March of the bedbugs 

14 May 2011

Once seen as the scourge of New York apartment rentals and seedy boarding houses, bedbugs are now heading south.

"Australia has experienced a sudden and unexpected resurgence in bedbug infestations," according to a report entitled Bedbugs: The Australian Response, recently produced by experts including Stephen Doggett, senior hospital scientist at Westmead Hospital's Department of Medical Entomology.

The growth in multitudes of the hardy, unpleasant pests comes at a potential cost to home owners and businesses. In 2006 the cost to the nation was estimated at $100 million. By the start of 2011, that amount could easily have doubled, the report says.

And that comes before a trend of litigation relating to the bugs – seen perhaps by some as benefiting another breed of bloodsuckers – has taken hold.

Despite their burgeoning numbers, bedbugs are an ill-understood bunch, more widely known as players in a kids' rhyme than rapacious night feeders.

"There's a lot of misinformation out there... it's often light-hearted, but that doesn't achieve a good outcome. You often hear people say, "night-night, don't let the bedbugs bite", but that doesn't necessarily help the public gain traction with the serious nature of a bedbug infestation," says David Lilly, a technical support manager in speciality services at Ecolab, a multinational outfit that, among other things, helps eliminate pests. Lilly is a co-author of the report.

For those unfortunate enough to have the unwelcome house guests, a bedbug infestation is upsetting, disruptive and expensive.

Nor is there much sympathy about. "People don't understand; they laugh when you tell them," says a retired biologist, living in Cronulla, who recently suffered an infestation. He asks not to be named because of the social stigma attached to the bugs.

"Most people haven't been through it and they don't have a clue how bad it is," he says. "Financially, it's devastating."

He puts the total cost of the experience at close to $4000, including more than $1000 spent on dry- cleaning – clothes and other material items in the house must be dry-cleaned or put through the washing machine to kill the bugs and their eggs.

Of course, what comes as a cost to those infested, represents a bonus for pest control companies. "The number of jobs we've been doing has just been skyrocketing," says Lilly. "I am not aware of (and it is hard to imagine) any other sector of pest management that has seen this degree of increase in business for one particular pest in such a short period of time."

An earlier survey co-authored by Doggett found infestations had increased in Australia by an average of 4500 per cent from 1999 to 2006. Pest control professionals say that numbers are still increasing. Ecolab, for instance, had 17 bedbug jobs in 2001; in 2009 it had 340.

An initial burst of large-scale infestations appears over, Doggett says, but infestations appear to be more dispersed. In the last few years there have been outbreaks reported in trains, hospital wards, cinema complexes, masseurs' beds and brothels, he says. It's not just in Australia that the pests are undergoing a renaissance. US non-profit group the National Pest Management Association warned

last year that the world was on the brink of a bedbug pandemic. Amid an epidemic in New York, bedbugs have reportedly been found at the United Nations, Bloomingdale's and the headquarters of Time Warner.

The resurgence of the pests here is blamed on a number of factors, experts say, including an unfortunate combination of the bugs' ability to build resistance to insecticides and an explosion of cheap air travel.

As plane tickets have became more affordable, travellers have gone places where bedbugs have never really declined in number. At the same time, it is thought the bugs have evolved a resistance to insecticides in areas where poisons were used to target disease-carrying mosquitoes.

"These resistant bugs then had the opportunity to be carried around the world," Doggett says.

Poor regulation of insecticides is partly responsible for the resurgence, he says. The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA), which regulates the supply of pesticides and veterinary medicines to Australia, doesn't insist that new insecticides are tested against modern resistant bedbug strains, "so the average pest controller thinks... this product, which is registered by the APVMA, is going to work, and it often doesn't", he says.

APVMA says it only registers products that work: "Any concerns about efficacy can be directed to the APVMA's adverse experience reporting program, which assesses adverse experience reports to ensure the ongoing safety and efficacy of registered products."

With a lack of understanding of bedbugs among pest controllers and the public, the measures taken to get rid of them often don't work, leading to bigger infestations.

The first pest controller engaged by the biologist in Cronulla failed to do the job. "It was our fault for panicking and grabbing the first person who said they would come... but when you have 20 or 30 bedbugs running out from under your bed and your mattress [is] all stained and having to be thrown out the next morning, you want to do something," he says.

For those unlucky enough to have an infestation, the impacts are also psychological.

"People can be quite disturbed that they've been living with these bugs in close proximity to where they sleep at night, when people are at their most vulnerable," Lilly says.

There is also a fear that once eradicated, the bugs might come back. "Every time we see a speck on the ground, or we see an animal crawling, we pounce on it with a magnifying glass and peer at it... it's just paranoia, it's terrible," the biologist says.

An adult bedbug is about the same size and shape as an apple pip. The insects start out pale, darkening as they grow. The eggs are tiny and hard to see.

An infestation can be identified by a number of factors, including spots of blood digested by the bugs. This often comes in groups, in places such as mattress seams or where carpet meets wall, as the bugs like to hang together.

According to the World Health Organisation, bedbugs aren't important in the transmission of diseases. Some people don't react to the bites. For those who do, the reaction can be delayed. "People never bitten before may suffer from local inflammation, intense itching and sleepless nights," WHO says.

Bedbugs come out at night looking for their prey and, among other things, are typically attracted to carbon dioxide and body heat. Adult bedbugs can live for several years without feeding.

There are many myths about the pests – that they live on humans (they don't) that they burrow into the skin (they don't). A key area of misunderstanding is the relation of infestations to hygiene. Bedbugs are just as likely to take up residence in a five-star hotel as a dirty house.

Australia has two varieties of the bugs: Cimex lectularius, the tropical bedbug; and Cimex hemipterus, the common bedbug.

Common bedbugs are likely to have come with the First Fleet, Doggett says. Matthew Flinders was an early sufferer, complaining of not being able to sleep at night and having to boil his clothes.

"No matter what he did, there were bedbugs around," Doggett says. They remained in Australia until well into the 20th century but then their numbers are thought to have waned as certain insecticides were introduced, the report says.

Now they are back with a vengeance. And, perhaps most worryingly, experts are warning their comeuppance may not happen without international co-ordination. In an age of disagreements over global warming, international law and driving on the same side of the road, the chances of achieving consensus among nations on the pests may be low.