By Susan Milius
AUSTIN, TEXAS — As bedbugs become more resistant to various pesticides, other do-it-yourself defenses are growing in importance. But new tests give several popular methods of homespun bedbug defense low grades.
Rubbing alcohol is often recommended for killing bedbugs, for example. But spraying a group of the insects with it left about half alive four days later, Changlu Wang reported November 13 at the Entomology 2013 conference. His research team at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., also found that mothballs failed to wipe out bedbugs after 7 days in a plastic bag full of infested clothes. Eggs and immature bedbugs survived the mothball treatment well, and only between 44 to 60 percent of adult males died.