How to Clean Your House After a Lice Infestation
Most parents who are dealing with a Head Lice Infestation are overly concerned about the house cleaning that they think they must do. At Fresh Heads Lice Removal of Jacksonville, we spend quite a bit of time educating our families, and most of the time, the families we help have done way more cleaning than they really needed to do. Here’s why:
Head Lice are a parasite, they require their host, and the host is the human head. If a louse comes off of a human head, it begins to die very quickly. In fact, after about 6 hours off of a human head, a louse will be so severely dehydrated that it would have a very difficult time crawling back onto a head, even if it had the chance. They cannot survive at all off of a head for more than 24-30 hours. Likewise, nits or lice eggs are glued to the hair shaft, typically about 1/8th of an inch from the scalp. The heat from the scalp incubates those eggs, and as soon as the baby louse hatches from the egg, it heads directly to the scalp where it belongs. If a hair that happened to have a nit glued to it fell out, that nit would quickly get cold and die. Lice are smart. They have been around for thousands of years, and they know where they belong. They are not crawling all over your house!
With that being said, the CDC estimates that of the 6-12 million cases of lice that occur in the U.S. each year, 98% of those cases are contracted via direct head-to-head contact. The remaining 2% could come from a contaminated environment, like a shared hat or hairbrush. To be extra cautious, you should follow these simple housecleaning tips:
–Wash All bed sheets and blankets in hot water
–Wash all clothes that have been worn in the last day or so, or that are lying on the floor
–Place stuffed animals, throw pillows and throw blankets in the dryer on high heat for 30 minutes
–Vacuum all sofas, chairs, car seats, large pillows, carpets and area rugs
–Clean all of the hair out of your hairbrushes, place them in a ziplock baggie and freeze them overnight.
–Bag up all hair accessories for 24 hours
The truth is, when you are dealing with a head lice infestation, the hard part is on the head, not in your house. Fresh Heads Lice Removal in Jacksonville, FL is the exclusive provider of the revolutionary AirAlle head lice treatment, the lowest cost traditional comb-out anywhere in Florida, and amazing tools for the do-it-yourselfer. We are Jacksonville’s top choice for Head Lice Treatment!
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