Bed Bugs on the rise in and around Boston

Boston.com
Your Town Salem
Bedbugs are biting once again
By Taryn Plumb
Globe Correspondent / November 28, 2010

It could be the synopsis of a horror movie.

They come for you in the middle of the night. They feed on your blood. They spread rampantly and unseen, and annihilating them is an elaborate, tactical process that doesn’t ensure they won’t come back again.

But this infestation — of tiny, resilient, and fast-breeding bedbugs — isn’t on multiplex screens, it’s in bedrooms, hotel rooms, and institutions across the country. The nocturnal bloodsuckers are proliferating at an alarming rate locally, according to officials and exterminators, and this time around, they may be a permanent pest.

“It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my industry,’’ said Galvin Murphy of Malden-based Yankee Pest Control. “It’s been beyond our ability to believe.’’

Rusty-red, oval-shaped, and about the size of a lentil, bedbugs — which remain dormant by day and feed on human blood by night — were ubiquitous in the United States at the turn of the century and then went nearly extinct after World War II with the introduction of the insecticide DDT.

But now, they’ve nestled right back into America’s bedrooms — and fears.

In one of the more publicized cases locally, the insects were discovered in roughly 40 elderly-housing units managed by the Salem Housing Authority. Lynn-based A-1 Exterminators is in the process of eradicating the bugs with a high-heat method, according to company president Gary Weisberg. Housing Authority executive director Carol MacGowan did not return calls seeking comment.

But the skin-crawling bugs have been found in “just about any community in metro north,’’ said Murphy, citing Malden, Everett, and Somerville in particular. “There’s probably not a town we haven’t been in.’’

His company is booked until mid-December, and has more workers dealing with bedbugs than all other pests (from rats to termites to ants) combined.

Farther northwest, Michael Beaulieu of Lowell-based Bain Pest Control Service also described an increase of about 30 percent in calls over the last six months. Particular problem areas include Lowell, Manchester, N.H., and Greater Boston, including Chelsea and Revere, he said.

The state Department of Public Health doesn’t track infestations, according to media relations director Julia Hurley, because bedbugs aren’t known to spread infectious diseases.

If you can get past the blood-sucking, they’re relatively benign, more “annoying’’ than anything, said Lowell health director Frank Singleton. Still, he acknowledged, “People don’t get a happy feeling when they’re told they’re a food source.’’

Most often, according to experts, bedbugs are discovered in multifamily dwellings or apartment buildings, elderly housing, nursing homes, hospitals, or public buildings such as firehouses and police stations.

“The more congested an area is, the more calls we get,’’ said Weisberg of A-1. “There’s no place that’s really immune.’’

Nesting areas are a little easier to pinpoint. Bedbugs typically settle anywhere within a 20-foot radius of a sleeping spot, according to Singleton; in addition to mattresses and headboards, they’ve been found tucked away in picture frames, closets, piles of clothing, walls, even clock radios.

“They’re called bedbugs, but they’ll infest chairs, couches — anywhere there’s a crack and crevice,’’ said Weisberg.

And often, people don’t discover them until they’ve got a prospering colony leaving evidence such as skin rashes, bloodstained linens, or dark spots from droppings.

They travel from place to place just as covertly, hitchhiking from bedrooms to cinemas to dressing rooms to hotel rooms, on luggage, handbags, clothes, and even the spines of books.

To minimize proliferation, officials and exterminators urge, don’t pick up free roadside furniture, and, when traveling, keep clothes in your luggage and store your luggage in the bathtub (since the tiny insects have a hard time climbing slippery surfaces). One can also check infestation-tracking websites such as www.bedbugregistry.com.

“I don’t know how you prevent them,’’ said Singleton, noting that complaints to his department in Lowell have rocketed from about a half-dozen a year to two or three a week. “They’re now back in the United States, fully introduced, and expanding into their old habitat.’’

But just how they returned is unclear. Many point to the DDT ban in the 1970s; others to increased international travel. Some also note a lack of knowledge on the part of pest services.

Because the boom is relatively recent, Beaulieu said, “the industry doesn’t know enough about it.’’

Singleton agreed, and has been pushing for a revision of the state housing code that spells out an organized approach to eradication.

Because today’s breed is often resistant to pesticides, the bugs are battled with steam, vacuums, cryogenics, or heat. The latter involves blasting the entire home or unit with temperatures up to 135 degrees for several hours, according to Murphy of Yankee, which also relies on the trained nose of a rescue dog to sniff out live bugs and viable eggs.

In the end, he and others don’t expect a letup anytime soon in the war against bedbugs.

“Unless they come out with some new technology,’’ said Weisberg, “we’re going to be dealing with this for a long time.’’

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