Moths

The moth fluttering across the room is not eating your jumper. The damage is done by the larvae that hatch from the eggs it leaves behind. The larva is the damaging stage — that one sentence puts the whole problem in the right place. Swatting the adult settles nothing, because the real work goes on inside the cloth, in the dark, quietly.

The moth in the food cupboard is a different insect

The small moth you find around flour, rice, dried fruit, nuts and chocolate is not this one. That is a stored product insect with no interest in textiles, and its signs are webbing in the tight corners of a packet and small holes in a container. The response is different too, and it is set out on the stored product pests page. This page is about clothes and carpet moths only.

How to recognise them

Two species account for most textile damage. The webbing clothes moth (Tineola bisselliella) is gold, with reddish-golden hairs on top of the head and a wingspan of roughly 12 mm. The casemaking clothes moth (Tinea pellionella) is browner, with faint dark spots on the wings.

The larva is shiny white with a dark head capsule. Most people see the evidence first:

• Silken feeding tubes and webbing containing fabric particles and faeces
• Small cigar-shaped cases, the colour of the cloth, where the casemaking species is present
• Surface grazing, where the pile has been cropped short, alongside irregular holes

Where the damage happens

The larvae feed on wool clothing, carpets and rugs, upholstered furniture, furs, stored woollens and animal bristles, and they will also attack blends containing wool.

Damage starts out of sight — beneath collars and cuffs, in the crevices of upholstered furniture, in the section of carpet that sits under a wardrobe or a sofa. In other words, in dark places that are seldom disturbed, and above all inside cupboards and storage chests. A wardrobe left shut for a season is close to ideal conditions.

That is why moths are usually found late. By the time the problem announces itself it is rarely a single hole; several items in the same cupboard are affected. Damage to cloth cannot be undone, so the value of dealing with moths lies in finding them early and stopping the spread.

How the treatment works

This is not a job that spraying alone completes. It begins with a survey: which textiles are affected, which part of the carpet is involved, whether the source is a cupboard or a piece of upholstered furniture. Finding and cleaning the infested items decides most of the outcome.

Treatment then uses biocidal products licensed by the Turkish Ministry of Health, applied as a residual surface treatment directed straight at the harbourage and the cracks around it — cupboard interiors, the undersides of shelves, skirtings and carpet edges, and beneath furniture. Because the larvae sit down among the fibres, general fogging into open space does not do what people expect with this pest. Monitoring traps afterwards show whether activity has continued.

What you can do

Laundering and dry cleaning both work. Hot water of at least 49 °C for 20–30 minutes kills all life stages, and dry heat above 49 °C for at least 30 minutes does the same. Items that cannot be washed can be frozen below about −8 °C for several days instead. Check the care label first and make sure the fabric will take it.

Clean woollens before they go away, and store them in airtight containers. Vacuum the corners of wardrobes, the carpet under furniture and upholstered seating regularly. Opening winter rugs and blankets once a year to look them over is what catches the problem while it is still small.