074:Bed Bug Control: Does ChinChex Really Work? | Expert Roundtable

0:00 oh okay i'll have to re-upload it looks like we're not alive on facebook oh okay nice what's going on there i've never had that before i'll have to upload the video after we're live on linkedin and youtube at the minute i've never had that before uh this is episode 74 of Press Perspectives podcast. We are now sponsored by Powered Now, a job management software company. It just helps fund the podcast software like this because it costs quite a bit of money to do podcasts. I do enjoy doing them, but getting a little bit of funding to help run the podcast, it just helps.

0:47 So there'll be a link in the podcast after the show. This week is something a bit different. Well, I've never had this many people on before. so this within the uk pest control industry there's been a lot of controversy and basically all over a product called chin chicks and i thought it was time i got some people on that have made it tested it used it everything so we can talk about it um so this week i have on right Francisco how do I say your other name Francisco is that right it is correct correct oh correct from Chinchix you're the owner isn't you of Chinchix yes yes I'm the guy who made it you are you are, it's cool to get you on also we have on Richard Naylor from the Bedbug Foundation and the Cimex store second time on the podcast he's back and another second time we've got Sarah the Bedbug Queen back on so you've also got a title of two times you have there is a list you know i'm gonna have to make a list of how many times people have been on i have i'm gonna have to do so i'll obviously go with francisco first so how did obviously chin chicks come to be how did he come about initially Okay, first of all, thank you very much for having me here.

2:43 Initially, we had a pest control company. We have a pest control company that the name is No Bed Bugs Hong Kong, which is the t-shirt that I'm wearing right now.

2:54 We couldn't find anything that really worked for us because we are centered, we only do bed bags. so in 2013 we were trying even a little bit earlier we were trying and we were getting good results but not as good as we wanted we were starting with like everybody a little bit of spray a little bit of steam a little bit of everything you know we were doing heat treatments also and but we couldn't find anything so it came out of necessity and we are not a a pesticide company where it's just me, a guy who needed a solution and with a lot of research, a lot of trials and a lot of understanding and five years we end up having chin checks after so many times.

3:43 So it comes out of instead of having an idea of I need to make a product because there is a necessity it's me preparing a product for my company for us to use

3:57 the kind of obviously at the time it would have been exclusive for your company you'd be the only ones that have got this product at the time so just for your at that time was it just you and your pest control company you were the only ones that had this as an actual product we had it only for ourselves until 2022 okay yeah okay so the first the first the first person who tested it was richard in 2016. yeah so that was the first that was the first efficacy test ever made

4:35 he tested in 2016 and we sent it to him one year after we had it in 2015 we were using it already for one year and then until we were about to launch it to the world but COVID came and it got delayed.

4:57 Yeah so yeah that's um I'll be honest how did you how do you make it obviously you're not got technical expertise how did you make a dust literally did you were you clever at science at school or did you get help or how did you how did you just make some dust okay initially my my my my studies and my initial experience and everything is i used to be a chef and i have a food science a degree so i have some knowledge i have some knowledge about ingredients silicon dioxide is a food that it is e551 and then i have a i have a some knowledge about biology and i have some knowledge about chemistry and so i have this is not rocket science it's not rocket science also you know at the end it won't be for me it won't be for me so i had a little bit of i have some experience in chemistry and then the rest is just about research you know it's just it took five years probably another guy maybe can do it in six months

6:11 it'd be incredible if it was six months

6:15 but yeah now you've done you've done well and you're obviously so did you was it what other countries got to tin checks before the uk did you launch any other country so i've heard it's in australia under a different name because i was listening to your podcast on um bestie profiles i've listened to that as well and i'm i'm not i had to do a lot of redisting to that podcast still not 100 uh understand all of it because i said sarah you need you need to watch this one it's like or listen to it it's like a panel of experts i said face it yeah the product is distributed in 25 countries by NCS text all around the southeast NCS taxi they have the world divided in three one is America another one is Europe and another one is the rest of the world which is Africa and Asia so it's existing beauty in Africa and Asia which is 25 countries we were talking yesterday about Fiji for example to not sit in Fiji then we are in uk obviously and before uk we were already in spain and portugal with anti-synics okay

7:36 anti-synics they have for the rest of europe i don't know if i have to say the rest of europe or or for europe not including uk anti-synics they have exclusivity for europe and so they are using it or oh wow so technicians that don't work for that particular company wouldn't be able to get it then no uh yes but i guess that they they initially they will start distributing it and selling it also online oh sorry okay that's the deal that's the deal oh i see okay okay so i have to do that that's it sounds really good it does it just there's so much to take in there so richard how do you help with this with the obviously you do testing um and you're like you're in your lab now you are yeah yeah in my office at the moment yeah yeah so how did that testing process work when you when you tested it back in 2022 was it uh 2016 2016 um yeah so yeah so lots of companies send me lots of bed buggy products all the time i've got i've got multiple tests on the go at the moment traps and sprays and all sorts of things and so i'm always excited to see new things coming to the market it's uh it's most similar the thing that was on the market already that it's most similar to would be cymexa from rock hall labs in the us

9:05 and i was familiar with that one so i had i had high hopes for it because it's uh this is another amorphous silica dioxide it side by side they look similar they're a slightly different color but they they look similar and so so i was familiar with that one uh and uh and so i just did some some simple um uh benchtop studies i tend to use um little plywood tiles and i and i dust them it it needs a very very small amount you don't it doesn't look like it's covered in snow it's just a it's a barely visible residue um so i don't dust a dust a set of tiles and um and uh put on some bugs and i confine them onto the surface with a petri dish and upturn petri dish so they have to sit there and then i just um monitor it over time and see how quickly it takes for them to die um and and and it's it's phenomenally quick you know it's uh it it's affected by humidity the ambient humidity in the room affects how fast the effect happens.

