Bedbugs returning to homes across U.S.

Bedbugs, the houseguests nobody wants, are back in growing numbers across the United States, and booting them from your bunk can be a lengthy, costly process.

Sixty years after near-eradication, the little bloodsuckers are infesting homes and hotels from New York to San Diego. Why the outbreak? Increased world travel and changing pest-control practices.

“The bugs had become a myth,” says Richard Cooper, an entomologist who runs a family pest control firm in Lawrenceville, N.J. “They were the monster in the closet. People don’t believe they’re real.”

They’re real, all right. If they’ve gained a toehold – or wherever they find bare skin to bite – they won’t leave your house unless you unleash an all-out effort.

“If you don’t manage them, they’ll manage you,” says Richard Pollack, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health.

The re-emergence of bedbugs appears to have begun in the late 1990s. Cooper saw his first one in a motel in 1999.

That prompted him to start collecting reports from colleagues. From June 2000 until May 2001, Cooper surveyed exterminators in the Northeast, Florida and California. None reported more than 22 bedbug calls. In 2004-05, bedbug complaints jumped to 335 in the Northeast, 285 in Florida and 240 in California.

“Now, we’re out there dealing with bedbugs every day of the week, all day long,” Cooper says.

According to Cindy Mannes of the National Pest Management Association, the pest control company Orkin says it has bedbug reports this year in every state except seven: Alaska, Idaho, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Wyoming.

You might expect that the vermin would be found in cut-rate flophouses. You’d be wrong. The Helmsley Park Lane Hotel in New York, where a one-bedroom suite fetches $950 a night, was sued by a bedbug “bitee” in 2003. The suit was settled, says spokesman Howard Rubenstein, and the hotel has not had a problem since.

Pest control companies blame the bedbug boom on increased foreign travel, Mannes says. The bugs are more common abroad, and they’ll happily hitch a ride in a suitcase.

Getting rid of them can require pesticides, powerful vacuums and sealing mattresses with impervious covers, Cooper says.

To avoid bringing bedbugs into your home, Pollack says, avoid secondhand furniture.

He says, “You might be getting friends along with that mattress, bed frame or dresser.”