Bed (linen) mite. How to get rid of bed mites and prevent them

Bed mites belong to the species of arthropods and the class of arachnids. These are synanthropes that live only next to humans. They are classified as animals, not insects, as they do not have wings. The body is covered with a chitinous shell, and there are also three pairs of legs, which are equipped with suckers at the end. This is why there is a problem with destruction - they cannot be shaken out or vacuumed.

What are they?

Bed mites have a body about 0.5 mm long, so it is almost impossible to see it without the use of special magnifying equipment.

They live in literally every home, where they get on the fur of pets, bird feathers or with ordinary household dust. Their favorite habitats are mattresses, blankets, pillows, carpets, house shoes, etc. They feel comfortable in bed due to the constant presence of a person.

These tiny animals do not feed on blood and do not even live on humans. Their main food is the smallest dead cells of the human body. Approximately 1.5 g of such particles are lost per day, for example in the form of dandruff. Therefore, the bulk of bed mites accumulate on the pillow.

Allergies can also manifest themselves in the form of scabies. This is a very unpleasant disease, expressed in the appearance of redness on a person’s skin. Severe, unbearable itching appears, and body temperature may increase. At the first signs of the disease, you should immediately contact a specialist.

Signs of a bite

Due to the fact that representatives of these pests do not live on the human body and cannot sting him, there is no need to talk about the symptoms of bed tick bites. In fact, all small rashes that are mistaken for bites are only an allergic reaction of the human body to arthropod feces.

Chemicals

You can get rid of bed mites using chemicals. Since these small individuals are not blood-sucking, the use of repellents is pointless. The fact is that they are intended only to scare away “insidious” animals. The most effective in in this case There will be the use of acaricidal agents. They are designed directly to destroy pests in any area.

Digital. The drug contains 25% cypermethrin emulsion concentrate. It has an acute insectoacaricidal effect against cockroaches, fleas, ticks, bedbugs, etc. within 25 minutes. To prepare the working solution, it is necessary to dilute the concentrate cold water and mix well for 5 minutes. It is recommended to use it within 8 hours. Surface treatment with Tsifoks must be carried out when open windows using funds personal protection. The room should be cleaned no earlier than after 9 hours. The use of the drug by persons under 18 years of age, pregnant and lactating women is strictly prohibited. The cost of the drug is about 650 rubles. for 500 g.

Sipaz - Super. It is highly effective. The main substance is cypermethrin - 25%. The composition also includes fragrances to remove strong odors. Valid on nervous system bed mites, which leads to almost instantaneous destruction. For treatment, add 4 g of the drug to 1 liter of water. The cost of the product is about 2000 rubles. for 1 kg.

Acarytox. Available in powder form, the main substance is alphacypermethrin 5%. It is diluted with water and processed following all safety measures. Retains its intoxication properties for 2 weeks. The cost of the drug is about 700 rubles. for 1 kg.

Traditional methods

There is one very effective folk remedy against bed mites. It is based on ordinary soap, which, when added with ammonia, has a detrimental effect on pests. The recipe is as follows:

  1. Dilute 50 g of soap (can be liquid) in 1 liter of water.
  2. Add 100 g ammonia. Stir.
  3. Treat surfaces in areas of infection, and use the solution when washing bed linen.

Treatment and prevention

First, you need to visit a doctor and have your blood tested to determine the allergen that provoked the reaction. After receiving the results, the doctor will prescribe immunotherapy, treatment with antihistamines, etc. Self-medication is dangerous. To relieve allergy symptoms, it is necessary to increase the amount of vitamin C in the body. To do this, you should eat a lot of vegetables and fruits that contain it.

To prevent infestation of your home with bed mites, regular ventilation and keeping the room clean are necessary. It is necessary to wash bed linen, towels, and pajamas at least once a week at a temperature of at least 65 °C.

One of the popular simple ways Getting rid of ticks on your own is to use a mixture of soap and ammonia. The proportions of the components are 1:2. It is recommended to fight ticks in bed using disinfectants that contain natural ingredients. A radical solution would be to replace blankets and mattresses.

Preventive measures

Since mites often live in dust, to prevent their appearance it is worth regularly carrying out wet cleaning. You can use herbal essential oils. People who are not prone to allergies can clean the room once a day with a vacuum cleaner with a filter. It is recommended to ventilate the rooms. Air circulation does not allow insects to reproduce normally.

