Quote Originally Posted by Grog View Post
Not sure the dryer is quite enough,
I'm no entomologist, but I've read over and over again that 30 minutes at or over 120°F will kill them, and the dryer is an easy way to do that.

Honestly, I think the whole thing is overdone. Bedbugs don't spread disease, they don't eat crops, they don't damage property. They just leave bites on middle-class and wealthy people that are associated with a stigma of poverty. Anyone who spends time outside in the summer gets mosquito and fly bites that are much worse on every level - worse swelling, worse scarring, worse itching, and worse potential as a disease vector.

The bedbug outbreak is just forcing economically comfortable people to admit that they can't 100% control their environment. The whole fanaticism about sterility has taken cleanliness to a level that's unhealthy both physically (in terms of immune system development) and, obviously now, mentally.

I don't consider myself lackadaisical about protecting against bedbugs when I travel, BUT some of what I read just seems obsessive-compulsive.