With back-to-school plans underway, for some kids that'll mean an opportunity for head-to-head contact—and for an unfortunate few, an infestation of head lice. A new study in the British Medical Journal tests the "Bug Buster" kit produced by a charity in England and concludes that it beats the toxic competition.

The researchers recruited children with lice for the study and assigned them to use either the kit or an insecticide, either permethrin (Nix) or malathion (Ovide). The kit includes specially designed plastic combs and instructions on combing through the hair; using this technique, the hair is completely wet, which is supposed to immobilize the lice. A nurse checked each child's hair for lice after treatment.

The Bug Buster kit eliminated lice in 57 percent of children who tried it, while the insecticides cured only 13 percent of children's infestations. This was much better than a trial of the same kit done a few years ago in Wales—the researchers credit the improvement to a redesigned comb. It could also be because this time they didn't tell parents to give two doses of insecticide, which is often recommended to kill any lice that hatch after the first round of insecticide is applied.

Bug Buster and other wet-combing methods may appeal to people who are concerned about coating their children's scalps with insecticides. Also, using insecticides can encourage louse evolution by allowing only the resistant lice to survive.

While you wait for Junior to come home sporting cooties, calm yourself with information from the Harvard School of Public Health, whose website points out that lice don't carry disease, they're rarer than you'd think, you shouldn't douse your whole house with insecticides because of a few measly lice, and "closing a swimming pool because of lice is a hysterical overreaction."