News | Bedbugs are biting again | University of Missouri …

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COLUMBIA, Mo. Bedbugs are back and good-night wishes wont keep them away.

Bedbugs are on the rise again here in the United States. Populations are growing, said Richard Houseman, University of Missouri Extension entomologist and associate professor in the MU College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.

The National Pest Management Association reported a 71 percent increase in bedbug infestations between 2001 and 2009. The upscale clothing retailer Abercrombie and Fitch recently closed two infested stores in New York City, where a municipal hotline received more than 9,000 bedbug-related complaints from apartment dwellers in 2008up from just a few hundred in 2004.

Outbreaks arent confined to big cities. Communities across the U.S. are coping with an explosion in bedbug populations. Thats why Houseman is currently developing an instructional video for homeowners and pest-control professionals to demonstrate how to prevent or control bedbug infestations.

This once-common scourge of slumber had all but vanished in the 1950s and 60s, when owners of homes and lodgings made a regular practice of treating baseboards and crevices with insecticide sprays, Houseman said.

Changes in pest-control practices have mostly put an end to monthly visits from the exterminator. Baits and traps were cheaper, safer and highly effective against cockroaches and other common household pests.

But not bedbugs. If bedbugs are introduced to a home now, there arent any residual insecticides to knock out those early arrivers, Houseman said.

Our increasingly mobile and urban population gives bedbugs more opportunity to migrate. Shared-lodging facilities such as hotels, apartment buildings, dorms and campgrounds are especially vulnerable, but any building can harbor bedbugs. And not just messy places. Bedbugs arent interested in the crumbs on the floor. Its your blood they want. Body heat and carbon dioxide from our breath attract bedbugs searching for warm-blooded animals to feed on.

Bedbugs typically come out at night. They like to live in cracks and crevices. When the host is sleeping, they come out, feed on the host and go back to the cracks and crevices, he said.

That can make it hard to identify a bedbug problem early on. People may think theyre getting bit by mosquitoes, which produce similar symptoms.

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News | Bedbugs are biting again | University of Missouri ...

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