A Returning Nightmare: Bed Bugs in the 21st Century



 “Goodnight! Sleep tight! Don’t let the bed bugs bite!”  Nearly every child has heard this phrase when going to bed, yet it is only recently that the meaning behind this saying has become known, sometimes devastatingly so.  For someone living with bed bugs, it can be the most traumatic experience one can go through, as the parasites are costly and difficult to get rid of.  History has show a wide range of curatives for infestations, from the obscure to the downright dangerous, and even after centuries of efforts, extermination efforts are imperfect.  In group living situations, such as apartment buildings, the bugs easily spread from one dwelling to another, leaving a myriad of questions about whose responsibility it is to finance their extermination.  Tenets have the right to live in a healthy and pest-free environment and should not have to pay what can easily amount to tens of thousands of dollars in pest control fees; it is the sole responsibility of the landlord.
Family Cimicidae consists of a group of bugs that are highly specialized for feeding on blood.  Within this family is Cimex lectularius, commonly known as the bed bug.  Though the bed bug has proven to thrive on birds, bats, and rabbits in laboratory tests, their primary hosts are humans (EOL).  Bed bugs are small, wingless insects, growing up to four to five millimeters long.  Their rust coloring and flat bodies has given them the nicknames “mahogany flats”, “red coats,” and “cinches.”  Their body is wide and flat, easily allowing them to hide in crevices such in headboards, floor cracks, under carpets, and along mattress seams (Orkin).
Bed bugs are nocturnal parasites, coming out at night to feed from their victims.  Using a sharp beak to pierce the skin, they inject saliva that contains an anticoagulant that allows them to easier suck the blood of their victims.  The young nymphs will become engorged with blood in three minutes, where the adult will feed on the person for a full fifteen minutes (Orkin).
Female bed bugs can lay up to twelve eggs a day coated with a stick substance to allow them to adhere to the cracks and crevices.  It takes between six and seventeen days for the nymphs to hatch, immediately beginning to feed on their human host.  Temperature and abundance of food greatly affects the development time of the nymphs.  In temperatures averaging 86 degrees Fahrenheit, adulthood can be reached in only 21 days; lower temperatures delay this, developmental time taking closer to 120 days.  Nymphs require a meal of blood to molt, and reach maturity after five molts.  Scarcity of food will delay this process even further, the bugs able to survive for months without feeding (Jones).  Adult bed bugs live up to eighteen months, and each year, three or more generations can occur.  At a conservative average of six eggs a day and a lifespan of twelve months, a single female bed bug can explode the population by over two thousand parasites; with their eggs reaching adulthood in two weeks, this explodes the number of insects exponentially (Eisenburg).
Bed bugs cannot tell the difference between males and females, so the male bed bug simply stabs any it comes across with its hypodermic appendage.  When it finally finds a female to impregnate, it injects her with the DNA of every male it hit before her, making the genetic tracking of the bugs nearly impossible (Amyx).
The bite of the bed bug is painless, and symptoms do not show up for several hours afterward.  Fifty percent of people have no reaction to bites, assisting in the difficulty of pinpointing infestations (Orange Environmental).  For those who do react, the bites initially resemble mosquito bites, small, raised, and itchy.  These welts can produce severe itching and swelling, the symptoms lasting for days and exacerbated if scratched.  Though bed bugs do not carry infectious diseases, scratching the bites can lead to infection and scarring.  Welts commonly appear in rows of three or more, and differ from flea bites in that they do not have a red spot in the center (Jones).  Victims of bed bug infestations can undergo great periods of stress, leading to anxiety, insomnia, and even nightmares.
The history of bed bugs stretches back to the beginning of recorded time.  As people began to settle into villages and cities, infestations became more commonplace than in the hunter/gatherer civilizations that moved frequently.  Archeological dig sites dating back more than three and a half centuries ago carry the fossilized bugs (Potter).
They have been used in many different cultures as curatives, such as the Greeks and Romans, who burned them to make leeches loosen their hold.  They believed that the parasites could cure many diseases when ingested with beans, eggs, or wine. Just over a hundred years ago, the fifth edition of the American Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia gave directions to cure malaria by making a tincture from the bugs (Potter).
As civilization expanded in Europe, the warmth provided by sleeping and cooking fires allowed bed bugs to infest the homes of the wealthy and working class.  The poor, however, suffered the most; unable to afford the constant changing of bedding that the wealthy could, the bugs had a must more established breeding ground.  This precedent is remains true today, as the impoverished lack the means to exterminate an infestation (Potter).
Common household pests until World War II, early colonists are to blame for bringing bed bugs over in the 1600s.  After the war, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT, as it is commonly known, was accredited to the eradication of bed bugs in the U.S. prior to the ban on its use (Jones).  In 1942, the USDA Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine in Orlando, Florida declared DDT to be “the perfect answer to the bed bug problem.”  In the 1950s, however, the U.S. began to ban its use because its carcinogenic nature to humans could damage the nervous system.  DDT remains in mammals for long periods of time, dissolving their body fat.  The chemical can travel far, condensing in water or vaporizing in the air, causing problems in places where it has never been manufactured or even used.  The indigenous population of the Arctic has never touched DDT, yet they have the highest levels of concentration in their food and bodies.  In 1972, DDT was banned in the U.S. by EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus.  Use of the chemical slowly became unknown in the world after the U.S.’s ban, and no industrial country currently uses it (Martin).
In 400 B.C.E, the Greek philosopher Democritus instructed hanging rabbit or deer feet at the foot of one’s bed to deter an infestation and in the 18th century, The Compleat Vermin-Killer recommended one place gunpowder in the cracks of the bed and light it on fire.  In the 1800s and early 1900s, a tonic created from arsenic and mercury was commonly used to apply where the bugs hide with a brush, oil can, or even one’s own finger (Potter).  Though the current methods of extermination are quite a bit more complicated than that, they are also much more effective.  Unfortunately, they also run the side effect of being extremely costly.
All cloth, including clothing, blankets, towels, backpacks, rugs, pillows, and more, must be thoroughly washed and dried at high temperatures.  Exterminators suggest immediately placing clean items in garbage bags when they come out of the dryer and placing them in bathrooms and kitchens.  These are places where humans do not linger and give less hiding places conducive to the parasites’ growth.  The cloth contents of a small, one-bedroom apartment taken to a laundromat can run a bill in excess of a hundred dollars (Amyx).
Though not always feasible, exterminators also recommend that all cloth furniture such as mattresses and couches be thrown out; this gives one less item for the bugs to hide in and speeds up the process of their removal.  If such action is taken, the items need to be defaced beyond use to help prevent others from picking up the used furniture and spreading the infestation further (Maestre).
Pyrethroids can be used to treat the small crevices where bed bugs hide, though using repellent formulas is discouraged as it causes to bugs to spread out.  The chemical in a dust form works well with hollow areas in walls and in attics.  Chemicals can only be used every 7-10 days depending on poison legislation, so it is recommended that treatments be repeated every two weeks until all signs of the bugs are gone (Amyx).
In lieu of DDT, the best recourse against the bugs is heat treating the dwelling, though the cost can quickly become astronomical.  A single heat treatment of a building consisting of ten one-bedroom apartments is in excess of $10,000 dollars.  The process requires homes to be sectioned off into smaller areas and the temperature raised over 140 degrees Fahrenheit for four hours (Amyx).
The high cost of bed bug extermination in apartment homes is the sole responsibility of the landlord.  Several states have already passed legislation about it, setting a precedent for current and future laws.
“No man shall be required to pay rent for a house infested with bed bugs” declared a Chicago jury in 1895 (Potter).
In August of 2010, former New York state Governor David Paterson signed legislation that requires all landlords must disclose any history of bed bugs within the past year to prospective tenets.  This law applies only to New York City, in which there were 11,000 complaints issued about the parasites in 2009 alone (Journal of Property Management).
On 12 July 2010 a law took effect in Maine that not only required landlords to disclose information of past infestations, but also set regulations on who had to pay for the removal.  In this instance, landlords are required to cover the costs of extermination, however a clause exists that can move the responsibility to the tenets if they do not cooperate with extermination efforts (Journal of Property Management).
In New Jersey, a state-wide bill passed in February 2010 requires landlords to pay for removal or face fines of $300 per bedroom and/or $1,000 per common area.  They must also provide resources to tenets on the insects and preventative methods (Journal of Property Management).
The state of Massachusetts decreed that infestations fall under the current statute requiring landlords to “maintain the dwelling you own without insect infestation” (MA: 105 CMR 410.550).  Property owners are responsible for inspecting each unit and financing any required extermination (Journal of Property Management).
Several other states have pressed for legislation about bed bug infestations.  In Illinois, pending legislation would require landlords to take responsibility for infestation.  Additionally, discussions have been ongoing about petitioning the federal government to allow banned insecticides to be used in treating bed bugs in residential units.  Ohio has already petitioned the federal government to use the chemicals, and also has pending legislation to create an awareness and prevention program.  The matter has also been brought before the U.S. House of Representatives in a bill that would give grants to assist individual states in inspecting hotels for the parasites (Journal of Property Management).
Once considered an anecdote of the past, bed bug infestations are making a furious comeback.  History tells a story of imperialistic expansion and chemical warfare against the parasitic bugs with the extermination companies the only victor.  Traumatic and costly, they destroy property and cause victims both money and grief.  Though many landlords make an effort to press cleanup costs off on their tenets, precedent set over multiple states demands that the cost of extermination lies solely in the hands of the landlords.




