Bedbugs are increasing, and the people who live with them are the ones losing sleep, blood, and money. The Associated Press said the insects are sometimes called the vampires of the insect world because they hide during the day and come out at night to feast on human blood. That’s the whole arrangement in miniature: the pests feed, and ordinary people deal with the mess.
Who Pays for the Infestation
Christopher Hayes, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University, said, “They certainly are out there,” and added, “And if you’re unaware, if you’re not on top of your game, it’s easy to bring them into your home.” Hayes said he has been bitten by bedbugs more than 50 times in the course of research. The warning lands with a grim kind of authority. The burden falls on people trying to keep their homes livable while the bugs slip in through luggage, furniture, and the cracks of everyday life.
The article said bedbug infestations are increasing and that this is the time of year when they tend to be at their worst. It said some scientists think the pests might be capable of spreading an antibiotic-resistant infection called MRSA. It also said bedbugs have horrified homeowners for centuries and occasionally panicked the public, including in New York City in 2018, when at least a half dozen city buses were taken out of service after reports of bedbugs crawling on seats, and in Paris in 2023, when reports of bedbugs at a movie theater, on trains and on buses popped up in the lead-up to the 2024 Olympics.
What the Bugs Do
Bedbugs are reddish-brown bloodsuckers about the size of an apple seed. Some researchers estimate they date back to the time of the dinosaurs, but they are best known for their ability to live with and prey on humans. They can hide in narrow crevices in furniture and lurk in clothes, linens and mattresses. They are hard to see but can be detected through the small dark excrement stains they leave. The pests can be year-round problems, but they have traditionally thrived in the summer. They tend to emerge at night, crawling onto people and using a beaklike body part to pierce human skin and suck blood for several minutes. The bite itself is painless. Some people develop itchy red welts a day or so later, but others have no reaction.
The article described a 2020 medical journal case report from France about a 70-year-old man who lived by himself in an apartment and fainted on the street one day. He was brought to a hospital emergency department in a Paris suburb where he was diagnosed with dementia and with anemia caused by a longstanding loss of blood. He also had bedbugs feeding on his neck, head and shoulder. An investigation of his apartment detected thousands of them in his bed and on the floor, walls and curtains of his home. The image is ugly, but the facts are plain: when infestations go unchecked, the damage lands on isolated people first.
The article said there hasn’t been clear evidence that bedbugs have spread diseases from one person to another, and that the bugs’ digestion and anatomy seem to prevent germs from being passed on efficiently, according to Chow-Yang Lee, an entomologist at the University of California at Riverside. But University of South Dakota researchers in 2023 published the results of an experiment using blood capsules with an artificial skin that demonstrated bedbugs could acquire MRSA during one feeding and spread it during a later one. Jose Pietri, one of the study’s authors, who is now at Purdue University, said follow-up research is needed to really prove bedbugs actually are spreading MRSA to people, but “it changes the perspective of what bedbugs do, in terms of public health.”
The System’s Half-Answers
Bedbug populations in developed countries were decimated after World War II due to the widespread use of DDT. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned the pesticide for most uses in 1972, citing evidence that it was harming animals and was a potential risk to people. Bedbugs had already started to develop resistance to DDT by then, and they have only been getting stronger and more common, said Lee, noting that insecticide resistance has driven a continued resurgence in bedbugs in recent decades.
Exactly how much more common isn’t clear. Pest control companies generate annual rankings of U.S. cities with the worst bedbug problems, with Orkin currently ranking Chicago at No. 1 and Terminix saying Philadelphia has the biggest problem. But those lists are based on how many calls each company receives in a year, not a rigorous survey. Lee said many bedbug infestations happen in low-income or public housing, which may not hire the big companies that compile those rankings. So even the numbers are filtered through corporate bookkeeping, while the worst-hit people can disappear from the official picture.
The article said the best thing people can do is never get them in the first place. Travelers can pick them up in hotel rooms, so before unpacking, they should check the room for signs of bedbugs by pulling back the covers and bedsheets to look for bugs or fecal spots. It said not to place luggage on beds or on the floor near beds, and to consider placing bags in a light-colored trash bag or even in the bathtub. When people get home, they should open luggage outside and take laundry right to the washing machine and dryer.
Bedbugs sometimes enter homes by hitching a ride on secondhand furniture or other products. Hayes advised visually inspecting those items and treating them before bringing them into the home. Some experts advise vacuuming, steaming or heating furniture, and quarantining it in a garage or storage unit for a few days before bringing it inside the house. If it’s clothes, wash them and put them through the dryer for an hour. Shoes or other items should be put in a freezer for a week “to make sure that everything in there that could be alive is taken care of,” Hayes said.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers do-it-yourself guidance for getting rid of the pests, but it’s labor-intensive, involving sealing hiding spaces and treating infested items. It also contains many warnings of what not to do. Jose Pietri said, “You can’t just blast random chemicals and expect it’s going to work because there’s a fairly high likelihood that they’ll be resistant to some of the first-line insecticides.”
It makes sense to hire professional exterminators who are experienced in getting rid of bedbugs, but it can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Insecticides are not the only option. Silica dust treatments absorb the bedbug’s body moisture, killing them. Sustained dry heating works wonders, killing eggs as well as adult bedbugs, but it has to be at least 122 degrees (50 degrees Celsius) and can damage furniture, paintings and other personal possessions, so it must be done by professionals.
Hayes said, “I think the biggest piece of advice is just people shouldn’t panic. They just need to take action. If you think you have bedbugs, don’t wait to deal with it.” That’s the practical truth left standing after all the warnings: act fast, because the bugs don’t wait, and neither do the costs.