If possible, you should keep fewer soft toys in your house or apartment. big size that are impossible to wash, fur bedspreads, decorative covers.

In addition to them, perennial feather and cotton pillows, as well as mattresses, are excellent dust collectors. Today, modern pillows with hypoallergenic fillings, as well as products made from silicone, are available for sale. It's best to buy them and just throw away the old ones.

It is recommended to buy washable toys and wash them as often as bedding. And it is not recommended to keep toys on the bed. For prevention, you need to deep clean the furniture surface and floor coverings. Many people nowadays do not hang carpets on the walls or use them for the floor. As carpeting they use wood, tiles, linoleum and vinyl on the floor. To prevent ticks from getting on sleeping area, it is advised to purchase protective covers for the mattress, spring block, pillows.

Video “What are dust mites and where do they live?”

From this video you will learn about what it is dust mites where they live and why they are dangerous.

From a distance, bedbugs and ticks are very similar. But if you look closely, you can see that the representative of the Arachnida class has eight legs, while bedbugs have six.

Bed mites have impressive dimensions and can be up to 8 mm in size. Their cousins, dust mites, are quite difficult to detect due to their small size. Furniture bugs are nocturnal bloodsuckers, while linen mites feed on dead skin particles.

Bed bugs live in secluded dark places in the apartment. They can be found in furniture, under baseboards and wallpaper, in old things. House mites live in feather blankets, pillows, and blankets.

What do furniture bugs look like?

Insect sizes from 3 to 8 mm can range from dirty yellow to dark brown. It has a flattened body and a special proboscis on its head. This proboscis is divided into narrow and wide channels. From the narrow channel, saliva containing an anesthetic substance is injected into the wound, and blood is absorbed through the wide channel.

For some it takes months. But such a long wait for results is usually caused by an incorrect approach to work.

Bed mites in the house

However, they reveal the manifestation of their vital activity quite quickly. First of all, the presence of bed mites becomes noticeable by their characteristic bites.

If such symptoms appear, it is necessary to take immediate action. To get rid of bed mites you need to choose effective, but relatively safe ways struggle. Considering that you will have to process places where a person sleeps and spends a lot of time, the task will be very difficult.

Causes of ticks in the house

Considering that it can be difficult to detect ticks right away, identifying the real reason why they came from the house is also difficult.

But it’s still worth trying to restore the chronology of events in order to know where you need to be especially careful next time.

Ticks can get into your home feather pillows and blankets

Ticks can "move" onto animals. A cat or dog is quite capable of carrying them on their fur.

In addition, these may be birds that are fed in a feeder right outside the bedroom window. Infection can also occur after visiting a place where there were a lot of bed mites, for example, a hotel with low quality service.

To prevent such developments, it is necessary to carefully remove dust, wash and iron things, especially bed linen, and ventilate the room. Mites in pillows and blankets, in terry sheets, as well as in all kinds of hand-made home decorations are a common occurrence. Handicrafts are wonderful and useful, but in limited quantities.

In a clean room, where they are always thoroughly cleaned using disinfectants, there should be no ticks, bedbugs, cockroaches and other unpleasant guests. Therefore, you should not be lazy, but devote more time to the cleanliness of your home.

Habitat and appearance

The bed tick is not very different from its other relatives. Their only obvious distinguishing feature- these are very small sizes. Because of this, even an adult can only be seen under a microscope. The size of the tick body does not exceed half a millimeter. They have 6 legs and a jaw large enough that they can even chew human skin.

Bed mites are often the cause of allergies of unknown etiology.

However, from time to time marks appear on a person’s skin that look like small wounds. One or two bites may not be noticed, but when a huge colony of ticks gathers in the bed, this is already dangerous and can cause serious damage to the skin.

In fact, such marks are called bites only conditionally. Bed mites can bite through the skin, they even feed on it, but this only applies to microscopic dead particles, and not to healthy epithelium.

How to treat allergies?

If you are irritated by a tick, lubricate the affected area with fenistil.

First you need to treat the affected area with a special anti-allergy ointment. Fenistil is a good choice, as it not only relieves irritation, but also eliminates itching, redness, and also disinfects the problem area. After this, you need to carefully monitor your health.

The bed tick does not bite through the skin and does not drink blood, so it cannot be called an active carrier of diseases. However, such a development of events is not excluded. When the first suspicious symptoms appear, you should immediately consult a doctor and undergo an examination.