10:02 If the humidity in the room is very low, you can see mortality in a few hours. And if it's high humidity, then it can take a few days, but probably not more than that if they're continuously exposed. Yeah, two to three days is maximum that I've seen. I mean, compared to, I was testing some of the professional residual insecticides last week on some recently collected populations and I gave up on day 12 because I hadn't killed anything yet so that so the pyrethroid resistance is such a huge issue now that they've almost lost all of their residual efficacy and so so the industry needs something that provides some residual efficacy for the for tackling bed bugs yeah okay sorry I am I can you do a talk at Pestex I wasn't there, but what highlighted it to me is I was told you used a word in your seminar on Tintix.

11:02 It's a word I don't like. It's game changer. Did you actually say game changer? Me? Did I say it? I could have. Why don't you like that word? It sounds like something I might have said. Yeah. No, I'm not having a go. It's just a word that generally a lot of products, when companies say it, it's not a game changer. but everything i've seen and heard and everything this does sound like it could fit into yeah i think i think that's a fair description yeah uh given that the current game you know we've known about the pyrethroid resistance problem for for two decades and and the game hasn't changed and then this is this is um this is uh this really has potential to change how you how you tackle uh bed bugs particularly in those multiple occupancy buildings where they where they can move around and you need something to stop them reinvesting the same places over and over again yes no you definitely do also i noticed so i wanted to bring it up but you're actually it says on company's house you're a director of tin chicks uk is that right yes i i set up a company with francisco in order to distribute it in the uk that's right and i think we're like a year old now just over okay I noticed it when I looked it up and I thought, I didn't realise he was actually a director.

12:20 I just thought it was just a bit interesting. That was. So, Sarah, how are you doing? All good. The lady that ditched all and sold all of her insecticides and everything. I was like, wow. She's all in. She's all in. I was like, there must be something here. If Sarah's ditched it all and just gone all in. Are you finding it works very well? I'm finding it incredibly efficient. It just works. I've got a really good one that I'm looking forward to going back to tomorrow with Leah. You know Leah Derby?

13:03 Yeah. We went to one. It's an unoccupied supported living unit that had clearly had bed bug for several years. um when we walked through the front door it looked like a carpet of dead bed bugs and before you knew it we were virtually back to back with our steamers because they weren't dead was that the one where you made some videos and you could hold you hear so that wasn't the bad one that wasn't the bad one the one prior to that was the bad one I mean, literally steaming the same areas three or four times, turning your back and looking back again and more emerging from the floorboards, the skirting, the plug sockets, because they haven't fed for many months.

13:52 And we're now giving off quite a lot of carbon dioxide as we're moving around. And they were just coming. So I'm going to give a big update tomorrow on that one. Not tomorrow, the day after when we go. But, yeah, it just works. what can i say i spent six months deleting posts in my little facebook group you know the little one with 10 000 members now just thought i'd mention that um 10 000 now 10 000 now but people kept i kept getting people that hadn't been members for long mentioning this product chin checks i was deleting them for a good six months oh really so they were actually saying you need to try you need to try it and i thought it was people spamming the group and you know my feelings on people with their latest snake oil cure you know just get out go away um and then i spoke to richard at pestex um last year and he said it's great give it a try and i thought well if it's good enough for Richard, it's good enough for me.

14:56 And I haven't looked back. I haven't looked back. I can't see myself using anything else in the very near future. Awesome. That's good to hear. So I'm going to run through some questions as well, obviously. So we can help people that want to listen to this, you know, decide. Because I'll be honest, I'm quite there to use it. I like that because I keep saying to you, Donna, Sarah, I like the look of it. Oh, yeah. The thing just popped me off still. So obviously, I know it's a silica dust, but is there any chance of getting, what's it called, silicosis?

15:41 Silicosis, yeah. No, say someone's got breathing issues. Is there a chance or not? It's been well tested, and this material has been registered as a biocide. It's debatable whether it should be considered a biocide, but it has been registered as a biocide in many different countries. And so it's passed safety testing in that respect. If you look at the ultra structure of it, you know, diatomaceous earth is dug out to the ground and ground up into a fine dust. So it's like little sharp shards of glass.

16:17 and amorphous silica is quite different. Under an electron microscope, you can see it's little round blobs, so it's quite a different material on a microscopic scale. It's not sharp. Silicosis is fibrosis of the lungs, which is scarring caused by sharp shards of silica cutting into the lung tissue. So it doesn't have that effect. I mean we always say with any kind of dust you should minimize exposure to it you know wear a mask that kind of thing but and and if you're using it sensibly you should be applying it very very specifically in the in the cracks and crevices where the bugs hide isn't it it shouldn't be in your bedding on your pillow and you know that kind of thing it should be in in the cracks and crevices where the bugs are and therefore not easily airborne and yeah the people who suffer from silicosis tend to be miners and builders who are working in dusty environments uh you know for decades and and it's it's contracted over a long period um okay that's for obviously i've had a lot of people who ask me various different things because it does it does worry people but yeah no can i just say i as part of my risk assessments i always ask the customers if they have any breathing issues, lung issues, asthma, COPD, those kinds of things.

