The war on bedbugs has become so pervasive that only an act of Congress is needed to make it official. Meanwhile, the civilian population is stepping up its weapons. One of the newest is the CleanWave Sanitizing Bagless Vacuum by Verilux, which was introduced at the International Home and Housewares Show in Chicago last week and sells for about $400.
“It uses UV light, which is a germicidal,” said Ryan Douglas, chief executive officer of Verilux. “What’s most exciting is that it is killing bedbugs; nymphs, which are the babies, and bedbug eggs.”
Hasn’t this vac-attack thing been tried before?
“Some people have tried to kill germs with vacs,” Mr. Douglas said. “But UV-C is a tricky wavelength of light, it’s hard to harness. What we are able to do is intensify and focus it at the surface so it can be very effective as a sanitizer. With the tests we’ve done on bedbug eggs, none of them hatched.”
That gives us the feeling that some tough adults survived.
“A tough adult bedbug is going to survive DDT, just about everything,” he said. “It’s important to be preventative.”
A vacuum could suck up the adults, we suppose. But then this vac is bagless — and they’re probably tough to spot.
“It has a contained area. And they’re actually visible, kind of reddish brown and about 3 ½ to 5 millimeters in length,” Mr. Douglas said. “What we advise people to do is put the container in a plastic bag and drop the bottom out. Then you tie the bag off and double-bag it and get it out of your house.” More
Information: verilux.com.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 17, 2011, on page D3 of the New York edition.
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