Head lice, one of the scourges that affect both parents and schoolchildren, looks as though their time is almost up with the invention of the LouseBuster, a device that effectively blows most of them dead within half an hour instead of using expensive medicinal shampoos that take weeks to be effective. This device is capable of killing both the nasty bugs and their eggs by literally drying them out, offering a much cheaper and time-saving alternative should a commercial version ever be released.

The LouseBuster managed to kill up to 80% of hatched lice and destroy 98% of eggs in a study that involved 169 children in the Salt Lake area. This number of dead lice is sufficient to prevent the survivors from breeding, so one can safely conclude that virtually each kid was cured of head lice within a single week of ‘LouseBusting’. How does the LouseBuster go about doing its job so effectively? The answer is pretty simple – it blows twice as much air as the typical blow dryer, and since dry air kills lice on birds, the same principal applies to humans. Temperature does not play that much of a role compared to the amount of air, so the LouseBuster is cooler than your typical hair dryer but much more powerful.

It seems that Larada Sciences has taken up the task to market the LouseBuster, and hope to see a commercial version be available within the next couple of years. They are targeting a price between $1,000 to $2,000 when the final product is released, which is much cheaper in the long run when you take into account how expensive traditional medicinal shampoo treatment costs.

Source: CNN