Banishing Bedbugs Means Scouring Memory Lane

By Theresa Braine

WeNews correspondent

Friday, October 16, 2009

A reporter's run-in with bedbugs forces her to inspect or clean every single one of her possessions. A box of childhood keepsakes--from Gloria Steinem's autograph to Suzy Homemaker toys--reflects on the contradictions of a U.S. girlhood spanning the '60 and '70s.

Theresa Braine NEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)--On my way to visit my sister overnight, I walked into the grocery store carrying two jumbo-sized, clear plastic bags of possessions and asked the cashier, "Where are the Ziplocs?"

"Down that aisle," he said, pointing.

I used Ziplocs not only for storing food, but also odds and ends like those in my home office. But now their role had expanded.

As I walked toward them I stopped to consider some piles of eco-friendly reusable grocery bags. Did I want one? No, I thought, I needed to reduce my clutter and didn't want to spend the $3. I kept walking, did my shopping and at the register found the same man.

He brought out one of those eco-friendly bags and started packing my stuff in it. "Here," he said, his eyes overflowing with kindness. "I saw you looking at them."

It was then that I realized what I looked like: A middle-class, middle-aged recession victim. I suppose I sort of am, given my status as a journalist in a disappearing field, though I was not homeless as the man seemed to think. I was, however, a squatter in my own home.

I was among the legions of people in this country--and around the world--who have been forced to live out of plastic bags, albeit temporarily, thanks to a case of the bedbugs.

I had found them in my apartment about six weeks earlier after two months of unexplained hives. The actual bugs--adults are about the size and color of an apple seed--finally became visible one night on my bare mattress after a renovation jostled them out of my bed frame.

Global Problem

Bedbugs, or cimex lectularius, are blood-sucking insects that tend to congregate in and around beds, though they will set up shop anywhere that a person spends an appreciable amount of time--say, the couch, a favorite armchair or even the office.

In 30 to 40 percent of us they cause nasty, itchy welts. They can cost thousands of dollars to eradicate in a process that takes multiple treatments over weeks or months.

During that time you need to keep your laundered high-heat-dried clothes in plastic bags so the bugs can't get back in. Some people throw out infested furniture, though often that's not necessary.

Bedbugs were fairly common decades ago, but were virtually eradicated in the United States by the 1950s. A resurgence, however, is under way. Experts suspect that a combination of increased international travel, the disuse of certain pesticides and bedbugs' growing tolerance to many pesticides, including DDT, are behind the change.