17:45 And then if they do, then obviously I use as little as possible. But I tend to use the aerosol rather than the dust because the aerosol I find it adheres to surfaces So you don get that potential for a little bit of updraft of the powder Okay. So obviously when... It's just open to obviously anyone with this. I've heard people... The process of doing it. Do you leave it in people's under their divan beds and stuff? is that is that safe to leave down in areas that they don't normally go to so say you're well like me when i get a bed at home i just woof the mattress up you won't get a puff of dust with you if that happens or no you know yeah i'll let you speak francisco yeah there is there is something that i think is very thank you thank you richard there is something that i say very important and and it's always about the dose that that you that you receive yeah okay when we're talking about the danger of any dust and when we're talking about xylikosis and as richard was saying this is something that the the builders and this is a sickness that the builders and the and the mine mine workers used to have which is people that they are breathing every day constantly a a a a a a usually from from course yeah which is what you get when you are in the mind and what you get when you are in the in the in the building side cutting bricks you know there is a lot of fast floating the amount of changes that you will use in a home is about 50 grams

19:30 50 grams that when you put the 50 grams you apply the 50 grams most of it is gonna be stick to the to the surfaces so if a person will breathe will breathe about 10 or 15 grams which is extremely extremely extremely lower than the than the than any danger thing so it's kind of like if you go to the beach and it's a windy day you know it's kind nobody will think that they are going to get silicosis for going to the beach in a windy day but the risk is bigger than with amorphous silicon dioxide the thing is that it has been tested by not not that we tested it or anything but it's been tested by the uh by osha by the by the american a a a work safety by european work safety regulations and all of them they say it's quite safe it's extremely safe and everything depends on how much you breathe obviously the applicator we only do bedbugs we only do bedbugs using ching checks our technicians they do every day six applications of the changes people like us of course use a mask is considered to be safe but i always put the example of sardines sardines they are this year they are super safe and next year they will kill you so just as a matter of safety use a mask i suggest to cover your hair you know it's like try not to breathe the product

20:53 for the people who are in the at the home it's extremely safe we have been using it in hospitals with the with approval of the doctor while the patient is in the bed i mean a patient with a with a respiratory problem that they are having oxygen or something like this and then we have been putting changes with the aerosol but it's still changes in the bed with the doctor present Okay. So obviously this sounds like a thing that could be quite good in places like care homes and places like that. There's a lot of people, people can't walk elderly and stuff.

21:31 A lot of them just sit in the same places. So it could happen. So this does sound like an option for like places like care homes. does yeah it's very very common to have divan beds often with drawers in uh and uh and the bed bugs just get inside that big hollow structure uh they're they're they're out of the way of you know this is a perfect location to put the chin checks because it's you can dust the inside of the bed base no no one's gonna have their head in there and have any kind of exposure to it uh but this is where the bugs will be hiding so in the bed base and behind the headboard these are the places where bugs like and they're away from where where people have contact with them so yeah these are the ideal locations yeah okay it does sound that it's a few people in chat now hello hugh hello chris hello hey man on uh linkedin um yeah it's a few people coming over as you might have noticed you my uh facebook stream failed for the first time ever i will re-upload the full video on facebook after as well um someone was asking what's the i don't know if you can answer this what's the cost difference between chinchicks and de i don't know if that's relevant or someone was asking that on the youtube they were it's a little bit more expensive okay well if it works that's all that matters i mean that's the thing i can get de to work i can make de work but the processes are a little

23:07 bit longer it's a bit slower the results i'm getting with the chin you know it's like paying for the congestion charge in london if you want to go the quickest most efficient route through pay your 18 pound a day it's worth it yes it says it says it's like it's like you always find if you find a product that works uh you know stay keep using it because it's working yeah even if it's cost a little bit more it's irrelevant and when you balance it out against the insecticides

23:42 i would say the chin checks is cheaper than you know some of your brand name pesticides it definitely is i was looking i was like and you and you said to me but that can do a few rooms I'm bringing you over to the dark side, surely. I'm bringing you in. DE is really, really, really negatively affected by humidity. It's almost not suitable for our climate. The efficacy becomes so slow. I did some marina trials in controlled humidity environments and I hadn't killed with the DE. I hadn't killed everything in four months.

24:23 and I was forcing the bugs in the arenas to walk over it every week. And so weekly exposures for four months weren't enough to kill 100% of the bedbugs. So I know that some people do use DE, and I know some people use DE effectively. I know a company in Switzerland that use DE, but they dry out all of their DE. They've built their own machine for drying it out before they use it because it's so critical that it's absolutely bone dry or it just becomes very, very slow. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Just on that hospital thing, Hugh Radford's just put something.

25:01 We have problems with bed bugs in the hospital type air mattresses. Can't steam them, but they are about a grand each.

25:12 I'm not familiar with those mattresses. I'm familiar with the blue plastic covered hospital mattresses with the zip around the side. And everybody that's watching will know exactly where you find the bed bugs in that zip flap. And yeah, those can be steamed. So I'm not familiar with the air mattresses. I can imagine they'd be a bit of a pain. But then equally, you can see it. So why not vacuum instead? Yeah. yeah in hospitals the hospital beds are renowned for getting bugs inside the inside the frame of the bed that that's the biggest problem with those hospital beds is the bugs can get into the tubular structure and then it's very difficult to to hit them with anything um blast some blast i thought metal beds were better i thought metal beds not hospital beds simple metal beds i swear by yeah if you're if you're in an apartment building and you've got bugs in all of your neighboring apartments get a bed and you probably won't have bed bugs but the hospital beds there's such a complex design with sort of telescope telescopic tubes and i know bugs can get right inside them and they can be a real pain to get rid of then yeah you need a chat with richard used to help redesign them he does yeah um so one thing i want to know you know with chinchicks does it have an md uh basically a safety data sheet base does it have a safety data sheet because obviously yeah it's got that okay yeah yeah you can find that on on there's there's chinchicks.com which is which francisco manages and there's a chinchicks.co.uk which is the uk site and both of them i think maybe the uk site links to the dot com site and that's where all of the safety data sheets are for not just the UK but

