Bed Bugs - Another Opportunity
Bed bugs are becoming an epidemic in the United States. They are a major concern for Hotels, Motels, Bed and Breakfast, Cruise Ships, Apartments, and millions of homes across the U.S.
For great reference material on Bed Bugs - Please click here to see Orkin's Bed Bug Info Center (Will open in new window or tab)
Below is an article from USA Today dated Aug 22, 2008.
Bedbugs Move Into College Dorms
By Greg Toppo
USA Today
filed under: Health News, National News
(Aug. 22) - Just as they've made an itchy, scratchy comeback in hotel rooms, bedbugs increasingly are appearing in dorm rooms, say college officials and pest-control experts, who are busy devising ways to eradicate the bloodsuckers.
"They're taking off right now," says Dan Mizer, associate director of residence life at Texas A&M University.
First they hit hotels, now they're terrorizing college dormitories. Reports of bedbugs are rising on campuses, experts say. Bedbug bites leave red welts on skin. In 2005, this woman said she suffered more than 500 bedbug bites at a hotel.
Bedbugs are everywhere, he says. "They're finding these things in public transit, in movie theaters, in cruise ships, in all the hospitality accommodations."
Blame an increase in international travel, bigger bedbug populations worldwide, new protocols that discourage widespread spraying and possibly even tougher bugs that are resistant to pesticides.
The size of an apple seed, the nocturnal six-leggers hitchhike on luggage, old furniture and clothing and can live up to a year without a blood meal. So a dorm room left empty over the summer poses but a brief nutritional challenge.
Among those fighting the bugs:
- Ohio State University has seen "several incidents" over the past 15 months, spokeswoman Ruth Gerstner says, including an outbreak in May 2007 in three rooms of a high-rise dorm. Workers treated 114 rooms.
- At the University of Florida's 4,000 dorm rooms and 980 apartments, "bad" infestations are limited to a couple of times a year, says Wayne Walker, who supervises dorm pest control. The school treats the problem with extreme heat, steam cleaning and pesticides.
- Greg Baumann of the National Pest Management Association says he has heard from "quite a few" members called to campuses. Like hotel rooms, dorms are the ideal bedbug habitat: small and crowded, with "quite a bit of humanity per square foot."
Unlike cockroaches, bedbugs aren't an indicator of bad housekeeping, says Richard Cooper, co-author of Bedbug Handbook: The Complete Guide to Bedbugs and Their Control. "The bug doesn't discriminate on social status. Blood's blood."
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