ....
Posted by: JMK | 2005.11.29 at 11:38 PM
thanks for the tip! so grateful that i don't have to use it...
Posted by: elsamary | 2005.11.28 at 10:17 PM
Nasty indeed...
Another way to avoid those nasty critters is with a latex mattress. 100% latex rubber is naturally antimicrobial and eaily cleanable.
Will you sleep tight tonight?
Posted by: Amie Nguyen | 2005.11.28 at 06:45 PM