ThermaPureHeat
Thermapureheat is a pest control technology that is designed
to kill off insects without using any chemicals, so that you can treat your
home while still being environmentally safe. It's sort of like fumigation. A
particular area is tented off (it could be the whole house, or it could just
be a single room or apartment). They then place heaters outside the tented
area and pump in hot air, with a temperature of about 130 degrees Fahrenheit.
They keep pumping it in for a couple of hours - long enough to kill off any
insects.
You'll have to take some stuff out of your living space - electronics are a big one, and plants or fish would also be killed if they stay in there. On balance, it's going to be less of a hassle than fumigation, though - you don't have to worry about your food or about getting the smell of chemicals onto everything. You also don't have to stay outside your home for several days, as required by many kinds of fumigation. If you're sensitive to chemicals, or asthmatic, fumigation may not be an option, period. The downside by comparison is that ThermaPure won't kill anything that isn't already inside your home. That can make it problematic for apartments. If someone next door has bed bugs too, they'll just come right back through the walls. Fumigation leaves behind a chemical residue that can keep killing new bugs that come back in.
A couple of U.C. Berkeley professors have studied the technology and concluded that it was effective (describing themselves as impressed by it in their report).
Sources and Useful Links:
http://www.thermapure.com/
http://www.thermapure.com/pdf
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