Use Dry Ice to Remove Bed Bugs
Find out if you have bed bugs by making a bed bug trap with dry ice. Bed bugs are attracted to the heat of bodies and to carbon dioxide, or CO2, which is a gas exhaled by humans and animals. Dry ice is solid carbon dioxide and gives off CO2 gas which can draw bed bugs into a trap constructed with dry ice as the lure.
Bed bugs have been a growing problem since 1990’s in the U.S. Canada, Europe and Australia, according to Dr. Changlu Wang, Extension Specialist with the Department of Entomology at Rutgers University. Unlike flies and mosquitoes, bed bugs do not transmit disease, but they do cause red welts and itchiness on their victims, most of which are people, dogs, cats, and rodents.
Where do you find bed bugs? Hotels, dormitories, shelters, and even homes are frequent sites of bed bug infestations which are most common in mattresses, couches and places where people sleep or sit for long periods of time.
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How to Make an Inexpensive Bed Bug Trap
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To remove a small population of bed bugs or test to see if you have any present, you can build an inexpensive trap, using 2-3 pounds of dry ice, a plastic pet food bowl, an insulated jug, tape, fabric, and talcum powder. This is best done at night when you can douse the lights in the room, as bed bugs prefer the dark.
Use a large pet food bowl of the type with sides that prevent it from tipping over. Apply any kind of fabric to the sides of the bowl with tape, to give the sides a rough surface that makes it easier for bed bugs to climb it. Turn the bowl over. This creates a moat or channel between the sides of the bowl and the upturned bottom of the bowl. Rub talcum powder on the insides of the moat so the bed bugs cannot escape once they’ve climbed into it.
On the upturned bottom of the bowl, place a large insulated beverage cup, or small cylindrical insulated jug. Using gloves, fill the container one-half full with dry ice. Leave the top open. DO NOT close the container or the dry ice could build up pressure. Turn off the lights and leave the room for an hour or more.
The concentration of CO2, being given off by the dry ice, will attract bed bugs, which will crawl up the sides of the bowl, becoming trapped in the moat. The bed bugs are unable to crawl back up the sides of the upturned bowl due to the talcum powder, which makes them slide back down the sides. Depending on your container and the amount of dry ice you use, the trap could work for several hours.
One professional contractor reports using dry ice in conjunction with heat to remove bed bugs. When doing jobs in hotels, his crew heats the rooms to 130 degrees with electric space heaters. The heat kills bed bugs. The contractor hangs small buckets of dry ice from the sprinklers in the ceiling to keep the fire sprinklers from being activated due to high room temperatures.
Dry ice is extremely cold and should ALWAYS be handled using gloves. Read and follow dry ice safety precautions before handling dry ice. Contact Continental Carbonic for your dry ice needs.
Call Continental Carbonic toll-free at 800-DRY-ICE2. Visit our News Archive to find out about more ways to use dry ice. Use your ZIP code to find your closest Continental Carbonic location.
