Going to the Mattress

Fortunately, the federal government is on the case. In a hotel ballroom in Crystal City yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency convened the first-ever National Bed Bug Summit -- a veritable Yalta Conference for the species Cimex lectularius. With help from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and even the Pentagon, the EPA assembled scientists, state and local officials, and a colony of exterminators to buzz about such topics as "Bed Bug Perspectives," "Bed Bug Basics" and "Government Responses to Bed Bugs."

"These insects can have a life-altering impact," warned panelist Richard Cooper of Cooper Pest Solutions.

"They are showing up in some of the finest hotels," contributed Saul Hernandez, an aide to the congressman who introduced H.R. 6068, "The Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2008."

All this for an insect the size of an apple seed that has a painless bite and is not known to spread disease?

University of Kentucky entomologist Mike Potter called the bedbug nothing less than "the most difficult, challenging pest problem of our generation." Tossing out phrases such as "doomsday scenario" and "perfect storm," he ventured: "In my opinion, we are not going to get out of this thing" -- the bedbug thing -- until we "allow the pest-control industry to go to war."

The layman might think that in an age of bin Laden and Ahmadinejad, not to mention pandemic flu and poisonous peanut butter, the threat posed by the tiny insect might be rather manageable. But that is not the prevailing view at this week's National Bed Bug Summit.

A year ago I thought bedbugs were a thing from a couple of centuries ago and maybe in a children's bedtime rhyme," testified Joan Quigley, a New Jersey state representative. "I had no idea they were a modern scourge." But when she scratched the surface, she found the bedbug matter to be "a can of worms," so to speak. "I had no idea how many stakeholders there were in the bedbug issue."

An official from the New Jersey Apartment Association (Jersey is a hotbed of bedbug activity) concurred. "I hesitate to use the words 'It became a sexy issue,' but it became a cause celebre," said the official, Conor Fennessy. "It kind of got legs for a while."

Actually, six legs and two antennae, according to the eight-inch drawing of a bedbug on the sign outside the Sheraton ballroom yesterday announcing "National Bed Bug Summit -- Please Sign In." The sign-in area was well stocked with coffee (sleep disruption is common in bedbug circles). Inside the ballroom, 200 people, some in military uniform, others in Orkin Man-style uniform, listened as Lois Rossi, from the EPA's pesticide division, spoke of "the size of the problem we have with bedbug infestations."

Bedbugs had been all but eradicated decades ago, panelist Potter explained, but thanks to increased travel, pesticide bans and resistance, we've "let bedbugs get back in the game."

Now, said Hernandez, the congressional staffer, "bedbugs invade luggage, burrowing deep into clothes, and are transported back home, where they infest their victims' homes . . . and the affected people have no choice but to trash their furniture, clothes and linen."

Audience members were squirming and scratching by the time Cooper told them of where he's found bedbug infestations: "behind picture frames or other wall hangings, or inside the bindings of books or on stuffed animals. Or how about an entire reproducing population with over 30 eggs inside the head of an adjustable wrench?" On the projection screen, the bugs in his presentation looked to be about three feet long.

After a representative of the National Pest Management Association divulged the "startling" fact that, in the pest-control business, the bedbug has surpassed the fire ant and is closing in on the flea, Harold Harlan, from the Armed Forces Pest Management Board, described the savage beast's method of attack. "They have piercing, sucking mouth parts -- that's important," said Harland, who boasted of the "trained" bedbugs he keeps in his lab. "They feed only on blood" -- known as a "blood meal" in the bedbug community.

Dini Miller of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute reported her findings that a particularly nasty strain of insecticide-resistant super-bedbug has taken up residence in Arlington. "It's pretty amazing how tough these bugs are," she said, showing a spray can of "Bedlam" aerosol. "Very determined, these bedbugs."

But what about that article two weeks ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association finding "little evidence" that the bugs transmit disease?

Well, consider the "mental health aspects" of the bedbug. "When you've got bedbugs, your bed is not your comfort," explained Tom Neltner of the National Center for Healthy Housing. "It can have a tremendous impact on the mental health of people."

Potter, who boasted that he's spent "the last three years of my life digging deep into the history of bedbug management," offered a challenge: "I'd like to take anybody who thinks bedbugs is not a big deal, and we'll sprinkle a few in their house and see what they think."

The rest of us can sleep tight, knowing our government is doing all it can not to let the bedbugs bite.