Archive for November, 2007

Lice in Your Home? Quick and Easy Solutions

headlice November 29th, 2007

If a member of your family has gotten a lice diagnosis, it is easy to get overwhelmed with the prospect of cleaning your home. The truth is, to get rid of head lice in your house, you really only need a vacuum cleaner, and access to a washer and dryer. No special cleansers, chemicals or professional lice removing services are necessary! If you know which areas of the house to be concerned with, you can methodically clean only those places, and then consider your house free of lice.

Here is a quick reference list of previous posts with advice for cleaning your home when your child has lice:

Treating Lice and Nits in the Home - Finishing the Job

headlice November 22nd, 2007

In the past few weeks, we have presented helpful information about cleaning your house when your child has been diagnosed with lice or nits.

We have explained that when dealing with human head lice in the main living areas of your home, you need to be concerned with places where a person is likely to rest their head. When dealing with the bedrooms, linens, toys, and closets need to be addressed as well, because it is more likely that there are stray hairs around with viable nits on them.

To finish up the job of cleaning your house of hair lice and nits, do a quick review of your bathrooms. Remove any used towels and wash them in hot water in the washing machine. Dry them on high heat for at least 30 minutes. Remove visible stray hairs that may contain nits, from bathtubs, sinks and showers by collecting them with a paper towel. Dispose of these hairs by placing them in a knotted plastic bag and toss them in your trash.

You have removed hairs from the head rests of chairs and couches, and treated the relevant items in your bedrooms and bathrooms. The same procedure applies to recently used coats and jackets. If you have a closet with such outerwear, it is only significant if the clothing has been used in the past 2-3 days before the lice diagnosis. In such a case, refer to our previous post on cleaning clothing during a lice infestation.  

Remember that head lice treatment for your house is mostly a matter of removing stray hairs that may contain nits. Human head lice will not survive on floors, or on chairs, or in closets - because they need to feed on human blood a few times a day. As we have stated many times before, a human head louse will die within 24-48 hours off of a human head.

The way to preserve the job you have done ridding your house of lice and nits, is to maintain the lice-free status of your child's head. Once you have used an effective lice shampoo, and methodically combed out all of the nits, you must continue the combing out process every night for about two weeks, to ensure that there are no remaining nits. If this maintenance is not done, having clean linens, sofas, and towels, will not prevent remaining nits from hatching and starting the process all over again!

 

Cleaning Lice and Nits in Brushes, Combs and Hair Accessories (conclusion)

headlice November 15th, 2007

continued from Cleaning Lice from Hair Accessories - Bedroom, Bathroom and Beyond

Once you have treated your child with a lice shampoo and comb, it is imperative to do all that is possible to prevent re-infestation. Although it is tempting to throw out many items, this is impractical, unnecessary, and can be very upsetting to your children who are already distressed!

Hair accessories can have live lice bugs on them, or hair with nits. Use a comb to remove ALL the hair that you possibly can from the brushes, combs and hair ornaments such as barrettes, ponytail holders, clips, and headbands. Pour boiling water liberally over these items. If the water is too hot for a human being, it will also be too hot for the survival of head lice and nits.

Some people immerse hair accessories in boiling water for a few minutes. However, most of these items have plastic or rubber parts, and they will get ruined. Therefore, Licenders is hesitant to recommend this. Although boiling water can kill live lice, it can also melt the glue on some hair ornaments, so be careful.

Items made entirely from fabric can be washed and/or dried on high heat for at least 30 minutes. The dryer must be hot enough that it could not be tolerated safely by a human being. A hair dryer is generally not hot enough to destroy hair nits. 

Any hair accessories that still have hair on them, or could not be properly cleaned using boiling water, or the clothes dryer, should be put into a plastic bag, and sealed inside for 48 hours. In this amount of time, lice will die without access to the blood of a human scalp.

Cleaning Lice from Hair Accessories - Bedroom, Bathroom and Beyond (Introduction)

headlice November 13th, 2007

A crucial detail that must be addressed when treating the bedroom when a child has lice, are the brushes, combs, and hair accessories of your lice infested child. You can clean your house, wash your linens and bag your toys, but obviously, in order to maintain the removal of lice with a lice shampoo and comb, hair accessories must be dealt with properly!

The first thing to do is to remove ALL items that you use in your child’s head, and bring them into a central place, such as the bathroom sink. Remember to include brushes or combs that may be stored for convenience in another location, such as a kitchen or bathroom drawer, or near a front hall mirror. Collect all such items from your home – even if they do not belong to the child with nits. Children often use their parents’ brushes and combs when it is convenient, so it is a good idea to clean every hair grooming item in the house – even the ones that may be off limits in your own bedroom. You want to make sure that every hair accessory in your home has been treated for nits.

