Dini Miller wrote the bed bug entry in the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Entomology (2008, John L. Capinera, editor).
She has a familiar take on the problem:
Because these insects have never completely disappeared from developing nations they have been continuously treated with many insecticide products over the last 50 years. This continuous pesticide pressure has selected for bed bug resistance, particularly to pyrethroids. These pyrethroid resistant populations present a unique problem in developed nations where public opinion and federal legislation has eliminated entire classes of insecticides from indoor use due to their perceived toxicity.
Actually, bed bugs never completely disappeared from developed nations either. But for once there is something else that I find more upsetting.
And that is the solution to our problem:
The key to bed bug control in developed nations will ultimately be education. People will have to accept that bed bugs exist and learn how to avoid transporting bed bugs to their homes (from hotels, taxis, air planes, camp cabins, movie theaters, laundromats, day care centers, multiple unit housing, etc.) during the course of their daily activities. The ability of the average citizen to identify bed bugs and bed bug evidence will be critical for them to successfully protect themselves and their home from bed bug infestations.
Identifying bed bugs and bed bug evidence is critical.
Accepting that bed bugs exist and avoiding transporting bed bugs home from multiple unit housing, well.
Is New York City that alien a concept? It’s almost as if a great part of the bed bug literature is simply not applicable if you live here. I know this is not Dr. Miller’s fault. And yet there’s something else at play. It’s astonishing but even the documents produced by the New York City Health Department are written as if for an audience of homeowners. Is this a safer way of considering the problem? A soft denial? If we imagine that everyone is an individual actor in control of his or her infestation, then it’s almost a manageable problem. Last week there was an article in our local paper that was dismissive of “a Washington task force” and instead posited bed bugs as a personal finance problem, with zero mention of the inconvenient fact that bed bugs spread between apartments.
The absence of a bed bug education campaign in New York City is enough to make you cry. But education will not be enough. Not here and, I suspect, not anywhere else.
These pages may be of related interest:
