Treating Nits Without Pesticides - MADE SAFE

Some things are guaranteed. Walking back from the end: death, taxes and nits from day care or school

The first time my son got nits, I was still in the corporate cloud with no idea of how the grotty things got passed around. I was pretty sure that my little darling couldn't possibly catch something so gross because his home was so clean. He did seem to have a very itchy head with a pile of white flakes in it so I took him to the doctor to ask what to do about his very bad dandruff. In hindsight I have no idea why the doctor didn't call Child Services, Instead, with a dead pan face, he got out his magnifying light, put my son's head under it and showed me my son's 'dandruff' up close. Oops. The poor child was crawling with nits. Zillions of them.  

Every parent has a nits horror story, but possibly the biggest horror story is that most of us are so freaked out when nits appear that we will pretty much do anything to get rid of them, including dousing our children in some pretty nasty chemicals. And we simply don't have to.

MADE SAFE recently published a great little guide on the treatment of nits (Lice) and this article is a quick summary of the guide.

Know what you are and aren't dealing with

Here are the base facts. With these, you can apply a logical management solution, don't over treat your child or household and focus your energy on the facts rather than the fictions.

• Nits can't jump or fly and are usually spread via head to head contact. 
• Nits are the egg, nymph are young lice (a week), then lice are the adult (30 days). All three need to be dead to stop the infestation.
• Nits live off human blood and can't survive more than a couple days without someone's blood to eat. 
• While nits are as annoying as hell, they are not known to spread disease. 
• Nits are more interested in clean hair than dirty hair, so don't go around thinking that everyone will think you dirty if your child has nits. 
• Treatments deal with the lice, not the nits. 
• Pets do not play a role in the spread of nits.

There is a lot of help around in terms of dealing with nits, but these are the high points

You don't need to buy half the chemist's pesticide collection. Deal with the basics first.

• Invest in a lice comb. You will need it.
• Wash (and dry) all clothes that infested person has been in contact with within the last 48 hours. You are looking for heat to kill the bug.
• Anything that can't be washed, like a Doona, seal it in an airtight bag like one of the storage bags for a few days. 
• Give the house a good vacuum and common places a good clean. 

For specific treatments, refer to the detail online or in MADE SAFE Guide 

Dealing with nits is relatively straightforward and logical

• Wet combing with a hair conditioner is tedious, but by far the most effective and least toxic treatment. 
• I have had enormous success with using a hot hair dryer on the hair after combing. It just seems to get rid of the blighters that little bit faster.
• Tea Tree is by far the most commonly touted essential oil for treatment. You can mix it yourself with a carrier oil. (I'd also go a step further and either make or buy a Teatree spray for your child's hats and spray them daily as a preventative measure. I can personally vouch for the strategy.)  Clove, spearmint and Neem are also known to be effective if you don't like the smell of Teatree.
• One other personal strategy that works well, at least for short haired kids, is to not wash hair so often, and for long hair, to keep it in a braid.

There is no reason to use the chemical and pesticides sold for nits management when natural essential oils and combing are easily as effective. Apart from the dangers to yourself and your child as poisons are readily absorbed through your skin, you are introducing poisons into our waterways and impacting the lives of others. Worse, lice are growing resistant to pesticide treatments containing permethrin and pyrethrins and growing resistance adds another reason to think twice about choosing these lice treatments.

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