More people battling bedbugs as pest makes a comeback

At first, Joy Kaye Watson of Jackson thought her itchy bug bites came from camping.

Then her four daughters started getting bites, even when they weren't playing outside.

After not getting any bites during an out-of-town trip, Watson found a bedbug while changing her sheets. That night she slept on the couch and got 55 bites. The bedbugs had invaded her furniture, too.

"They were the itchiest bites I've ever had, and I've had poison ivy, chiggers and mosquito bites. It was maddening," said Watson, who saw a physician to treat the itching.

Watson is one of an increasing number of people battling bedbugs as the pests make a comeback across the United States.

A small magnifying glass can be used to identify bedbugs. (Fred Lynch)

Bedbugs were common before World War II, but with the use of DDT bedbugs vanished in the 1950s. The pests remained prevalent in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe and were first spotted back in the U.S. in New York City in 2001, said Lizbe Knote, owner of Cape-Kil Pest Control.

Bedbugs have been found in hotels, schools, movie theaters, clothing stores and rental furniture across the nation. They look similar to ticks and, like ticks, feed on the blood of animals and people. They are in the same insect family as head lice. They are most active between 2 and 6 a.m.

"They can drink seven times their body weight in five minutes," Knote said. "That's the equivalent of a human drinking seven kegs. When they bite you, they expel an anaesthetic in you so you can't feel the bite."

While irritating, bedbugs do not carry diseases, according to Charlotte Craig, director of the Cape Girardeau County Public Health Center.

"They are not a health threat, and it's not an indication that you are an unclean individual," she said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, their resurgence is due to increased resistance to pesticides, greater international and domestic travel and a lack of knowledge of how to control them because of their long absence.

The CDC calls bedbugs "a pest of significant public health importance" on its website and says bedbugs may affect the mental health of people in infested homes by causing anxiety and insomnia.

Bedbugs latch on to fabric and are easily carried from one place to the next unnoticed.

"They're hitchhikers," said Gene Schuessler, owner of Advanced Pest Control Systems.

He said that five years ago he used to see bedbugs only rarely; now he treats about three houses each week in Cape Girardeau and Perry counties.

"People that travel bring them from New York or Mexico in their luggage. Quite a few soldiers coming back from Iraq are bringing bedbugs with them," Schuessler said.

The Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau hasn't received any complaints of bedbugs from travelers to the area, said Chuck Martin, executive director.

Southeast Missouri State University's Residence Life director Bruce Skinner said Southeast has not had a case of bedbugs in its dormitories since the late 1990s. The university uses mattress covers to help mitigate the spread of bedbugs and cleans the covers each year after the halls close and again after summer camps, he said.

A variety of methods are used by pest control professionals to kill bedbugs, including sprays, dusts and fogging.

"They are not easy to kill, and it's not cheap," Schuessler said. A three-bedroom house takes about eight hours to treat, he said.

Watson's house was treated twice by a pest control professional, and she had to throw out two mattresses, a bunk bed, a couch and love seat.

"You literally have to wash every piece of clothing and every piece of linen that you own," Watson said.

Bedbugs like to hide in tiny crevices like the seams of mattresses, Knote said. In addition to looking for the bugs themselves, areas where bedbugs have been will have dark reddish-brown spots of regurgitated blood.

"Bedbugs will excrete half the blood they consume within five hours of feeding," Knote said.

Knote attended the first North American Bed Bug Summit in Chicago last month and now sells several products to help people detect and avoid bedbugs, including encasements for beds and pillows, sprays and insect intercepters that catch bedbugs when placed under bed legs.

For the past 20 years, travel agent Carolyn Kempf, owner of Elite Travel, has been checking the hotel rooms she stays in for bedbugs by pulling the sheets off and looking at the mattress for the signs.

"It doesn't matter the quality or the rating of the hotel," she said. "Bedbugs are not exclusive to a dirty hotel. You cannot protect yourself based on the type or rating of the hotel you stay at."

She does suggest brand-name hotels because they are more likely to have a corporate structure that supports education about and proper treatment for bedbugs.

"Ask for another room if you have any doubt about its condition," she said.

mmiller@semissourian.com

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