by Joshua Rice

On youtube, there is a person claiming that he used silica gel crystals cat litter to kill bed bugs. He said that when grinded into a fine powder, it will stick to bedbugs when they crawl over it, which will dehydrate them like what salt does to snails and act like shards of glass at the same time; cutting up the bed bugs. He also said the upside to this method was that silica gel crystals are harmless to humans, even when swallowed. Other sources online seems to back up this harmless claim, which was important to me. Everything sounded good and so I decided to give it a try.

 

I bought a tub of Silica Gel Cat litter from Petco and decided to use it beneath my spring box and mattress and a corner of the bedroom that was nearest to my bed. Before breaking it down to powder form, I had to take out the blue pieces. These dyed blue pieces of silica gel crystals are for identifying if the cat litter was wet or not. I do not know if these blue pieces were toxic or not but it was better to be on the safe side so they were removed. I pounded the white crystals with a hammer until it was in powder form, and I spread it liberally around my bed and the corner of my room.

 

Did It Work?

 

I honestly do not know if it worked. I didn't find any dead bed bugs in the powder. One thing it did do was prolonged a cough I have had. After I sprinkled around the powder, the small cough I have had for a couple of days got worse. I was laid out for a good 3 weeks and had to take a lot of medicine. It was not until I removed all the powder did I get better. So my advice is to not use cat liter to kill bed bugs. If it can make a cough get worse, then it is not a good idea to use it when you're fully healthy either.