Works Cited



Amyx, Bob, Pest Solutions Specialist for Schendel Pest Services. Personal interview. 11 Feb. 2011.
"Bed bug laws." Journal of Property Management Mar.-Apr. 2011: 16. Academic OneFile. Web. 12 Nov. 2011.
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Jones, Susan C., Ph. D. “Bed Bugs.” Ohionline. The Ohio State University, n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2011.
Maestre, Ralphe H., BCE. The Bed Bug Book: The Complete Guide to Prevention and Extermination. New York: Skyhorse, 2011. Print.
Martin, Ashley K. “The regulation of DDT: a choice between evils.” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law Mar. 2008: 667+. Academic OneFile. Web. 27 Nov. 2011.
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Orkin. Bed Bugs: Facts, Identification & Control. Atlanta: Orkin, LLC, 2011. Web. 17 Oct. 2011.
Pinto, Lawrence J., Richard Cooper, and Sandra K. Kraft. Bed Bug Handbook: The Complete Guide to Bed Bugs and Their Control. New York: Pinto & Associates, 2007. Print.
Potter, Michael F. “The History of Bed Bug Management – With Lessons from the Past.” American Entomologist. Entomological Society of America, 2008. Web. 17 Oct. 2011.
Terminix. Bed Bugs. Memphis: The Terminix International Company Limited Partnership, 2009. Web. 17 Oct. 2011.