Originally published August 22 2005
How to avoid bedbugs
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
More of these nasty critters are sharing our beds now than in the 1940s, and Chron.com offers tips on how to avoid them.
There's a sound, scientific reason he strips the sheets from hotel beds and pillows and even rattles headboards loose from the wall before going to bed.
As an entomology professor, Potter knows what could be crawling from the mattress, box springs and night stand when the lights go out.
Don't let the bedbugs bite" are no myth.
The National Pest Management Association, with about 5,000 member companies worldwide, said its U.S. members now report getting one to two calls every week for bedbug treatments compared with none before 2000, when the resurgence gradually began.
Many 30- to 40-year veteran pest experts who had never even seen a bedbug are treating infestations in hotels, apartment buildings, college dorms, homeless shelters, hostels and homes.
"It doesn't matter if it's a five-star hotel or a one-star; we've seen it in all of them," said Cindy Mannes, spokeswoman for the National Pest Management Association.
Atlanta-based Orkin, a pest-control company, reported an 81 percent increase in bedbug treatments from 2003 to 2004, said Frank Meek, entomologist and technical director at the company's training center.
"Ten or 15 years ago, if I got a bedbug sample, I would run out and show the secretary because it was such an unusual event," said Phil Pellitteri, an entomologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Insects put up a fight Experts suspect several factors --- such as the United States' ban on DDT in 1972, increased international travel, and the pest-control industry's shift toward more site-specific treatments --- have led to the recent resurgence.
She said her nonprofit trade association, with about 1,100 member hotels, motels, resorts and bed-and-breakfasts, surveyed the situation in the past few months and found that only one of more than 100 respondents reported a bedbug problem.
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