Of course, the easiest thing to do with inexpensive items that have a lot of hair in them is to simply discard them. Put them in a plastic garbage bag, seal it with a knot, and put them in the trash. However, this is not always a practical solution.

Items of monetary or sentimental value, can be safely treated despite the lice and nit problem. It is not necessary to add additional anguish to a child by irreverently discarding their possessions during a lice infestation. Treating hair accessories for lice and nits must be done carefully and methodically. Again, it is not difficult or complicated. Once you know what to do, even these most personal and problematic items can be salvaged, with the assurance of having been successfully included in your home treatment of head lice.

(to be continued)

Treating the Toys When Your Child Has Head Lice

headlice November 7th, 2007

During a Lice infestation, most toys do not present a problem at all. Only toys on which a child has likely laid his head are a concern. The main guilty parties are stuffed animals. As we have said previously, lice do not burrow into furry toys by nature. The only concern is a surviving louse that may have strayed off the child’s head directly on to the toy or a stray hair stuck to the toy with a viable nit on it. This only applies to a louse that has had the opportunity to feed on a human head within the past 24 – 48 hours, or a nit that has grown for a few days while on the head, and is likely to hatch soon.

Stuffed toys can often be put into the dryer on high heat. Such toys should be put into the dryer for ½ hour. If the toys have delicate parts, or cannot withstand high heat for any other reason, they should be placed into large garbage type bags, and sealed for 48 hours.

Additional items to pay attention to are headphones from play stations or personal music gadgets, bicycle and sports helmets, and any other toy that is used on your child’s head.  Seal the bags securely with a knot or a tight twist-tie.  As we have explained, in our professional experience treating thousands of families with head lice, 48 hours is a sufficient amount of time to assure that there will be no re-infestation resulting from the toys and protective headgear.

How to choose a Lice Comb (part 1)

headlice November 6th, 2007

Using an effective, safe lice shampoo is certainly very important. Many people seem to make the mistake however, of not focusing enough on the most important lice removal tool: the lice comb. When you use a shampoo for lice, it will kill lice on contact, if it is a good shampoo. However, the nits will remain behind.

Nits are eggs that are laid by mature head lice. Lice have a life span of 30 days and lay eggs, called "nits". Using a natural glue, the louse attaches one egg per strand of hair. Within 10 days after it reaches maturity, a female louse may already deposit more than 60 nits at a rate of about six eggs each day. As those nits hatch, the new lice start laying eggs at the same rate. If every nit is not combed out with a lice comb, the use of the lice shampoo will have been a waste. In order to prevent frustration of lice re-infestation, the child with lice must have his hair thoroughly and methodically combed out.

to be continued in a future post

Removing Lice Nits from Clothing

headlice November 5th, 2007

After a child has been treated with a Lice Shampoo, and had the nits properly combed out, attention must be given to the home. Removing the possibility of a re-infestation of headlice is crucial, and not very difficult. We have addressed treating bed linens in Lice Information and Remedies for the Bedroom

The same lice treatment instructions that apply to bed linens apply to clothing and outerwear.  Any item of clothing that has been worn by a child in the last few days prior to being diagnosed with lice or nits, could potentially contain a hair with a viable nit on it. If it was worn in the previous 24-48 hours the clothing could theoretically even contain a surviving hair louse. This includes sweaters, sweatshirts, and outerwear such as coats and jackets. When dealing with nits or head lice, it is wise to be extra cautious about items worn directly on the head – hats, scarves, baseball caps, earmuffs, etc. You do not have to fumigate your closets and drawers! Only items that have been in direct recent contact are cause for concern.

In a closet where clothing is pushed tightly up against each other, you should also treat those garments that were pressed directly against the items that we have described above. You do not need to be concerned beyond those secondary items. Remember, lice are human parasites. They need human blood to survive. Lice do not embed themselves in clothing. The only concern is a louse that came off the head within the last 24 hours, or a lice egg ("nit") on a hair, that was transferred by friction on to an adjacent item.

Any items that can tolerate it should be washed in hot water. If they cannot be washed, they should be put into the dryer for ½ hour on high heat. If neither of these is possible, these items should be bagged for 48 hours.

Tie the top of the bag with a knot or a twist-tie. In the case that there is a live lice bug on any garment, it will die within 24-48 hours because it has no access to human blood. In the case of stray hairs with nits, the fact that they are in a sealed bag is equally beneficial. Any newly hatched nymph will die right away without a human head on which to feed.

Upcoming topics:

  • Cleaning toys when a Child has Nits.
  • Hair Accessories from a Lice Infested Child.
  • Bathroom advice for treating Lice.
  • Lice or Nits and Your Car.