Are Bed Bug Insecticides Failing? The Science Behind Desiccant Dusts | In Focus

0:00 The thing that was on the market already that it's most similar to would be Cymexa from Rockhole Labs in the US. And I was familiar with that one. So I had high hopes for it because this is another amorphous silica dioxide. Side by side, they look similar. They're a slightly different color, but they look similar. And so I was familiar with that one. And so I just did some simple benchtop studies. I tend to use little plywood tiles and I dust them. It needs a very, very small amount. It doesn't look like it's covered in snow.

0:33 It's just a barely visible residue. So I dust a set of tiles and put on some bugs, and I confine them onto the surface with a Petri dish, an upturned Petri dish, so they have to sit there. And then I just monitor it over time and see how quickly it takes for them to die. And it's phenomenally quick. You know, it's affected by humidity. The ambient humidity in the room affects how fast the effect happens. If the humidity in the room is very low, you can see mortality in a few hours. And if it's high humidity, then it can take a few days, but probably not more than that if they're continuously exposed.

1:14 Yeah, sort of two to three days is maximum that I've seen. Okay. Yeah. I mean, compared to I was testing some of the professional residual insecticides last week on some recently collected populations. And I gave up on day 12 because I hadn't killed anything yet. So the pyrethroid resistance is such a huge issue now that they've almost lost all of their residual efficacy. And so the industry needs something that provides some residual efficacy for tackling bedbugs. okay sorry i am i can do a talk at pestex i wasn't there but what highlighted it to me is i was told you used a word in your seminar on tinctix it's a word i don't like it's game changer did you actually say game changer me did i say i i could have why don't you like that word it sounds like something i might have said yeah yeah no i'm not i'm not having a go it's just a word that generally a lot of products when companies say it it's not a game changer but everything i've seen and heard and everything this does sound like it could fit into yeah i think i think that's a fair description yeah uh given that the current game you know we've known about the pyrethroid resistance problem for for two decades and and the game hasn't changed and this is this is um this is uh this really has potential to change how you how you tackle uh uh bed bugs particularly in those multiple occupancy buildings where they where they can move around and you need something to stop them reinvesting the same places over and over again yes no you definitely do also i noticed so i wanted to bring it up but you're actually it says on companies house you're a director of in chicks uk is that right yes i i've set up a company with francisco in order to

3:11 distributed in the uk that's right and i think we're like a year old now just over okay i just i noticed it when i looked it up and i thought i didn't realize he was actually director yeah i just thought it's just a bit interesting that was um so sarah how are you doing all good the lady that ditched all and sold all of her insecticides and everything i was like wow she's all in she's all in I was like there must be something here if Sarah's ditched it all and just gone all in are you finding it works very well?

3:51 I'm finding it incredibly efficient it just works I've got a really good one that I'm looking forward to going back to tomorrow with Leah you know Leah Darby we went to one it's an unoccupied supported living unit that had clearly had bed bug for several years. When we walked through the front door, it looked like a carpet of dead bed bugs. And before you know it, we were virtually back to back with our steamers because they weren't dead. Was that the one where you made some videos and you could hear Leah going?

4:31 So that wasn't the bad one. That wasn't the bad one. The one prior to that was the bad one. I mean, literally steaming the same areas three or four times, turning your back and looking back again and more emerging from the floorboards, the skirting, the plug sockets, because they haven't fed for many months. And we're now giving off quite a lot of carbon dioxide as we're moving around. And they were just coming. So I'm going to give a big update tomorrow on that one. Not tomorrow, the day after when we go.

5:03 But yeah, it just works. What can I say? I spent six months deleting posts in my little Facebook group. You know, the little one with 10,000 members now. Just thought I'd mention that. 10 now 10 now But I kept getting people that hadn been members for long mentioning this product chin checks i was deleting them for a good six months oh really so they were actually saying you need to try you need to try it and i thought it was people spamming the group and you know my feelings on people with their latest snake oil cure you know just get out go way um and then i spoke to richard at pestex um last year and he said it's great give it a try and i thought well if it's good enough for richard it's good enough for me and i haven't looked back i haven't looked back i i i can't see myself using anything else in the very near future awesome that's good to hear so i'm gonna run through some questions as well obviously so we can help people that want to listen to this you know decide because i'll be honest i'm i'm quite there to use it i like that because i keep saying too donna sarah i like the look oh yeah it just popped me off still it's um so so obviously i know it's i know it's just it's a silica dust, but is there any chance of getting, what's it called?

6:40 Silicosis. You know, say someone's got breathing issues. Is there a chance or not? It's been well tested and it's been this material has been registered in as a biocide. It's debatable whether it should be considered a biocide, but it has been registered as a biocide in many different countries. and so it's past safety testing in that respect. If you look at the ultra-structure of it, you know, diatomaceous earth is dug out of the ground and ground up into a fine dust, so it's like little sharp shards of glass.

