Bed Bugs Are Back

We've all heard the cute little bedtime rhyme that cautions us about letting the bed bugs bite, but how many Americans have ever been bitten by one of these tiny insects? Not many - until now.

It's in the news - bed bugs are back. In fact, there are so many of the little biting insects invading homes and hotels that the Environmental Protection Agency scheduled a two-day conference on the subject. They are responding to the biggest outbreak of bedbugs since World War II.

There appears to be two reasons for the return of the bed bug in America's bedrooms. First, pesticides that are strong enough to kill the insects may also be dangerous for children and adults. For that reason, the EPA has recently banned many of the chemicals that were once effective against this biting pest.

The second problem is pesticide-resistant bugs that are being unintentionally imported from other countries that still use chemicals that are now banned in the United States.

What is a bed bug? The most common form of this insect in temperate climates is Cimex lectularius. It's an insect that feeds on the blood of humans and other warm-blooded animals. Bed bugs are nocturnal, so they're up and eating when most humans are trying to sleep.

This reddish-brown insect is somewhat flat and oval-shaped, and has no wings. They aren't very big, (1/8^th to 3/16^th of an inch) but they can be seen with the naked eye. They like to come out of hiding and feed about an hour before dawn. To reach their prey, they climb up walls to the ceiling, and then drop onto any object that emits heat and carbon dioxide, such as a sleeping human.

These insects have two tubes for feeding. One tube injects an anticoagulant and an anesthetic into the area where it will be withdrawing blood and the other tube is used to draw out the blood from the host.

Because the bug injects an anesthetic into the wound, it takes a few minutes to several hours before the bite is felt. Then the bitten area gets itchy as the body reacts to the chemicals injected by the bug. The bites may be raised or flat, and are often found in clusters or lines.

The good news, if there is any, is that bed bugs only eat every five to ten days. But the bad news is they can go dormant when no food is available and live more than a year with no food at all.

The banning of dangerous insecticides and the rise of pesticide-resistant bugs combine to make a solution to the new infestation difficult to find. The newest outbreak became observable by 2004, and since then the number of outbreaks has tripled across America.

At one time it was believed that bed bugs had been entirely eliminated from the United States, but that is certainly no longer true. According to speakers at the recent EPA conference on bed bugs, a new source of contamination is commercial poultry farms. Fortunately, bed bugs are not believed to carry disease to humans, but Americans may be living with this newest outbreak of bed bugs for many years to come.