Do Bedbugs Spread on Clothes to Work and School in Barking and Dagenham?

How Likely Is It?

Bedbugs are not like lice. They do not live on the body, and once they have fed they want to get away from the person and back into a crack. Clothes you are actually wearing are a poor hiding place, because they move, they are warm all over and there is nowhere dark and still.

The risk comes from things that sit in the bedroom overnight and then leave the house in the morning: a school bag on the floor by the bed, a coat hung on the back of the bedroom door, a handbag on the bedside table, a work jacket folded on a chair. A bedbug looking for somewhere to hide can crawl into any of those.

Habits That Keep Them at Home

• Move bags out of the bedroom. Keep school bags, work bags and handbags in the hall or the kitchen, ideally on a hard floor or a hook.
• Hang coats downstairs. A coat that spends the night by the front door is far less likely to have a passenger than one hung on the bedroom door.
• Dry the next day’s clothes hot. Uniforms and work clothes can go through a hot tumble dry, then into a sealed bag outside the bedroom until the morning.
• Do not store clean clothes in the affected room during treatment if you can avoid it. Bag them once they are washed and dried.
• Check shoes and bags now and then along the seams, particularly anything that lives near the bed.

None of this means keeping children off school or staying away from work. Carrying on as normal, with these habits in place, is the sensible approach.

Clothes and Wardrobes During Treatment

What happens to the contents of the wardrobe depends on which route you take.

Chemical treatment

We treat the places bedbugs hide, not your clothes. Bedding is stripped and hot-washed, and clothes that have been on the floor, the bed or a chair in the affected room go through a hot wash or a hot tumble dry and are then bagged. Floors need to be clear so the skirtings can be reached. Between the first and second visit, keep the treated clothes bagged and take out only what you need. The chemical treatment page covers the rest of what the course involves.

Heat treatment

Heat treats the room and what is in it, so a lot less needs to be washed and bagged. There is a list of heat-sensitive items to take out first, and we send it before the day. Preparing for heat treatment goes through it in full.

Should You Tell Work or School?

That is up to you. If you have followed the habits above, the chance of carrying them in is small. If you think it has already happened, say, you have found one in a bag you took to work, it is fair to mention it so that the area around your desk or peg can be checked. Our guide to bedbugs in the workplace covers what an employer would do next.

When It Is Over

Once the treatment is finished and nothing more has turned up, you can drop the extra washing and go back to normal. Keeping bags off the bedroom floor is a good habit to keep anyway. If you are still unsure whether the house is clear, the borough page explains what the follow-up looks like for each route.

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