27:04 yeah lots of different companies because everyone has their own system and so they're all on there yeah okay yeah yeah in cheatchecks.com you you can look in i mean we have it some some some pest control companies they don't publish all these documents but in cheatchecks.com you can have i'm reading right now the website in next window which you can download in here the toxicity oral toxicity inhalation toxicity dermal toxicity skin sensation air eye irritation skin irritation eye irritation is misspelled stability report label food grade report msds for australia msds for and the c-o-s-h yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that was what i was asking because the cosh basically yeah that's all there yeah people said ask that question so i've asked the question i have um so you can it it is categorized as a non-toxic treatment so you can legally say this is non-toxic is that correct either yeah yeah you can is it correct there is there is one thing that is very important in in in this because it's not just that i say or that we say is non-toxic because we have a toxicity oral toxicity study but amorphous silicon dioxide is an approved a food additive whenever you use a instant noodles or whatever you have the chocolate powder for the milk or

28:33 or so yeah it is in those the the number is what you read the ingredients list is that is a e551 and it's in so many foods i mean it's it's a food additive okay okay that's interesting that is how does i heard something on the i think you were talking to the beauties and beasties francisco and something came up i'm sure you said something about something was mentioned about you know for was for use vulcan vulcan and they said that obviously that was more dangerous than chin chicks was there was something i don't know the ins and outs of what was said it's something to a vulcan dust it was and it came in uh chin chicks was safer than that to use and everyone was worrying about chin chicks when vulcan was more dangerous to use so i use deadline by the way that's why it's deadline providers pro but i think most of the products most of the products that that most of the sprays are more dangerous than changes they are all poisons and you know

29:43 now you're probably so jake on youtube someone said have you someone's saying have you got well obviously you're not going to have that you've got you've got the data sheet police say in the uk hse data sheet it hasn't gone through that has it so hse are wondering what to do about silica products generally at the moment i know that they're talking to um to barotene at the moment because they have an oa2ki silica spray uh and and there are others lodi have a desi dust and and and the question the question is whether or not these these should be considered a biocide because by HSE's own definition, a biocide has to have a mode of action beyond physical.

30:29 And we know that silica products have a physical mode of action. So by HSE's definition of a biocide, these are not biocides. But that doesn't stop people registering them as biocides. So that's what caused the gray areas. Several companies like Rent-A-Kill registered an amorphous silica. and the Vasa DE comes from Biofer and this has been registered as a biocide but it's not a biocide so HSE are trying to decide what to do about that and I'm not sure which way they're going to go it will take them a very long time, it will take governments years to work anything out so they might just knock it on the head in the end yeah i don't know i think it took six years for uh for the vasodil one to be registered as a biozide yeah it's getting worse phenomenal amount of money yeah it's getting worse and worse like i'll be honest like everyone's going on about products but other than pest control we're losing more yeah we're actually gaining i reckon it's six to eight years to register a product now something crazy like that yeah and maybe half a million yeah yeah it's mental it really is like everyone says oh with look i said we're losing more than we're gaining because a lot of new products they're not new are they they're just a mixture of something that's already out and they're just yeah yeah yeah so it's nothing new no nothing groundbreaking the products most of the projects come out they're not yeah yeah so there's a few people with uh someone saying that they use chin chicks and have great results there you go

32:10 uh also right um so how does it actually work how do you do this is open to all how does a treatment work how do you actually do a chin chicks treatment say a normal bedroom how this is open to any of you because i it's up to who wants to go you probably all have different ways doing it as well i think we're operating quite a similar way yeah yeah i'm happy to go if you want i'm happy to say so after my initial survey which we all know is the most important part of the entire process um it's it's detail work it's so let's say we'll stick with the divan bed for example the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to start behind the headboard i'm going to steam there first then i'm going to remove the headboard from the bed then i'm going to steam the rest of the headboard okay then i'm going to take the drawers out i'm going to steam the drawers individually all fabric edges joints in the frame screw holes then i'm going to have the divan base upside down have that fabric off underneath i'll probably steam the edges of that fabric first just to kill any that are in that area because i don't want them pinging as I'm popping that fabric off.

33:29 Fabric off, then steaming all the cracks and crevices inside that frame, all the joints in the wood, those little cavities up in the corners. You can just get your poultie in there nicely, steaming all of those fabric edges, screw holes, knots in the wood, all those same areas. And then I'm going to give it a little while to dry just to make sure that there's no dampness in the area so i might do the skirting boards then i might even move to another room to just make sure that's fully dry and then it's applying the chin checks with a brush just i just use a little makeup brush this is literally a makeup brush um that's what i use you can squeeze it flat to make a more um defined area and actually i got some out so i can actually show you how I apply it on the cushion just as an example Mask!

34:25 Mask! Right there right there way ahead of you Sorry That's alright, no you're absolutely right We're not in this, where's her mask? So, let's assume this is some piping on a mattress or on a headboard, so I'm just going to dip my brush in the chinchecks you see that there's quite a fair bit loaded on there actually there's too much on there so i've tapped a bit off and even that is a little bit too much and that brush load yeah i've still got more left on there oh you haven't yeah yeah but that is plenty and i would just brush that in a bit more so it's less on the surface and more just in the gaps and crevices ah i get it that's it

35:33 yeah if you're looking at me i was not expecting a live demonstration i mean that like okay detail You know, a bed frame is a lot more than that one single cushion. But it really is. It's slow and steady. It is you know you flick your brush to get a nice dusting up into those voids in the frame Brushing every joint in the wood each screw hole bed back up the other way some around the mattress seams sometimes, not always, zips, rarely on the buttons. If it was a really significant one like today's one, yeah, I would be putting some around those button areas.

