Why are Bed Bugs Spreading at an unprecdented rate?

[lib2DaBone]

http://www.huliq.com/10017/bed-bugs-massive-nyc-officials-try-stop

[babylonsister]

In NYC. Maybe the heat? nt

[Subdivisions]

1. Climate change?

:shrug:

[Fumesucker]

2. This town's in tatters? n/t

[sendero]

7. They all moved...

... uptown.

[musette_sf]

9. great minds etc n/t

[dflprincess]

17. Now I really regret I didn't take a picture of the large bill board in Times Square

warning us that "BED BUGS ARE IN NEW YORK". This thread would have been a great place to post it - though it was a little disconcerting to see it as we got out of the cab from LGA to enter our hotel. Not that we didn't know they had become a problem, we just preferred to block thoughts of bed bugs. Though I'll confess to checking on line (after I got home) to see if the hotel had had any reports of bed bugs. It hadn't but that only means, no one had reported it yet. One thing to do is - keep your luggage on the luggage rack or at least another hard surface. Not fool proof but it is one precaution.

I did see the Soho Hollister store had to close to try while they tried to get rid of an infestation.

[musette_sf]

8. But they're only uptown!

On the West Side you only have the rats to deal with.

:-)

[Sebastian Doyle]

26. That's only when they're uptown.

And the rats are on the west side.

What a mess.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6-twZlxt_k

[jgraz]

3. Mostly because they've become pesticide-resistant

Pyrethrum is no longer that effective against them, and many people would rather put up with a few bites than gamble their health on more toxic treatments.

[itsrobert]

4. Because hotels are not changing bed spreads as often

They are trying to save money and using the excuse they are saving the environment.

[EstimatedProphet]

5. Because we're no longer a God-fearing nation with a 21% tax rate for the $1 million bracket

That's why all bad things happen

[Canuckistanian]

13. I blame Reagan

It's because St. Ronnie vetoed that 1988 Appropriations bill that included research into bedbugs and AIDS.

Bastid.

[musette_sf]

6. Because DDT is outlawed in the US

And we don't allow mattresses to be treated with DDT any more.

Not defending DDT... it's just a fact. Some other way has to be found.

You can now buy a big box to keep outdoors or in your garage. You put your luggage into it when you return from a trip (before you bring your luggage in the house, of course), and it heats everything in the box to a temperature that kills bedbugs.

http://www.amazon.com/PackTite-Portable-Killing-Heater-Unit/product-reviews/B002C4NVO4

[KT2000]

10. DDT was banned in 1972

lack of DDT cannot be responsible for the bed bug problems emerging 40 years later.

[musette_sf]

14. Yeah, I saw that info in some of the articles I Googled

You're probably right in that many pests have become DDT-resistant, and that the bedbug is likely one of these.

[JCMach1]

35. We have a winner!

[MicaelS]

12. If I were a fequently traveler I might buy one

But for $300+, no way. Have to admit, it's a great idea.

[ck4829]

36. Insects started showing resistance to DDT in 1959

It's not the miracle pesticide that everyone makes it out to be.

[pipoman]

11. In nearly every city

there are mattress rejuvenators who take filthy, disgusting, nasty, old mattresses, recovers them, and sells them...bugs and all, to unsuspecting bargain shoppers.

[applegrove]

15. There is more business travel to places like China that have bed bugs.

The bugs crawl into a briefcase or a suitcase and then get deposited in suburban North America (often in hotels). Happened to my sister. She had to wash all the fabric in her house because her husband brought bed bugs home from a trip.

[NutmegYankee]

16. I had a bed bug infestation in college. It's NOT a joke at all!

At the start of the school year nearly a decade ago, I went and bought a guard rail for a wooden loft bed I had made that summer. A local Christian group collected lofts and resold the parts. And for a few weeks I attended classes and everything was fine.

The welts started out small and were located on my knuckles, and itched like all hell. I quickly scratched them till I bled, but since I only had two or three, I didn't think much of it. After a few more weeks, I started getting a random welt on my arm, and I started looking for mosquitoes or some other flying bug that must have been biting me. Finally after two months, I woke up one morning with 7 rather large welts on my right arm, and 4 on my left. I showed them to the housekeepers who remarked that they appeared to be spider bites. I embarked on a frenzy of cleaning my sheets every other day, but it brought no relief.

I searched the internet for hours looking at insect bites until after three days of searching, I saw a welt that looked just like mine. It was the common bed bug. I talked with a professor in the Entomology Dept, who insisted that bed bugs were extinct in my county after eradication with DDT. Apparently people would sleep on DDT powder to get rid of the bites. After a few months of being bit, I totally understand why they did it.

Discouraged, but still curious, I read up on them and learned that they could be located by the little droppings of blood they leave behind outside of the nest. I searched for about an hour and finally saw a small one crawling across my sheet, which while horrifying, confirmed what was biting me. I finally found their main nest in the loft guard rail where two 2x4s had been nailed together. I wiped them out with my can of "flying insect killer" (bought to wipe out the mosquitoes I swore had to be at fault in the early days) and found a second nest in the trim near the ceiling, and wiped that out as well. I discarded the guard rail and collected the largest of the bugs (3/8 inches long)in a Ziploc bag and went off to the Entomology Dept, which was fascinated by the specimens. I also handed a bag of three bugs to the university exterminator, who was contacted by the housekeepers after I paraded my find around.