7:17 And amorphous silica is quite different. Under an electron microscope, you can see it's little round blobs, so it's quite a different material on a microscopic scale. scale. It's not sharp. Silicosis is fibrosis of the lungs, which is scarring caused by sharp shards of silica cutting into the lung tissue. So it doesn't have that effect. I mean, we always say with any kind of dust, you should minimise exposure to it, wear a mask, that kind of thing. And if you're using it sensibly, you should be applying it very specifically the cracks and crevices where the bugs hide isn't it it shouldn't be in your bedding on your pillow and you know that kind of thing it should be in in the cracks and crevices where the bugs are and therefore not easily airborne and uh yeah the people who suffer from silicosis tend to be miners and builders who are working in dusty environments uh you know for decades and and it's it's contracted over a long period um okay i just thought obviously i've had a lot of people will ask me various different things because it does it does worry people but yeah no can i just say i as part of my risk assessments i always ask the customers if they have any breathing issues lung issues asthma copd those kinds of things um and then if if they do then obviously i use as little as possible um but i tend to use the aerosol rather than the dust because the aerosol I find it adheres to surfaces so you don't get that potential for a little bit of updraft of the powder.

9:06 Okay. So obviously when, this is open to obviously anyone with this, I've heard people, the process of doing it, do you leave it in people's like under their divan beds and stuff? Is that safe to leave down? in areas that they don't normally go to. So say you're like me, when I get a bed at home, I just woof the mattress up. You won't get a puff of dust, would you? Or no? Yeah, I'll let you speak, Francisco. There is something that I think is very important, and it's always about the dose that you receive.

9:52 yeah okay when we're talking about the danger of any dust and when we're talking about xylicosis and as richard was saying this is something that the the builders and this is a sickness that the builders and the and the mine mine workers used to have which is people that they are breathing every day constantly a a a a a dust usually from from quartz yeah which is what you get when you are in the mine and what you get when you are in the in the in the building inside cutting bricks You know, there is a lot of dust floating.

10:22 The amount of chin cheeks that you will use in a home is about 50 grams. 50 grams, when you put the 50 grams, you apply the 50 grams, most of it is going to be stick to the surface. So if a person will breathe will breathe about 10 or 15 grams which is extremely extremely extremely lower than any dangerous thing So it kind of like if you go to the beach and it a windy day Nobody will think that they are going to get silicosis for going to the beach in a windy day. But the risk is bigger than with amorphous silicon dioxide.

11:00 The thing is that it has been tested by, not that we tested it or anything, but it's been tested by the uh by osha by the by the american uh uh work safety by european work safety regulations and all of them they say it's quite safe it's extremely safe and everything depends on how much you breathe obviously the applicator we only do bed bugs we only do bed about using chinchers our technicians they do every day six applications of the chinchers people like us of course use a mask is considered to be safe but i always put the example of sardines sardines they are this year they are super safe and next year they will kill you so as a matter of safety use a mask i suggest to cover your hair you know it's like try not to breathe the product for the people who are in the at the home it's extremely safe we have been using it in hospitals uh and with the with approval of the doctor while the patient is in the bed i mean a patient with a with a respiratory problem that they are having oxygen or something like this and then we have been putting changes with the aerosol but it's still changes in the bed with With the doctor present.

12:19 Okay. So, obviously, this sounds like a thing that could be quite good in places like care homes and places like that. It does. Because a lot of people, people who can't walk elderly and stuff, a lot of them just sit in the same places. So, it could happen. So, this does sound like an option for places like care homes. It does. Yeah. It's very common to have divan beds, often with drawers in. and the bed bugs just get inside that big hollow structure.

12:54 They're out of the way of, you know, this is a perfect location to put the chin checks because it's, you can dust the inside of the bed base. No one's going to have their head in there and have any kind of exposure to it. But this is where the bugs will be hiding. So in the bed base and behind the headboard, these are the places where bugs like and they're away from where people have have contact with them so yeah these are the ideal locations yeah it does sound that it's a few people in chat now hello Hugh hello Chris hello hey man on LinkedIn um yeah it's a few people coming over as you might have noticed you my uh Facebook stream failed for the first time ever i will re-upload the full video on facebook after as well um someone was asking what's the i don't know if you can answer this what's the cost difference between chin chicks and de i don't know if that's relevant or someone was asking that on the youtube they were it's a little bit more expensive okay well if it works that's all that matters i mean that's the thing i can get de to work i can make de work but the processes are a little bit longer it's a bit slower the results i'm getting with the chair you know it's like paying for the congestion charge in london if you want to go the quickest most efficient route through pay your 18 pound a day it's worth it yes it is it says it's like it's like you always find if you find a product that works uh you know stay keep using it because it's working yeah even if it's

14:34 cost a little bit more it's irrelevant and when you balance it out against the insecticides

14:42 i would say the chin checks is cheaper than you know some of your brand name pesticides it definitely is i was looking i was like and you and you said to me but that can do a few rooms No, never, never. I'm bringing you over to the dark side, Sean. I know. Slowly I'm bringing you in. I know. DE is really, really, really negatively affected by humidity. It's almost not suitable for our climate. The efficacy becomes so slow. You know, I did some marina trials in controlled humidity environments, and I hadn't killed, with the DE, I hadn't killed everything in four months.