36:20 skirting board around the bed close the door tell the customer not to enter the room for 90 minutes walk away smiling though obviously some people have i knew this would come up because some people in chat have been asking basically saying why are you steaming why can't you just use chin chicks for the knockdown we've lost your process though isn't it that's your process sarah that's not he's not saying this is compulsory yeah but if you want a success rate of 98 on one single visit just saying yeah yeah we do we do it slightly different because in hong kong we our technicians they go in the in the tube they go in public transport in hong kong to use a car it doesn't make sense so what happened is that our guys they go around with a backpack with powder and aerosols.

37:19 So we don't do, we do not do steam. What we do is the first thing when we get to the home, we do aerosol to the surface. We do aerosol directly to every backpack that we find. And then we put the powder a little bit similar to what Sarah just explained and also to every gap.

37:39 Two weeks after, we do it again. And that's usually enough. In the first week, we will kill. the first application the first day will kill about 85 or something like this percent in the next few days it's gonna get to the 100 percent usually when we go to do the follow-up we don't find anything else and if we find something we always set up a set up another extra follow-up because we do give one year warranty because it just has a very long effect efficacy a very long principle but it's basically the same thing instead of using the a st we use the we use the aerosol but it's the same thing okay some people also mention hoovers they hoover is that a good way as well before treatment yeah i recommend hoovering if it's a bad one in that when you when you go to disturb it you lift the mattress and they're all scattering and dispersing a hoover is great because you there's really nothing faster for like sucking them up as they're moving away from the bed so if you've got hundreds or thousands to deal with a hoover's a great first step to get the thing under control and then you're just trying to deal with the the ones and twos that you can't necessarily find that i think yeah sounds quite satisfying Yeah.

38:58 It really is. It's a bad problem much better. Yeah. Look at me and Francisco. We're all excited.

39:09 It is very satisfying. It really is. It's such satisfying work. That's a hard question to answer, Jake, to be honest. He's saying to you, Sarah, how do you know that it's the Chinchicks that's killed them and not the steaming? um because okay so some of you know my history i've actually got a decade of experience with bed bugs um i started out with a company called bed bugs limited in south london run by david kane who just about everybody knows um so i worked with him for six years he pioneered an insecticide free approach to bed bug control because um he was one of the first people i think along with Richard and some others that spotted this resistance issue so I already was using DE, steam and some cleaning protocols for six years and then when I came back into the industry and started my own company obviously I wouldn't be copying David's methodology because you know he spent years developing his way so I looked for a different way I did my BPCA training I trained in the use of insecticides and I did a kind of combination where I was using insecticides away from the beds almost using it as a kind of a flush to kind of flush them out of the areas where I didn't want them to be and then using DE on the bed frame in order to you know bring them into contact with that and then some cleaning protocols as well which I made work because I'm that kind of...

40:50 I could probably make any method work if I put my mind to it. But this is about making it simpler and more efficient and safer for everyone. The moment I started using the Chinchecks, I didn't have many callbacks anyway, but I've literally had two. That's good. How many jobs is that out of? One wasn't out of how many? Oh, hundreds. hundreds of jobs and one of those when i went back to do the re-inspection i didn't actually find anything and and i think the insect that the customer found but had forgotten to photograph probably wasn't a bed bug and the other one was a really serious one which any product would have required multiple visits and this only required two so that's good i mean that's how it that is very telling that is when you say you've done hundreds and then you've only had to go back to two.

41:48 That's very good, to be fair. That is, especially with how hard bed bugs can be. That's a good sign. Someone was asking as well, obviously it kills the bed bugs. What does it do with the eggs? Does it kill eggs? Oh, no, I don't. Eggs hatch in about six days, and those first-stage nymphs are the most susceptible to desiccation. the thinnest cuticle and a very small amount of water inside them so there so it i i imagine that the eggs would probably probably survive they're pretty they're pretty tough to kill eggs like most sprays can't kill eggs but as soon as that nymph hatches and finds itself surrounded by the dust it'll it'll it'll die in probably hours or less yeah okay that's that that's answered it that's been a few i think a few people found their way over to youtube and linkedin because i realized that right facebook stream has died i've been saying for ages i have i was like the beauties and beasties keeps they've got a method of doing it when they go live it goes down i know they have to do it and i said to myself this ain't happened to me it's happened now

43:04 um hugh radford is now over on youtube he said does the aerosol or dust work out more cost effective it's there there you go i mean i would say the dust is more cost effective okay yeah they do have some different applications some different benefits if you if you wanted to treat the legs of a bed uh in order to you know expose bugs stop bugs climbing up i'd go with the aerosol because uh because it sticks to surfaces if you were trying to go for you wanted something to you're cooked for a rapid direct kill then the the aerosol will kill bugs immediately by spraying on them that's not a chin checks effect that's the like the propellant in there will kill them immediately so if you want something where you can instantly kill bugs then the aerosol is very effective at that um but for but for like area that you can treat uh then there's there's a lot there's a lot more product in the the dust will go a lot further yeah yeah okay because also i've noticed you've got some um you've not just got that you've got uh some harbors area products ain't you as well so stick down you've got some different products as well are they are they good i presume they're good as well yeah yeah maybe francisco wants to

44:24 talk about that that's something he's yeah yeah i try to reach one second everyone don't you think Francisco looks great for a man that's it's 3 a.m in the morning looks very awake

44:46 in the morning today in a few hours we have every year we have a factory inspection by the trade and industry department that is gonna be fun today and we have the we were talking about this one one, yeah, it's a hard one. Yes. Yes. Okay. These are the stripes of cardboard that we call them. These ones are not a brandless because this one's a NC steps. Once you use them like this for hotels, they are we design them. So the bed bags can easily fit inside. They can. It's a hard work and it's coated with chin checks.

