Bed Bug Infestation is Scaring Millions of Americans! [View All]

[LongTomH]

From an article at Alternet:

Peter Krask stepped out of his New York City apartment one day last year, shut the door, and walked away forever, leaving behind almost everything he owned.

He carried away only a few items of clothing, personal records, and his computer.

Krask's apartment was infested with bedbugs. Savoring warmth, they swarmed in his DSL port, light fixtures, carpets and furniture. They'd feasted on him nightly for a year — which he spent visiting doctors in an increasing state of panic over the rashes inflaming his buttocks and other body parts before finally ascertaining the cause.

It was Cimex lectularius, the flat, cockroach-colored, lentil-sized pest whose favorite food is not just warm blood but human blood. Bedbugs are back, bigtime. According to a National Pest Management Association study, outbreaks have soared 81 percent nationwide since 2000. Their sudden resurgence in all fifty states of a formerly bedbug-free nation has caught off-guard not just the medical and pest-control industries but millions of ordinary people who now apply costly, time-consuming, potentially toxic and inconclusive strategies for slaughtering insects that inhabit indoor environments both soft and hard and can lie in wait without eating for up to a year. Finding hosts, they feed by night, doubling in size as they suck.

This is scary stuff! Apparently the infestation is particularly bad in the northeast. Trendy NY stores, including Victoria's Secret are being hit; even CNN headquarters.

Bedbugs were virtually eradicated in the US decades ago using insecticides like DDT. Since those more effective insecticides were banned, bedbugs have returned.

There is a national clearing house for people dealing with bedbug infestations: BedBugCentral.com.