15:23 and I was forcing the bugs in the arenas to walk over it every week. And so weekly exposures for four months weren't enough to kill 100% of the bed bugs. So I know that some people do use DE, and I know some people use DE effectively. I know a company in Switzerland that use DE, but they dry out all of their DE. They've built their own machine for drying it out before they use it because it's so critical that it's absolutely bone dry or it just becomes very, very slow. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Just stop.

15:57 Just on that hospital thing. Hugh Radford's just put something. We have problems with bed bugs in the hospital type air mattresses can steam them but they are about a grand each I not familiar with those mattresses I familiar with the blue plastic covered hospital mattresses with the zip around the side and everybody that's watching will know exactly where you find the bed bugs in that zip flap and yeah those can be steamed so I'm not familiar with the air mattresses i can imagine they'd be a bit of a pain but then equally you can see it so why not vacuum instead yeah yeah in hospitals the hospital beds are renowned for getting bugs inside the inside the frame of the bed that that's the biggest problem with those hospital beds is the bugs can get into the tubular structure and then it's very difficult to to hit them with anything um you can use a glass glass some glass i thought metal beds were better i thought metal beds not hospital beds simple metal beds i swear by yeah if you're if you're in an apartment building and you've got bugs in all of your neighboring apartments get a metal bed and you probably won't have bed bugs but the hospital beds there's such a complex design with sort of telescope telescopic tubes and i know i've treated them bugs can get right inside them

17:20 and they can be a real pain to get rid of then. They need a chat with Richard. He used to help redesign them. He does. Yeah.

17:30 So one thing I wanted to know, you know, with Chinchicks, does it have an MD, basically a safety data sheet? Does it have a safety data sheet? Because obviously, it's got that. Yeah, yeah. You can find that on Chinchicks.com, which Francisco manages, and there's a chinchecks.co.uk which is the UK site and both of them i think maybe the UK site links to the dot com site and that's where all of the safety data sheets are for not just the UK but yeah lots of different companies because everyone has their own system and so they're all on there yeah okay yeah yeah in chinchecks.com you you can you can i mean we have it some some some pest control companies they don't publish all these documents but in chinchecks.com you can have i'm reading right now the website in next window which you can download in here the toxicity oral toxicity in a recent toxicity dermal toxicity skin sensation air eye irritation skin irritation eye irritation is misspelled stability report label food grade report msds for australia msds for europe and the c-o-s-h yeah yeah yeah that was what i was asking because the kosh basically yeah that's all there yeah people said ask that question so i've asked the question i have um so you can it it is categorized as a non-toxic treatment so you can legally say this is non-toxic is that correct either yeah yeah you can is it correct there is there is one thing that is very

19:11 important in in in this because it's not just that i say or that we say is non-toxic because we have a toxicity oral toxicity study but amorphous silicon dioxide is an approved a food additive whenever you use a instant noodles or whenever you have the chocolate powder for the milk or or so many. Yeah, it is in those. The number is, when you read the ingredients list, it's an E551. And it's in so many foods. I mean, it's a food additive. Okay, okay. That's interesting, that is. How does, I heard something on the, I think you were talking to the beauties and beasties, Francisco, and something came up.

19:58 I'm sure you said something about, something was mentioned about, you know for the wasp we use vulcan vulcan and they said that obviously that was more dangerous than chin chicks was there was something i don't know the ins and outs of what was said it's something with vulcan dust it was and it came in uh chin chicks was safer than that to use and everyone was worrying about chin chicks when vulcan was more dangerous to use so i use deadline by the way that's why it's deadline providers pro but i think most of the products most of the products that that most of the sprays are more dangerous than changes they are all poisons and you know

20:43 now you're probably so jake on youtube someone said have you someone's saying have you got well obviously you're not going to have that you've got you've got the data sheet police say in the uk hse data sheet it hasn't gone through that has it so hse are wondering what to do about silica products generally at the moment i know that they're talking to um to barotene at the moment because they have an oa2ki silica spray uh and and there are others lody have a desi dust uh and and and the question the question is whether or not these these should be considered with a biocide because by HSE's own definition, a biocide has to have a mode of action beyond physical.