You need to be especially careful if the child has an allergy. Children need to thoroughly treat problem areas, and then take care to completely get rid of ticks in bed and at home. In a child, proximity to ticks can cause not only hives and itching on the skin, but also breathing problems.

How to kill bed mites?

As for how to get rid of bed mites, there are a huge number of ways to do this. First, you need to treat things and furniture in which small bugs could settle. Bed linen, pajamas and other clothing should be washed thoroughly. Tar soap is best suited for this. If possible, you should boil all things and then hang them out to dry in the fresh air.

First, wash all household textiles.

If it’s winter outside, this is another chance to get rid of bed ticks. You can take furniture, blankets and pillows out into the cold. Freezing for 24 hours is enough for the mites to disappear. They die when the thermometer drops below – 5 ºС, so you don’t even need to wait for severe frost.

Therefore, they can be destroyed by steaming. For this, a special apparatus is used that releases steam at 90 ºС. This is enough to kill all ticks. It is best to entrust the furniture processing process to professionals. They use not only hot steam, but also special chemical substances. But here you need to be very careful, since you cannot use the furniture for some time after cleaning. Otherwise, poisoning may occur.

You can use soap with ammonia to clean sofas and mattresses. The peculiarity of this method is that in this case there will be no harm to human health after treating the room. You can be in the room right away, rather than waiting several days for chemical poisons to wear off.

Treating the premises to eliminate bed mites is a complex undertaking. If you don't follow some important rules, then there will be no sense in the procedure.

In order to properly clean the room, you must first carry out wet cleaning of the house.

Preventive measures

In order not to suffer from allergies, not to endanger the lives of your children and not to think about how to deal with bed mites, you need to make sure that they do not bother the residents of the house. To do this, you need to follow preventive measures.

Bed linen must be changed regularly. After washing, it must be ironed, and only then put in the closet. This will minimize the risk of ticks breeding.

Linen mites prefer for their residence objects that contain an accumulation of dust in them. large quantities. It can be:

But there are times when bed mites They feel comfortable in their own quarters, as well as with proper observance of sanitary rules.

Unlike other types of pests that feed on human blood, ticks' diet consists of flakes of dead human skin cells mixed with dirt particles.

The bites of bed ticks themselves do not pose a danger to human health, which cannot be said about the reaction of the human body to their feces. The waste of these creatures contains digestive enzymes.

They contribute to the destruction of human skin cells, and can also provoke severe allergies and severe asthma in people.

Elimination methods

People who are faced with this problem for the first time have a question about how to get rid of linen mites forever. A positive effect can be achieved by performing a number of actions.

First of all, bedding items should be thoroughly processed by washing using a high-temperature mode, which must be done at least once a week, as well as mandatory ironing.

Bed mites love to live in soft toys, so they should be placed away from the bed and washed no less often than linen items. This wish also applies to curtains and curtains.

Due to the fact that dust mite bites lead to the development of unpleasant diseases, it is sometimes advisable to use chemicals in the fight to eliminate these bed itches. Various special sprays and solutions act as drastic remedies.

The most common and effective among them are:

  • Tsifoks based on 25% cypermethrin emulsion.

  • Akaritox based on 5% alphacypermethrin.

  • Milbiol.

Allerqoff is a spray that is effective for destruction at any stage of its development. It is completely safe for people and animals, and has a neutral aroma.

Sipaz-Super, the main component of which is 25% cypermethrin. It differs from other drugs in the absence of a pungent odor.

Milbiol is a spray for treating bedding and furniture. Contains medicinal natural oils from the neem plant.

Rules for treating premises and using folk remedies

After processing the room chemicals It is not recommended to have people or pets in it during the day. Further, after thorough ventilation, it is necessary to carry out spring cleaning home using saline or bleach.

Cleaning will clear the premises of chemicals.

Treat all bedding, pillows, blankets, mattresses, soft toys, and upholstered furniture in the house with a steam cleaner.

You can get rid of domestic ticks by decomposing some herbaceous plants in the expected places where they accumulate:

  • common wormwood;
  • wild rosemary;
  • tansy.

By observing hygienic standards, maintaining cleanliness and order in your home, as well as timely therapeutic actions in relation to allergic symptoms, you can forever forget about the troubles associated with such unwanted guests in the house as linen mites.