Bed bugs don't discriminate; celebs have had to deal with them, too. Besides having money, fame and paparazzi camped outside their homes, celebrities Bradley Cooper, Renee Zellweger and Howard Stern have all had to deal with an invasion of bed bugs, FOXNews.com reported Tuesday.
Howard Stern is the first celebrity to publicly admit to being the victim of the bedbug epidemic, as the office building he shares with other celebrities has been infested. INSIDE EDITION has the story. The bedbug epidemic has its first known celebrity victim—Howard Stern!
You can successfully get bed bugs out of your bed by carefully vacuuming, steaming, or freezing (Cryonite treatment) bed bugs rather than applying a pesticide. After any treatment to your mattress, you should immediately encase it in a bed bug proof mattress encasement.
Bed bugs are a public health pest. While bed bugs have not been shown to transmit disease, they do cause a variety of negative physical health, mental health and economic consequences.
The incidence of bed bugs is three times higher in urban areas than in rural areas due to factors such as larger population size, apartment living and increased mobility, which are conducive to the rapid spread and breeding of bed bugs.
Key messages. Bedbugs are a relatively common pest across Australia. Bedbugs can be difficult to remove because their eggs are difficult to see, have a significant incubation period and can quickly infest new sites.
Among the popular and most effective DIY home treatments for bed bugs is rubbing alcohol. You can dilute it and place it a spray bottle and simply spray the infested areas. The alcohol will kill bed bugs almost immediately. It also evaporates quickly, leaves no traces or bad smells.
India. India has one of the worst bed bug infestations in the world, with infestations in both urban and rural areas. The problem stems from a lack of knowledge about bed bugs and how to prevent them, as well as a scarcity of effective pest control solutions.
Do continue to sleep in your bedroom after identifying a bed bug infestation. If you move rooms or start sleeping on the couch you run the risk of contaminating these other areas of your home. Similarly, avoid taking your bedding from the location of the infestation to other rooms of your home.
In fact, it would be weird for you not to be freaked out, says Stéphane Perron, a doctor and researcher at the University of Montreal. “If you have bed bugs, and if you don't care, that's not a normal reaction. You should be worried. I would consider it a normal reaction to a stressor.”
The bugs, Potter said, disappeared from about the mid-1950s to the late 1990s. They became so rare people could no longer identify them and a new generation of pest control professionals weren't equipped to fight them, noted University of Florida research scientist Roberto Pereira.
Steam Clean Often
The heat of the steam can kill bed bugs and their eggs. Take your steamer and slowly spray each room with it. Pay extra attention to the baseboards, closet shelves, window trim, and even the carpet. Make sure the steamer is set to at least 160 degrees Fahrenheit and use a low setting for the airflow.
For about as long as humans have been living in places, bed bugs have been infesting them. In a new study in Journal of Medical Entomology, researchers present evidence of the oldest bed bug ancestors ever uncovered: tiny fragments of insidious insects from some 5,000 to 11,000 years ago.
Experts believe the recent increase in bed bugs in the United States may be due to more travel, lack of knowledge about preventing infestations, increased resistance of bed bugs to pesticides, and ineffective pest control practices.
Heat treatments are highly effective as they can get rid of 95% of bed bugs with just a single treatment.
1 in every 5 Americans report some level of bed bug infestation annually. About 20% of US homes and hotels have an annual bed bug problem. Bed bugs are most prevalent in the Southeast region of the US, making up 29% of the country's total infestations.
Showering using soap and water is sufficient to remove bed bugs from your person. Wash your work clothes and dry them completely in a clothes dryer. Once dry, run the clothes on high heat for an additional 30 minutes to make certain that any bed bugs transferred from the washing machine are dead.
Don't count on bed bugs to go away on their own. In theory, they can. In practice, they don't unless several highly specific circumstances occur. Your best bet is professional bed bugs treatment.
Bed bugs can live for as long as 4.5 months or more in an empty house before completely dying off. The two primary factors that determine how quickly or slowly the bed bugs could die off are the existence of a blood meal host, and the temperature of the house.
How can bed bugs get into my home? They can come from other infested areas or from used furniture. They can hitch a ride in luggage, purses, backpacks, or other items placed on soft or upholstered surfaces. They can travel between rooms in multi-unit buildings, such as apartment complexes and hotels.
Bed bug season normally begins at the end of spring each year and ends at the beginning of the month in November, coinciding with increased summer travel. Bed bugs do not reproduce faster this time of year, it simply takes time before people start to notice they've got a problem.
Chicago, New York and Philadelphia hold onto the top three spots, ranking first, second and third, respectively.
Bed bugs are generally considered to be nocturnal and prefer to forage for a host and take a blood meal during the night. They also will come out in the daytime or at night when lights are on, in order to take a blood meal, especially if there were no human hosts in the structure for a while and they are hungry.
Ingestion, by comparison, was easily induced in bed bugs and highly effective at killing the bugs. A single blood meal with 0.5 percent boric acid killed 80 percent of all bugs in seven days.