Sure, that can kill a few of them, but entirely inadequate for actually getting rid of any real infestation. They breed much more quickly than the diatomaceous earth can kill, and can survive on the order of months without any feeding so you can never be sure to have killed them all with a passive approach that just waits for them to come out and kill themselves.
Have you ever worked with diatomaceous earth? I have.
1. It's fine and goes everywhere. Breathing it is especially ill-advised.
2. The first light breeze, mammal to walk by or light misting of rain will wipe it away.
Giving yourself silicosis in the process of not actually killing them.
One of my former roommates got bed bugs that were living in the wall from either the neighbor or a previous tenant. Only insecticides are going to solve that problem, not some holistic, "negative ions" (radioactive thorium) panacea snake oil.
They're tiny. Even the adults are quite small. The babies are specks. The younger ones are clear unless they've recently fed, so nearly invisible when they aren't bright red from ingesting blood.
They have a real talent for going unnoticed, even when there are dozens or hundreds of them. People often discover an infestation due to bites or poop smears, not from seeing a live bug at any time.
They mostly come out at night and I think they can hibernate for long periods, like weeks or months. They are quite hard to get rid of once they get into something like a mattress.
I can confirm all of the above, having lived through an infestation myself. Had to ditch my dirt cheap apartment and basically throw away all of my belongings at the time out of fear of bringing any of them with me to the next place ("luckily" I didn't have much at the time as I was a poor student). And then ended up spending $2000+ anyways on a full room heat treatment for my new place because I could swear I was still getting new bite marks and it was driving me insane (though in hindsight they might have been what's referred to as "phantom bites" but I wasn't going to take the chance to find out after going through that whole ordeal).
Up to that point I've lived in shady places with ants, roaches and rats and other shitty stuff but none of that bothered me too much, so I thought I could handle any shitty living arrangement as long as the price was right, but the bed bugs thing was by far the most nerve wracking experience of my entire life, and even made me contemplate suicide at one point. I learned to not cheap out on a place to live ever since... And definitely never pick up used furniture lying on the sidewalk, which I used to do a lot...
So yeah... I can see why people might have reservations against used mattresses...
> People often discover an infestation due to bites
Oh man that brings back some memories, I used to have bites all over my hands and I just assumed its because of mosquitoes although I had not seen or heard a mosquito in the room. 2 weeks after first bite was discovered I saw a bed bug running away slowly because it was full with my blood. I followed it under the bed where I saw a huge colony of bed bugs, I was literally speechless, just could not believe, there were so many of them all living on my blood.
Even Phoenix rarely hits 50C and you'd have to be crazy, or have a broken AC system, to let the inside of your house get that hot. So that leaves, what? Desert countries where AC isn't widely used?
The reports I'm relying on comes from Alice Springs, Australia, which is pretty much smack bang in the middle of a country that is mostly desert. So yeah, desert country describes it pretty well. Ambient temp there was over 47 for days at a time this year.
And yes, "no aircon" also applies. Aircon is a recent thing and most (almost all?) houses outside of the Alice metro don't have it. Hotels that leave the aircon on can still have bed bugs:
But notice this quote: "As I left they gave me a black plastic bag and advised me to keep my clothes in the bag and leave it in the sun for a few days to kill the bugs.
The bags were kept on the counter so it seemed standard procedure to provide departing guests with them."
In reality most houses north of 30 degrees and west of the great dividing in Australia will kill the bugs if you lock them up in the summer letting the temp inside get 10C degrees above ambient. As it happens Australia statuary minimum requirement for workers annual holidays is 4 weeks, and it's traditional to take it over Xmas - which is our summer.
In reality most of the country lives east of the great divide, however even where I live on the coast at 27 degrees south it hits 40C ambient for few days. It doubt it would be hard to nudge it another 10, and a bed bug biting me on the arse would be more than enough incentive for me to find out.
And no, I would not be in staying in the house at the time. As you say, that would be crazy.
