EPA-registered bed bug pesticides · 7 chemical classes
Most of what's on the shelf no longer works.
Bed bugs have been resistant to the pyrethroid class for years, and pyrethroids are what almost every consumer spray contains. Type the active ingredient off the back of the can — it's in small print near the bottom — and find out what you actually bought.
- How it kills
- Also sold as
- Watch out for
Resistance spectrum
Every class kills by a different mechanism. That matters more than brand or price, because resistance is mechanism-specific — and one class can't be resisted at all.
Search by product name
Checking for the product database…
Not loaded yet. This page works from active ingredients, which is the honest way round — brand names change, formulations change under the same name, and the ingredient is what decides whether it works. To add brand lookup, download the EPA bed bug product list and run the ETL:
python3 build_products.py bedbug.csv -o site/assets/products.json
The CSV is a one-click export from EPA’s own bed bug product search — add csv=1 to the query string. Once assets/products.json exists, this section switches itself on. Nothing else needs changing.
Three ways people waste money here
Food-grade diatomaceous earthDesiccants are the one class resistance can't touch, but only EPA-registered, bed-bug-labelled products count. Food-grade and pool-grade DE is a different particle size and raises inhalation risk. Registered desiccants are limited to crack-and-crevice application for exactly that reason.
Foggers and bug bombsFoggers don't reach into the seams, voids, and frame joints where bed bugs actually sit. Worse, a pyrethroid fogger against a resistant population disperses them — you turn one room's problem into the whole floor's. EPA is explicit that foggers should never be the only method.
Products that don't name the pestIf bed bugs aren't printed on the label, the product was never tested against them. No EPA registration number at all means EPA never reviewed whether it works.
Building this from the real data
The class-and-resistance layer above is the editorial work. The product list underneath it should come straight from EPA and refresh on a schedule.
- APPRIL — Active Pesticide Product Registration Informational Listing, EPA's ORDS app. Over 350,000 registrations, updated daily, searchable by active ingredient and by pest, with a weekly Excel dump. This is your product table.
- Caveat that bites — APPRIL's pest keyword tags aren't fully populated or standardized. Filtering on pest alone drops real bed bug products. Cross-check against label text.
- PPLS — Pesticide Product Label System. The actual label PDFs, where the pest list and application sites are authoritative.
- EPA Bed Bug Product Search — the consumer tool. Useful as a reconciliation set, but its own data was last refreshed in December 2019, which is the gap this page exists to close.
- Registration status — a registration can be active, cancelled, or no longer marketed. Show it. A product list that includes discontinued items reads as stale to both users and Google.