Sleep Tight, Don"t Let the Bed Bugs Bite!

Back in the early to mid nineteen hundreds, parents would often use this expression when tucking their children into bed.
They weren't trying to be cute, they meant it! Bedbugs were originally brought to the United States by early colonists from Europe and were a common problem in the United States up to and throughout the World War II era.
With the widespread use of DDT in the 1940s and '50s, bedbugs mostly disappeared from North America in the mid-twentieth century.
Guess What? They're back!!! While no one can say for certain what caused the resurgence of bed bugs in the United States, there are a number of factors that have probably influenced the emergence of this difficult blood-sucking pest...

• Global travel has become commonplace and bedbugs are amazing hitchhikers, and easily travel in suitcases, boxes or packages.
  
• Bedbugs are very hard to detect as they readily hide in small crevices, and may accompany (as teeny tiny stowaways) luggage, furniture, clothing, pillows, boxes, and other such objects when these are moved between apartments, homes and hotels.
  
• Used furniture, particularly bed frames and mattresses, are very susceptible to the risk of harboring bed bugs and their eggs.
  
• Because bedbugs can survive for many months without feeding, bedbugs may already be present in apparently vacant and clean apartments or homes.
  

One thing that is certain is that bed bugs are back with a vengeance and once they are introduced into a new environment they are able to readily spread from infested locations to new locations that were previously un-infested.
Bedbugs have now hit hotels and homes in every state.
In fact, the bedbug population in the United States has increased by 500 percent in the past few years The bedbug problem has gotten so bad that G.
K.
Butterfield, a North Carolina Congressman, has recently introduced legislation that would authorize $50 million that's already in the Department of Commerce budget to train health inspectors how to recognize signs of the insects.
The Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2009 also would require public housing agencies to submit bedbug inspection plans to the federal government.
It would add bedbugs to a rodent and cockroach program in the Department of Health and Human Services.
It also would require the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research bedbugs' impact on public mental health.
Most of the problems have nothing to do with sanitization or good housekeeping.
Bedbugs are easily transported from one location to another.
All one needs to do is to spend a night in a bed bug infested environment and there is chance that they will take at least one bug with them to their next destination.
So what are the signs and/or symptoms of bedbug infestation? Look for unexplained bites on the legs, arms or torso.
Bites typically appear as red, itchy welts and tend to be very itchy and often in a row.
Bedbug bites many times look like a mosquito bite, though they tend to last for longer periods.
Bites may not become immediately visible, and can take up to nine days to appear.
There is a good chance that you have bed bugs if you keep waking up each morning with bite symptoms on your body that were not there when you went to sleep.
The bad news is the only way to know for sure if you have bed bugs, is to produce an actual sample of the bug itself.
If you suspect your home, apartment complex, hotel, or government operated facility has a bedbug problem, call a bedbugs pest control companyMost will give you a FREE inspection.