45:26 So what happened is that If you put them properly in the place, if you do a proper installation, meaning in the head, 30 centimeters from the head, between the mattress and the headboard, they will be a very good preventive option for hotels, for example. And not only that, you can also use them for treatment. So what we're doing nowadays is we go to the homes, we do a little bit of aerosol, then we put the powder, and also we install two or three of these because the bedbags they will always try to hide.

46:03 This is something that I learned from a research PhD thesis. The bedbags will always hide as close as possible to the host. So if you put them close to the head, then the bedbags they will always find their way to them. It's a very logical and very easy thing. bed bags will not go very far to the wall or to the outlets uh if if there is some room to hide nearby the good thing is that when the bed bags come inside here they get coated with changes and then they go out to die so there is always going to be a space in here for bed bags so could that be used as a bed book monitor or no because they can get out again can they The thing is that the way we design it, you can't really open it to check.

46:56 You can hold it up to the light, though, can't you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The holes are big enough to see through it. So, yes, you could use it as a monitor. But I have the thing of, like, my understanding always is the monitoring is to know whether you have the bed bags yeah and for us the point with this one is that if you have a box and they go inside here you will not have the bags anymore so you are not looking for a monitoring anymore you have a constant treatment we do hotels and then with anti-cymex they do a lot of hotels with preventive treatments meaning that they get a hotel they put a little bit of chin checks in every room and then this hotel they will get uh they will get a certificate that this hotel has been preventive uh treated for bed bugs and then it's considered free of bed bugs they offer them it's a it's a one-year contract and then if there are bed bugs in any bedroom they treat for free and it's becoming it's very very good for them they are making a good a good sense of that nice because i suppose i suppose obviously with pest control we're not supposed to treat unless it's a problem but because that's not a chemical you could leave that down Even if someone killed the infestation off and you've left some of them in, you know, in each room, that's allowed because it's not a chemical.

48:28 Yeah. Yeah. And actually in Spain, which is where they are using it the most, it's exempted. They talk to the government of Spain and the government of Spain, they told them that they don't need a registration for this product or anything. it's a non-biosidum. Then you can lift chinches, you put the chinches powder properly, then you give some training to the staff and you put two of these in each bed. And the chances for bedbugs to succeed on manifestation is extremely minimal. And we're talking about hotels in Spain where there are a lot of hotels, as you know, many people from all around Europe go there there is so many hotels there is a case where uh two hotels they had 86 of the bedrooms infested and they solved it with using chintzics and in the last one and a half year they only got like 14 reports so out of 700 rooms there were really good that is yeah and then i have the theory that some of these a a new calls is because there were so many bed bags in the hotel that obviously also some of the cleaning uh or the stewards they got them to their home so this is kind of like bringing them back but there is not an infestation ongoing again so that's good that's yeah i had a job last week that involved um it was a bed and breakfast and from the sauce room which was round a corner end of the corridor that was the source coming back down the corridor few in that room back down this corridor one in this room and you could literally track the linen down the corridor as housekeeping do their job and training those sorts of people to do things differently it that can really change things for them as well it's not just about product it's about behavior yeah no you're definitely right because uh a lot of places i hear some places they train

50:40 the cleaners what to do because a lot of them i'm not saying they all have monitors but a lot of them look they're trained to look for bed bugs in the beds they are makes total sense yeah they're the most likely ones to just they're most likely to disturb a bug when they're changing the beds and most likely to see the black spots those black fecal spots so you're like first indication that there's something going on so it makes total sense to train your cleaning staff to recognize that so that they can act on it when they see it yeah it doesn't you never know in the end they might think right i want to i want to get into the business you never know do you it's a joke there is plenty of work about at the moment trust me um i wanted to mention something because i mentioned it briefly on a podcast i did on a round table and sarah thought it was an aid of it wasn't actually made in aid of the chin chicks diy kit it was made in aid of i added the chin chicks into it i was fair treatment kits yeah what it was i found loads of like big companies that were trying to sell like farm kits and all it was is like off the shelf redenticides shoved into a kit it was the same so i rolled that into it so i wanted to mention what's where was the diy kit born out of

52:02 and obviously with that you've obviously got risk because people are going to buy it that haven't got bed bugs as well but yeah and i can't police that that's that's not water police um but i mean we've all seen it in the group a lot of people is this a bed bug no it clearly isn't but anyway um so i see a lot of jobs where a problem has got out of control within a building because one person's got bed bugs and they can't afford pest control and it is very easy for us that aren't in that situation to say oh well i'm sure you could if you really tried you know it's only a few hundred quid some people are literally living hand to mouth and they don't have even a hundred to pay me to come out and do an inspection let alone a treatment so there are already enough bed bug killer kits on all of the well-known sales platforms and we know they don't work and we know they often make things worse you know every controller will go oh my god what have you already been using the bed bugs are dispersed through the room because you've sprayed them You recently had someone try and ask you if the bed sheets were great.

53:23 What was it? Oh, no, a bed bug proof bed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was it. A bed bug proof bed. Yeah, that annoyed me. So, yeah, so I'm aware there's an issue and there are products out there that are basically snake oil. And I wanted to fill that gap. So I wanted to give people the chance to resolve their own issue or at least bring it down to a bare minimum. You know we all know professionals We got knowledge about exactly where and how and all the rest of it the biology the behaviour And maybe Joe Public won always get it right But at least this kit won make it worse It's not going to cause them to spread to the neighbours or get into the fabric of the building.

