No, You Don’t Have To Burn Down Your House When You Have Head Lice

Here’s what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has to say about home cleaning for head lice: “Head lice do not survive long if they fall off a person and cannot feed. You don’t need to spend a lot of time or money on housecleaning activities.”

The only things that need to be cleaned are items that have been in contact with the hair of the person with lice. It is important to wash their linens, clothing, combs, brushes in hot water (130 degrees) and to dry things in high heat, but that’s about all that is necessary.

Lice only spread through hair-to-hair contact. They can’t jump or fly, so a strand of hair with a louse on it could theoretically get stuck to a hat or scarf, but the louse will die if it doesn’t reach a human within a day or so. And eggs (nits) can’t hatch apart from the heat provided by the human body.

The odds of lice spreading from furniture or the carpet is extremely low. The same goes for car seats and shared headgear like batting helmets or headphones.

“Spending much time and money on housecleaning activities is not necessary to avoid infestation by lice or nits that may have fallen off the head or crawled onto furniture or clothing,” the CDC says.

The only thing you need to seal and store are things that can’t be washed, placed in a drier on high heat, or dry cleaned. Even then, you only need to store those items for no more than a day.

There is really no need to panic about head lice. They don’t carry any diseases and they don’t cause any kind of illness.

Our Los Alamitos and Torrance clinics guarantee that you’ll leave the clinic lice-free in about an hour.