Bed Bugs Everywhere
Bed Bugs Everywhere
Bed Bugs Everywhere
Once believed to have been eradicated, the well-known, almost unseeable bed bug pests are making an undesirable reappearance globally, as these expert little travelers stash away in clothing and luggage. From business travelers to pilots, bed bugs are being unintentionally spread around.
One traveler says that bed bugs are no longer just bed fellows as they have managed to permeate planes. She says she was attacked by bed bugs while flying on a British Airways flight from L.A. to Bangalore.
A business executive for the Internet company Yahoo!'s media group, 28-year-old Zane Selkirk says she first noticed the bed bugs on her airline-provided blanket and on her hand, around three hours into the first leg of her flight, which was from L.A. to London's Heathrow Airport. She also said she had been attacked on a flight to Bangalore a few weeks earlier.
Selkirk says she left the ten-hour flight to find her body covered with approximately 90 bug bites, on the return Bangalore to London journey. "During the first flight, I turned on my light to find bugs crawling on my blanket and a bedbug-blood-spattered shirt. The worst part was the non-existent customer service throughout the ten-day ordeal."
Selkirk was upset with BA's initial response, so she posted photos of her bites on the Internet.
A BA spokesman said that two aircraft were taken out and needed to be treated before returning back into service. The airline fumigated one of the aircraft on which it confirmed there had been an infestation and expressed regret to the woman for her ordeal.
A spokesman for BA said "British Airways operates more than 250,000 flights every year, and reports of bed bugs onboard are extremely rare".
In 2010 officials in New York, where there are 1.1 million students and 100,000 teachers, acknowledged that the plague of bed bugs had arrived at 'an unprecedented rate of spread'. They pledged $500,000 in order to raise public awareness.
A set of rules for coping with cases was set up in schools, along with the goal of better communication between parents and schools.
As the bed bugs travel on the clothes and bags of their hosts, the spread continues, showing these measures have failed, because so many houses are already infested. Private homes continue to be the source of the majority of infestations.
Missy Henrickson, of the National Pest Management Association, told NBC New York "Bed bugs need to be where people are". "So when you have homes infested with bed bugs, students who live there are bringing them into schools."
As bed bugs are not thought to be carriers of disease, the damage is psychological rather than long term physical discomfort. The bugs can survive an entire 12 months without eating, making them extremely difficult to eliminate. Getting rid of them demands persistence.
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