54:13 It's going to, at the very, very least, it's going to minimise it to a manageable amount. and I still believe that the majority of people that can afford pest control are still going to use pest control because nobody wants to be crawling around inside a divan bed base apart from lunatics like me and Francisco or maybe Richard you know most customers when you tell them they have to sleep in their bedroom are horrified yeah they're really not going to want to get up close and personal in the way you really need to in order to make any product or method work so I wanted to give them something and I have written instructions which I've run past Richard just to like you know am I being detailed enough but it is it still easy enough to understand and we think it is um and yeah I want that out there and if it's going to affect anybody's business because you know you know how much hate i'm receiving at the moment i'm getting a lot of love as well but i'm getting a lot of hate out there you know you're going to take business away from us well i'm going to be the one that's most affected because i only do bed bugs you do that's sorry dave the pest controller you've got 20 other pests you can continue making your money off of but i don't think it's going to put me out of business

55:39 but what you've been saying recently you can't keep up can you i can't i'm fully booked to next friday oh that's good that is i literally haven't got a second i forgot about this today i remembered earlier came home from work took all my gear off washed it put my dressing gown and i was sat on the sofa and i was like what this nagging feeling is something i should be doing oh my gosh so yeah I had to quickly get up. But yeah, it's crazy out there. There seems to be a massive uptick in bed bug work at the moment, not just for me, but across England generally.

56:19 It seems to be. Yeah, the data I've seen supports that. Yeah, the data I took, so I take all of the, we have this Bed Bug Foundation website, which receives lots of people submit photos to see if they're bed bugs. and I look at the proportion of those that are actually bedbugs and it's normally around 20%. And in 2021, we were at maybe like an eight year low, like it had dropped to about 15%. And that seemed to be like the effect of COVID, like stopping movement of people and shutting down hotels and things like that.

56:58 And bedbugs really took a dive. And pretty much every year since then, it's increased and now it's increasing quite rapidly yeah it is it really is it even in the group you're just getting more and more and they also seem to be getting just harder and harder to resolve the stories in the group it's not on a daily basis you're hearing from people that have had four five insecticide treatments two or three heat treatments and they've still got a bed bug problem this resistance thing isn't going to go away and i know change is scary but the industry does need to change and i know i talk about a revolution and i do it in quite a tongue-in-cheek manner but this product really could revolutionize the way we treat bed bugs and the question i think we should ask ourselves is do i want to build a business doing bed bug work or do i want to try and actually get on top of bed bugs as a nuisance pest and yeah although it might put me out of business at some point in the future i really want to get on top of bed bugs as a nuisance pest it's a big goal that is it's uh yeah because it's yeah it's it's like when you it's like there's certain products in different countries like America and they say I'm not on about gin chicks there they go

58:29 there's a mold one coming out I'm not mentioning names but it's a game changer well they've still got bed bugs in America it's not you know obviously they've got bed bugs everywhere but getting new products like this it might turn the tide eventually i think i think the technology and everything's getting better got these new powders that this powder does seem out of all the recent i'm no expert it this one seems to be the one that's as richard said might have said it may very well be i hate saying it a game changer for the paper world as i say i was very dismissive of it i was very i i look at everything i look at every claim with and take it with a pinch of salt but i've been using it now for the best part of so when i start october i think we started november last year so good eight months using nothing else i bet you have to get a lot in stock don't you to not run out i've got the bigger one yeah i've got the big boxes yeah i've got the big boxes so yeah i do i desperately need the aerosol at the moment um but yeah we're gonna have we're gonna need a bigger store guys yeah no no no it's good for all you all your you know your insight on it because obviously i'm hoping this podcast will help people try it because i i want to try it i don't get a

1:00:17 lot of bed book work at all i'm i'm bobbing the minority uh hugh's saying he's getting about he's they're doing about four his bloke's doing about four to eight a week so you know i had a i had a i had a conference i had a conference in philippines about two months ago and and we found out when there's something by talking to to pest controllers in there because in philippines there is also a lot of bedbugs talking to to so many of them i knew that the bedback problem in philippines was very big and i was talking to so many pest control companies and they all were telling us that oh no we don't get too many jobs for bedbugs we don't get too many jobs for bedbugs but after talking what was happening is that they were not taking the jobs people were asking them and then initially what happened is that they were doing for example for hotels they were doing the pest control for the hotel and including the bedbag jobs for free and at the end what happened is that they were giving the bed back jobs to other guys so there were like five guys in philippines doing a lot of bed back jobs and then most of it most of other guys they were simply rejecting or not not getting enough or not marketing for it for example

1:01:35 if you have a in google yeah most of the people doing google or in facebook ads and everything and then you are not including it's the same thing for me i don't get robin jobs i don't get also or concrete jobs because I don't market for those ones. But I believe that as soon as you see profitability and then because most of the people, the problem is that if you go to do bedbugs, you will have so many problems. You will fail, you will get a callback, you will have problems, people will complain and then just stop marketing for them.

1:02:04 But if you have a product that works, then most likely you will start making some, you know, some marketing for it. and the jobs for them will grow. Because I think UK has a big problem. But if we compare UK, for example, I was talking the other day to some guys in Africa. I think in Africa, 95% of the households have advanced. Yeah, I had someone on the podcast at some point and he mentioned that nearly every place has got them. They're everywhere. Yeah, I've been talking to someone from Kenya and Malawi in the last week or so both saying what can we do about bed bugs yeah yeah so do chin chicks could probably help them countries is chin chicks available yeah distribution is a nightmare yeah i tried sending it to kenya and it just disappears yeah i can believe it yeah yeah yeah i've got a lady wants to bring me out to morocco at some point in the future to help her so i'm I'm quite looking forward to that.

