What Is the Ratio of Borax and Salt for Killing Fleas?

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Like cockroaches and ants, fleas are biting insects -- borax won't kill sucking insects, such as mosquitoes. A flea isn't likely to ingest borax directly -- you probably have to get it to walk through a fine film of the compound and wait for it to ingest the material when it preens itself. This is why pest experts usually recommend working borax into the carpet fibers with a stiff brush, or spreading it on the carpet, leaving it for 20 minutes to an hour and vacuuming it. When you vacuum, the fine dust that is left over is probably what does the work.

Borax and boric acid -- which is derived from borax and is a more powerful insecticide -- are recommended treatments for ant and cockroach infestations. In both cases, the efficacy of the compound in killing the pests depends on their ingesting it -- in the case of ants, low-concentration baits do the job slowly enough to allow the workers to feed the bait to the rest of the colony.