So I am in a bit of a dilemma and I wanted to know if anyone here could give me some additional information, suggestions, recommendations, or encouragement. My apartment has fleas in it, something we noticed since the last week. We have five cats, all indoor only, all of which are current on their flea medications (topical Cheristin, lasts for one month), and all of which as far as we can tell do not currently have fleas on them (I periodically check them using a flea comb and have found nothing so far).
As for the apartment itself, normally I'd have no problem using some sort of fogger or other pesticide to kill all the fleas, but with my wife being pregnant I am very loathe to use any pesticides out of fear that it could harm the development of the baby; furthermore, even if my wife wasn't pregnant, because of the quarantines from COVID-19 coordinating a time for everyone (including neighbors if necessary) to evacuate the apartment while the pesticides do their work would be virtually impossible.
This leaves me with only options that do not involve using any pesticides minus whatever medication we would have to give the cats themselves. There are a lot of websites which have suggestions for dealing with fleas without pesticides, but many of the suggestions seem to be of questionable efficacy. I've already washed and dried with the highest heat setting most of our clothes, sealed them in plastic bags to prevent recontamination, and tossed all the furniture that I can't effectively clean, with whatever cushions/pillows I have kept being steam cleaned daily using a garment steamer. For the carpet and flooring I have been mostly just vacuuming and sweeping my apartment every day, and starting tonight I plan on setting up a dehumidifier in the living room at its highest setting; later I plan on renting a carpet cleaner, and may rent one every other week (or even more frequently) until the fleas are gone. I have considered getting a robot vacuum to help supplement getting rid of fleas in the apartment, perhaps a Roomba i7+ with food-grade DE in the bag to kill any sucked up fleas. For a while I was trying to use the same garment steamer to kill the larvae in the carpet, but because it was a garment steamer the head where the steam came out was tiny and it took forever to cover any ground.
All of these efforts have definitely reduced the number of bites we are getting, but in spite of everything I've done, many websites suggest that vacuuming alone will not get fully get rid of the fleas. These same websites recommend an integrated approach with pesticides being used, but my wife is pregnant so using any pesticides is basically a nonstarter for me unless they're cleared by our OB/GYN. We have already asked her and she didn't know of any definitively non-teratogenic pesticides, only stating that DEET is safe for use in pregnancy, though from what I understand DEET only repels them, not kill them.
Lastly, it should be said that I did bring up the flea issue to our apartment manager, and he told me that no other apartment has brought up any issues of fleas, so presumably there isn't a flea problem happening in some other apartment with the fleas jumping over to our place. Because of the COVID-19 closures it will be a long time before he can get an exterminator to take a look, and even then I can't be sure they won't use pesticides or teratogenic chemicals.
So with all of this, will all of this be effective in getting rid of the fleas eventually? I don't mind if its not super quick as all this overcleaning has kept bites fairly low, but it is a lot of effort every day and if I could be definitively rid of this problem as opposed to just effectively manage it that would be preferable.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/g44lyb/howis_it_possible_to_get_rid_of_a_flea/
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