Bed Bugs Sink Their Teeth into the West Coast

LOS ANGELES, CA -- Good night. Sleep Tight. Get used to bed bugs.

Those little suckers have firmly implanted themselves in the West Coast in just a few short years. A decade ago, Californians rightly and smugly thought of bed bugs as a New York problem, but now the Golden State’s two most populous regions made Orkin’s top 10 list for the most frequent bed bug service calls. Los Angeles comes in at number four and the San Francisco-San Jose area rounds out the top 10.

The mite-sized parasites are up and down the west coast with Seattle-Tacoma ranking 34th nationwide and Portland Oregon 50th.

“We have more people affected by bed bugs in the United States now than ever before,” Orkin Entomologist and Director of Technical Services Ron Harrison said in a written release. “They were virtually unheard of in the U.S. 10 years ago.”

The top ten cities most often treated by Orkin for bedbugs in 2016 were:

1. Baltimore
2. Washington, D.C.
3. Chicago
4. New York
5. Columbus, Ohio
6. Los Angeles
7. Detroit
8. Cincinnati
9. Philadelphia
10. San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose

The infestation has spread with remarkable speed. Bed bugs spread with ease. People can carry them in their clothes, luggage and purses. They have been found in movie theaters, trains and office buildings.

“Anyone can get bed bugs in their home. They are not a sign of uncleanliness. Bed bugs only need blood to survive. We have treated for bed bugs in everything from million dollar homes to public housing,” Harrison says.

While it may be easy to pick up bed bugs, getting rid of them is another story. Bed bugs, small brown oval bugs the size of an apple seed, can live up to a year without feeding. Many people who have the bugs don’t realize it, attributing their red itchy skin to a rash.

To determine if you have bed bugs or are staying at hotel that is infested, look for small brown spots on the furniture or look directly for the bugs along the seams of your mattress or behind the headboard.

Orkin offers these tips for protecting yourself from the invasive parasites:

At Home:

• Inspect your home for signs of bed bugs regularly. Check locations where bed bugs hide during the day, including mattress seams and behind baseboards, headboards, electrical outlets and picture frames. “I like to inspect every week when I change the sheets to make sure I don’t have a visitor,” Harrison says.
• Decrease clutter around your home to make bed bug inspections and detection much easier.
• Inspect all secondhand furniture before bringing it inside your home.
• Dry potentially infested bed linens, curtains and stuffed animals on the hottest temperature allowed for the fabric.

During travel, remember the acronym S.L.E.E.P to inspect for bed bugs:

1. Survey the hotel room for signs of an infestation. Look for black or brown spots on any furniture.
2. Lift and look in bed bug hiding spots: the mattress, box spring, bedskirt and other furniture, as well as behind baseboards, pictures and even torn wallpaper.
3. Elevate luggage away from the bed and wall. The safest place is in the bathroom.
4. Examine your luggage while repacking and once you return home from a trip.
5. Place all dryer-safe clothing from your luggage in the dryer for at least 15 minutes at the highest setting after you return home.

Photo by Piotr Naskrecki via Wikimedia Commons