FDNY: Pouring Gas on Mattress NOT the Solution to Bed Bugs

There are many different strategies for ridding your apartment of bed bugs. Experts recommend dry cleaning your clothes and keeping them in sealed plastic bags, and hiring an exterminator. But there's one radical method for battling the parasites that has the FDNY rather alarmed: Some bed bug victims are pouring gasoline or kerosene on their mattresses. The FDNY says that's not only ineffective, but also dangerous, because mattresses really shouldn't be flammable. Yet it appears that Astoria residents are not only gassing up their beds, but their bodies, too.

Several Astoria residents called 911 over the past few months after they smelled gasoline coming from adjacent apartments, the Queens Gazette reports. Firefighters responding to the calls found that residents had poured gasoline on mattresses to kill bedbugs. They had also wiped gasoline on their limbs and their children’s bodies to thwart the bugs! Queens fire officials have now issued a warning, reminding potential Darwin award winners that "gasoline is a highly explosive compound that could ignite and 'pop' from something as simple as flicking a light switch." [Via Queens Crap]

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By John Del Signore in News on December 21, 2009 1:46 PM

Comments [rss]

Think2wice

Suck on frogs to cure clap.

Malcolm Tucker

If you want to cure your lice, jam a fork into the nearest electrical outlet.

spnder

I read this two years ago...

ed_Extinct

people are so f&%king stupid.

Nyctini11

^Stupid, maybe, i'd venture closer to Desperate. But at upwards of $3k for initial treatment and ZERO help from the city, what do you expect these poor people to do?... they like everyone else are desperately trying to self treat because they have NO other options.

nycblonde

This should be submitted to the Darwin Awards

Sommelier

My thoughts, exactly!

hotstepper

got it. gas no good for getting rid of bedbugs.

*writing down*

now, is it an okay treatment for fleas?

felixthecat2

http://www.snopes.com/medical/homecure/lice.asp

It used to work on lice.

Kojak

wtf.

Ok, what ethnic group can we point the finger at for this one?

jaycjay

It's Bloomberg's fault.

felixthecat2

Actually, if Bloomberg plans to close more firehouses then it might soon be his fault when people died. Of course, people like you can only make jokes when you probably didn't vote or even ever attend a hearing. The apathy and misinformation proves to me how inferior humans are.

felixthecat2

flammable children, human specie so superior.

valeriob

human specie so superior
Right, because bed bugs, cats, and horses can all log onto gothamist.com on the internet with their computers and make degenerate comments just like you.
If they could do all that, they would probably correct your grammar somewhere along the way too.

felixthecat2

You're the prime example why humans aren't superior. What pathetic 35 year old would create 8 Felixthecat avatars? Answer: VALERIOB.

ides_of_march

And you're a prime example that animal rights activists have, at best, an iffy relationship with sanity.

felixthecat2

ides of march, Is this what Faux News tells you. They are wrong. There is a difference between passion and insanity. One who creates 8 FTCs avatars is pathetic. Not even a twilight stalker chick would do such a thing.