How Do You Get Bed Bugs?

'How do you get bed bugs?' is a very good question, but the answer is not so easy, because no one really knows. Houses that are more likely to have a bed bug infestation have loose woodwork and plenty of cracks in the plaster work. Anywhere dark and narrow like cracks and crevices that they can get into and sleep during the day.

How Do You Get Bed Bugs?

A torn mattress is excellent for them to hide in. One thing is for certain, people used to think that only the poor got bed bug infestations, but now there is evidence that many of Manhattan's East Side homes are infested with bed bugs too.

Bed bugs, their nymphs (or young) and eggs, Cimex lectularius, were historically seen as a working class problem and the inference was that this was because working class people were 'the great unwashed' and that their houses were filthy which made an infestation a question of public health, although there are no adverse health effects from having bed bugs.

This was just class propaganda, mis-information or class warfare, if you like. This is because the upper classes also had bed bugs, lice and fleas in their furniture too, but were too hypocritical to admit it. Bed bugs are attracted to carbon dioxide, not filth. They want human blood not left overs like cockroaches do.

The same myths go on today. Bed bugs were practically wiped out in the post Second World War years by the widespread use of DDT. After the war, government authorities across Europe had a lot of clearing up to do, and as they did it, they also knocked down many slums and waged war against bed bugs.

As they carried out this clean up, they spread DDT, which has since been banned, and billions of insects were killed in the process. A similar process took place in America, but for different reasons.

These reddish-brown bugs, which had been a plague on British society for 400 years, were virtually wiped out, as they were in most of the developed Western world.

However, bed bugs came back with a vengeance in 1995, as did the incidence of bed bug bites and now they are a growing problem in the West, increasing in number year on year, because modern bed bugs have a resistance to contemporary pesticide and insecticides and the use of DDT is banned.

The fact of the matter is that all classes of people and all classes of houses are subject to an infestation of bed bugs. There is just as much chance that the Hilton, The Holiday Inn or The Ritz will get an infestation of bed bugs as Mrs. Jones' Guest House.

In fact, there is more chance that the posh hotels will get bed bugs because rich people travel long-haul more often than less well-off people and most bed bugs are brought back from Asian and African travel.

Bed bugs are not like ticks, they are not taken home attached to one's skin, but they do lay their eggs in clothing and may also climb into luggage for refuge. The fact is that long-haul travellers, that is business people and the well-off are more likely to suffer problems from bed bugs than those that stay at home.

Not that the stay-at-homes can rest on their laurels. You can take bed bugs home from a hotel, a taxi, a bus, a friend's house, an airplane seat or practically anywhere. The one thing for sure is that if bed bugs are a class issue, it is not the working class that are responsible for their proliferation.

The good news though is that, although they feed on human blood, this pest does not spread disease or infection. The problem is that it is difficult to treat bed bug problems successfully.