Don’t Sleep Tight While the Bed Bugs Bite

BEACON TRANSCRIPT – Parents of America, don’t sleep tight while the bed bugs bite your children, and yourself. Pest control reports that the number of bed bugs infestations has risen alarmingly since 1990. They link this to the rising amount of cases of infestation left untreated and a higher rate of international travels.

Terminix, a service for pest control in the United States has compiled a top 15 cities in which bed bugs infestations are a serious trouble. The cities were ranked after all the reports from 2015 were gathered up and analyzed.

Paul Curtis, manager at Terminix in the technical services department said that the top 15 cities with a big bed bug problem are big cities, business and tourist destinations. This makes the danger of coming up close with an insect even higher as they are easily transported by travelers via plane, cab and metro. Also, big cities usually go hand in hand with an agitated lifestyle, meaning that a person carrying the bugs could come in contact with a large amount of people in crowded areas such as restaurants, movie theaters or other locations in which sitting next to a stranger is not an unusual thing to do.

Among the cited cities are Los Angeles, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Chicago, Toledo, Dallas, Denver, San Francisco, New York, Oklahoma City and Baltimore.

This news comes short after the November release of a video that disturbed many of its viewers. Last year, the Acarology Laboratory from the State University of Ohio made public a video that showed an enlarged version of bed bugs and dust mites getting about their business while surrounded by their own feces. Apparently a single bed bug can eliminate up to 20 pieces of waste per day. If we multiply this number with the estimated millions that are believed to live in a single place at a time, we get the stuff of our childhood nightmares.

It is a common misconception to think that the bed bugs actually bite. They are tiny creatures that measure somewhere around 0.2 – 0.3 millimeters in length. The reaction that a person has when contact with these little insects takes place is actually a sort of allergy. Humans are not allergic to the bed bugs, themselves, but rather to their waste. The dust mite’s feces can cause eczema, dry eyes, hay fever, cough, and rhinitis.

Even though vacuuming regularly may help you get rid of the tiny creatures, don’t sleep tight while the bed bugs bite. It is better if you call professional exterminators when signs of an infestation are seen.

Image source: www.wikipedia.org