I'm fairly certain that it is poor taste to blog someone else's blog, but Bug Girl has her Ph.D. in bugs and does a great summary of what this 2008 study really means to us laymen. Even the National Pesticide Information Center tells people to not spot treat with pesticides because it causes the pesticide-resistant populations to grow. You know - natural selection - if you kill the ones who are susceptible to pesticides the strong will survive to reproduce!
Here is a nibble of Bug Girl's Feb 2009 Blog:
So, what does this new information tell us?
- DDT will be utterly useless against bed bugs, so people should stop asking for it.
- We’re going to need a lot more research on ways to kill bedbugs other than just poisoning them with the usual pesticide suspects.
- In cities where there are active bed bug populations, insecticide choice for resistance management will be very important in urban entomology.
- Bedbugs are not going to go away and you should probably be getting a little paranoid.