I only found one additional bug after my blitz with the RAID spray, and it was on the wall the next morning bathed in the sunlight, probably avoiding the poison I had sprayed. I had read that bed bugs hate light. I wiped it out and was never bitten again. The university exterminator confirmed the bugs identification and replaced my mattress (which wasn't needed, but I didn't complain about the chance to get a new comfy mattress) and treated the walls with Pyrethrin (also the active ingredient of RAID) while I was on break.

To this day, I have nightmares that I have been bitten again and my place is infested. Bed Bugs SUCK!

[Scatterheart]

18. Lived in NYC over a year, never had them...

...then I moved to Albany. Got a cozy little apartment by a park and a pond. Two months after moving in, I awoke one night around 4am and I got the urge to flip open my cellphone and scan the bed with its light. Nothing is more terrifying than seeing a dozen black dots the size of apple seeds scurry away from where your head was just lying. I turned on the lights and was horrified to find them EVERYWHERE in the bed, all engorged with my blood and scurrying for cracks in the walls. They lay 20 eggs a day and are virtually indestructable. Two months later I threw out 80% of my belongings, abandoned the apartment, lost my $800 security deposit, and spent the next few months as a refugee in a coworkers spare room. Bedbugs are NOT a fucking joke. In fact, this growing epidemic of them has driven more than one person to suicide. No feeling is worse than working all day and then being terrified to go home because its crawling with highly contageous parasites. I still have nightmares about them.

[NutmegYankee]

21. I agree!

See my post above. I got lucky and managed to wipe them out, but it absolutely sucked. The worst part was that people would laugh when I told them about the bugs. They would rattle off the little kids rhyme and didn't understand that it's a real bug that makes you miserable.

[Maru Kitteh]

23. Good God. Why did I have to read this before bed?

damn damn damn damn damn!


Dammit!


:scared:

[seabeyond]

24. wow. i really didnt want to read your post.

i thought you couldnt see bed bugs. now i am going to have to read article. maybe in the morning, lol.

sorry for your experience. sounds simply horrible.

[NutmegYankee]

25. The largest I killed were 3/8 inches long!

Most Americans are not familiar with bed bugs and mistake them for the microscopic mites that eat our skin flakes.

[Scatterheart]

28. The only small blessing about seeing them

is that when you actually examine them in the light, they are rather mundane looking. Not hideous like ticks, for example. They just look like flat apple seeds with legs, and if you have only a small infestation you never see them. But when they start numbering in the double digits, they get BOLD. They come after you in broad daylight if you sit still for an extended period of time. Having bedbugs really does turn your life into some nightmarish scifi-horror movie. I tremble whenever I see people pick up discarded furniture now. The cycle continues... This is going to be a HUGE problem over the next decade.

[lonestarnot]

19. Because they ran out all the Mexicans who were hard working folks that changed sheets full of .

crackers.

[NutmegYankee]

22. Filth has nothing to do with bed bugs.

They don't eat crackers. They eat blood. For instance, the ones that bit me were not even in/on my foam mattress. They were living in woodwork in my dorm room.

[lonestarnot]

29. Ackefuckingty

[Ross K]

20. NOTHING TO DO WITH CLIMATE CHANGE!

NO! NOTHING TO DO WITH CLIMATE CHANGE! NOTHING AT ALL! GLENN BECK TOLD ME!

:puke:

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

27. Rush Limbaugh moved out and they had to find a new host.

[Ross K]

31. I would think that bed bugs had more self-respect.....

...than to bite Limbaugh!

[Marie Marie]

30. I have been reading about this growing infestation

and it made me more than a little paranoid about traveling and staying in motels. Not just the disgusting things feeding off of me in my sleep but also bringing them home because they are not easy to get rid of. Wouldn't you know it, at the very 1st place we stayed during a short trip, I discovered one crawling on the bed that I had just slept in. Totally freaked me out! We packed up so fast and got the hell out of there. When we got home, I unpacked everything unto a white sheet laid out on the garage floor and inspected every single item before bringing it into my home. Fortunately, none of the little critters hitched a ride back with us, however, now I am even more paranoid about traveling. They are gross and my sympathies to any one who lived through an experience with them. Sounds like they are here to stay and it is only going to get worse.

[seabeyond]

33. this is my problem. the older i get, the harder time i am having sleeping in hotels

on beds, with comforters i know are not being washed. pillow that may get new cases but hey, still, those pillows are being continually used.

i am having such a hard time. very particular. and getting worse. now i see me checking room before accepting reservations. i have to have the newest hotels.

[demigoddess]

32. they started putting microban in all those things and now

they are becoming resistant and stronger? maybe the places have cut back on their cleaning schedules?

[Maine-ah]

34. my guess is perhaps an extinction of other bugs that eat bed bugs

and the population of bed bugs increased.

[Scatterheart]

37. They have no real natural predators.

Except house centipedes, which are the most godawful terrifying things in all of house pestery :S The problem is that for every bedbug that gets snatched by a spider or centipede, there are countless more hiding in cracks in the walls, breeding like crazy.

[melm00se]

38. Population density

introduce (intentionally or inadvertently) a pest into the ecology and it can spread like wildfire

[saltpoint]

39. I think it's connected to all the GOP sex scandals.

[WinkyDink]

40. I refuse to stay in a NYC hotel now, much to my travel detriment. No DDT = More bedbugs. Simple.