Every year, more than 200,000 people come down with scabies. It’s caused by a tiny, burrowing mite that causes redness, swelling, and itching that can get pretty intense. The mite is also easily passed around from person to person.
Whether you can get scabies from your furniture is a legitimate concern. If a house guest with scabies sits on your favorite couch, you’ll definitely want to know whether you can get scabies from where that person sat and what you can do about it.
Fortunately for you, we looked into this and wrote up this article. We looked at what you can do to reduce the odds that you’ll get scabies if your furniture gets infested. Hopefully, it helps you avoid a nasty bout of scabies.
In This Article We'll Discuss
Can you get scabies from furniture?
The primary means for spreading scabies is prolonged person-to-person contact, and very commonly this is between sexual partners. Transmission of scabies via furniture isn’t considered terribly common unless the person is diagnosed with crusted scabies, which spread more easily.
That said, the transmission of scabies through bedding and furniture is not unheard of, so it is a risk.
To reduce the risk, vacuum things that someone diagnosed with scabies has touched or sat. Those are usually enough to clean up any of the minutes that are lingering on the furniture.
It’s also important to remember that the mites that cause scabies require human contact to live. They can live for a short time — no longer than 72 hours — outside a human body but die after that.
You can also expose them to cool temperatures to kill them. They die after 10 minutes at 50 degrees or cooler temperatures.
How long does scabies last on furniture?
While it’s possible to get scabies from furniture and bedding, it isn’t the most common way. Aside from crusted scabies, the mites require prolonged person-to-person contact to spread.
That said, it is not unheard of for scabies to spread on furniture. Time and temperature are on your side, however.
Because they require warm humans, the mites can’t survive without one for more than two to three days. They will also die if exposed to temperatures of 50 degrees or cooler for 10 or more minutes.
If you suspect that someone who was in your house had scabies, try to thoroughly wash whatever they touched as quickly as possible. Bleach kills them easily. Spray disinfectants can kill them on the surface of things.
You should also vacuum your furniture thoroughly if you think someone with scabies touched it. That is often enough to clean up the mites.
How do you kill scabies on furniture?
The mites that cause scabies don’t live very long away from a human host, so if you don’t need to use a piece of furniture you suspect is infected you can set it aside from use or even move it to a cold part of your house including a garage.
Scabies mites will die within two to three days if they don’t find a human host, and can’t survive more than 10 minutes in temperatures lower than 50 degrees. Remember, these pests thrive in a body that is about 98.6 degrees.
If you don’t want to wait for the mites to die off naturally, it isn’t hard to treat furniture to kill them. Wash bedding with the warmest water possible and dry at the hottest settings possible for your fabric. Use a normal detergent. This should be enough to kill the mites.
As an alternative, use a steam cleaner or a hot iron applied at the point of infection to burn them out.
There is evidence that bleach will kill scabies mites, which means you can use it on furniture and especially any hard surfaces you suspect as infestation points.
Whatever you do, don’t use a bleach bath on your skin to kill the mites. It won’t kill any mites that have burrowed into your skin and bleach is very bad for you.
Does Lysol kill scabies on furniture?
The question of whether Lysol kills scabies mites is complicated by the fact that Lysol is a line of products and not a single cleaner. That said, Lysol spray bleach is believed to be effective at killing scabies mites on surfaces.
What bleaches aren’t effective at is killing scabies mites below the surface of something. So, you can spray it on the surface of furniture and it will probably kill any mites there. But if the mites are below the surface — say a fabric-covered couch — you might not get all of them.
Lysol is probably best used if you think that your floors or hard counters have had contact with someone with scabies, especially if it is crusted scabies. On a fabric couch, you might also create a stain without killing all the mites.
Even more effective is letting your furniture suspected of a scabies mite infestation site without human contact for three days. Scabies mites can’t survive without a human host for more than 72 hours. If you can expose them to temperatures below 50, they’ll die within 10 minutes.
And it has to be said … do not attempt to treat a case of scabies on your own body with Lysol bleach cleaner. It won’t kill the deep-burrowed mites and could poison you.
Conclusion
Coming down with a case of scabies means spending a couple of weeks scratching at the tiny burrowing mites that cause it. That’s no one’s idea of fun and you’ll want to do what you can to avoid it from happening.
One source for real concern is whether the mites responsible will transfer to your furniture and put you at risk of catching them. So, you’ll want to know if you can get scabies from your furniture, how long they can survive there, and what you can do to kill them.
We put together this article to help you out. If you found it valuable, please leave us a comment down below. Or share it on your social media networks. If one of your friends had scabies, chances are your other friends want to know how to make their homes safer.