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Monday, January 26, 2015

Decontamination

I read an article a while back about a bed that uses steam to kill bedbugs (I don't have a link, sorry). The idea is that it's much healthier and safer than using insecticides. So I was wondering today, could you do that to a whole house? Put some big heaters in every room and raise the temperature of the entire house to, say, 60 degrees celsius over the course of a few hours? It would be much healthier than using pesticides and you'd be able to use the house again much sooner. The question is whether there's a safe temperature range that can reliable kill all insects without damaging anything, and the feasibility of heating the whole house to said temperature. It might be expensive, but I think it has potential, especially when you consider how insects tend to develop immunities to pesticides and that forces us to use more and more toxic chemicals.

Crazy idea or business opportunity?