Over-the-counter "foggers" or "bug bombs" may do little to kill bed bugs if they're already infesting your home, according to new research from scientists at The Ohio State University.

The study appears in the June 2012 issue of the Journal of Economic Entomology, a peer-reviewed publication of the Entomological Society of America. "There has always been this perception and feedback from the pest-management industry that over-the-counter foggers are not effective against bedbugs and might make matters worse," Susan Jones, an urban entomologist with the university's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center and a household and structural pest specialist with Ohio State University Extension, said in a prepared statement.

"But up until, now there has been no published data regarding the efficacy of foggers against bedbugs."

Here's what the study, in part, concluded, according to the news release: Jones and research associate Joshua Bryant evaluated three different fogger brands obtained from a nationwide retailer, all of which have pyrethroids as their active ingredient. Only one of the foggers is specifically labeled against bedbugs. The other two are labeled for use against flying and crawling pests in homes, but can be used to treat bedbugs in many states, Jones said.

Experiments were conducted in three rooms in a vacant office building on Ohio State's Columbus campus. The researchers used five different bedbug populations collected from homes in Columbus between 2010 and 2011. Additionally, they included the Harlan strain -- which has been laboratory-raised since 1973 and is susceptible to pyrethroids -- as a control.

Source:  http://www.entsoc.org/Pubs/Periodicals/JEE