1:03:08 Yeah. That's good. Yeah.

1:03:12 Casablanca, no less. Yeah. Private jet for the pepper tree. That'd be nice. I do happen to know that there are a few pest controllers out there that have been trying it on the quiet because they've reached out to me to ask about application and then going, oh, my goodness, you were right. This is great. so there are a lot of although there's been a lot of people just being very anti i think some are having an anti front but they're using it like on the sidelines and finding it and eventually listen if people try it they will realize so just give it a go guys just try it once on a difficult one try it seriously well we don't to be fair i mean the majority of our work is is rodent and wasps and moths and stuff but i don't particularly market towards anything but i do do bed books but i don't i never seem to get the calls you know you're quite worried i do a few years yeah yeah basically if i if i went into less actual leicester and peterborough centers city center yeah i would but then it's not worth it you see from where i'm coming from it more economical for them to hire someone more local yeah to be fair it would so yeah it's like cockroaches it's not a big thing we've done two cockroach jobs in the last few years but not being funny or anything but they're from people that have moved from a city and they've most likely brought it in their food boxes because i couldn't work out how they got cockroaches into rutland we don't have them we know so that was something you also is also useful on cockroaches

1:05:07 someone else was asking can we use chin chicks for any other any any other insects and there you go yeah stored products yeah spis yeah grain store products yeah francisco is telling me yeah you can give them to more detail about that yeah yeah yeah it works in cochlear we have some tests for cockroaches a few efficacy tests we have also testing the scorpions and then we have a very good testing in stored grain insects and it's starting to get a lot of traction NC-Sex is starting to push a lot in Australia for the stored grain insects.

1:05:46 Also in India we're getting some traction for the stored grain insects because it's really effective. And the thing is that in the silos where you keep the grain, usually they need to let the insects eat like 10% and then they fumigate and the fumigation will kill the insects that are present. adding a little bit of tinctures to the grain at the beginning of the of the storage access as a profilactic so you don't need to do the fumigation and you also will not lose any grain to to the insect so it's starting to get a lot of a lot of traction for for the store there that's good that is it's um it works for that that that insect too it's another avenue into it it is that again you can call that a non-toxic can't you because obviously yeah you can um because i think obviously yeah there's you've got fumigation and that's obviously highly i don't i'm no expert in it but i do know that you have to have quite a few qualifications to do that kind of work you do you wouldn't need to with chin chicks because i think fumigations you have proper fumigation i i think you have to like work under somebody and have x amount of experience and it takes a long time to become properly qualified in that it does so someone's asking garden ants

1:07:18 i haven't tried it i wouldn't be surprised but i haven't tried it i'd like to try it before i say anything on that yeah yeah you're right now i take you could be the first buy i shouldn't do chicks and try it but yeah yeah it's uh it's been a it's been a good podcast it has hopefully this podcast has helped people understand more about the product and maybe try it because there's someone in here i'm sure is a chris he works for virgo and he said he's been i'm sure he said he's been he's been trying it he has i got a free sample there you go i got a free sample uh which i have tested for virgo so they're even looking at it maybe they are but um but yes but thanks for coming on so uh thank you sarah for coming on and explaining the way you the way you do uh how you apply chin chicks my pleasure and your methods but uh and thank you richard for giving us the big the bigger terminology and technical talk thank you for having me no no thanks for coming on again and francisco thanks for arranging this because this this because because i initially when i messaged you i said any chance you're getting richard naylor on as well so i reckon that will make a really good pop you know and then he was like

1:08:48 i'm gonna go one better he says can we have the bed bug queen on i'm sorry that will make a well rounded conversation that will so yeah the the chin chicks round table as such it's been good do you think i've missed anything any of you do you think there's anything that i've missed or i think i've covered pretty much yeah yeah yeah i made sure i got that diy in there so i didn't want you i know i was ready for you i was ready i actually text you because i said i think it's a fair question he did he gave me a heads up yeah because it was the um that's the one thing that caused a lot of stir it did yeah it did so i thought i'll mention it the thing is just just to say yeah like richard does a lot of work so richard helps people out when they have a complicated bed bug problem i help people out so we're already doing stuff and i'm sure we're not the only people that are out there helping people that can't you know that can't afford pest control so you know there needs to be something there there just needs to be something there and yeah that's all i wanted today it was my idea it was something i'd always wanted to put together but didn't have a good product well now we have the product so let's do it yeah let's see if flies off the shelf you can't

1:10:08 keep it no no no sarah you're a genius it might do it might do to be fair yeah you can message me when i'm in the bahamas okay do you want to mention your code sarah i'll put it in the description as well after fantastic yeah if anybody's going to order any chin checks products use the bedbug queen one word as a discount code is that capitals or does it all lowercase oh lowercase there you go you get a little discount do you get a little discount it's a little they get a little discount i get a little kickback well that's nice that is so uh yeah so thanks everyone and thanks for watching i will upload this to facebook people i've never had that before but it is what it is most people screaming to be fair most people the highest rates of watches come from spotify and apple after they do higher than facebook and higher than you i would like it to be youtube and facebook but you know the little clips i put up on on on facebook they do incredibly well they do but uh the podcast wise i mean the podcast is over 6 000 on uh spotify listens not every podcast i wish it was every podcast but uh it's doing it's doing very well but i will re-upload this to facebook amazing messed up so so yeah so thanks everyone for for coming on and

1:11:41 giving up your time and waking up early francisco it's nice to you thank you thank you thanks for having us yeah thanks i'll end the stream now so yeah thanks everyone and i'll see you next week i remember who i've got if you're someone good bye thanks everyone