An Explainer On Bed Bugs In Paris. Are They Really A Problem? – Forbes

Its the stuff of holiday nightmares; arriving in your hotel to discover that other guests arrived before you, and that they bite. Paris is back in the bed bug headlines but is the city really any different than other metropolitan areas in suffering an increase? As the city launches a hotline, heres a run down on what you need to know and why its happening.

Bed bug feeding on human skin.

Bed bugs were almost wiped out in the 1950s after increased use of pesticides and insect repellants including DDT. Almost ten years ago, Scientific American reported a huge increase in bed bugs globally, announcing that they could now be found in every U.S. state, and in the decade since, they havent gone away. Bed bugs are becoming increasingly resistant to chemicals, soas is increasingly common with many insectsit is the stronger bugs which survive and stick around; we are creating new breeds of superbugs generally, not just bed bugs.

Bed bugs have proliferated in many countries in recent years. In 2017, The Guardian reported an exponential increase in bed bug infestation across the U.K. At the same time, Le Parisien reported an explosive increase in Paris, which has struggled to keep numbers under control ever since. So, the problem is global, not local and Paris is not alone.

Just last month, The Local reported that bed bugs were again on the rise in France. According to the French Union for Pest Control, Frances bed bug problem has seen the number of cases go from 180,000 to 400,000 in just two years.

These bedbugs are about the size of a capital "O" in this caption.

A major difficulty is in getting rid of them. Once a room has bugs, hoteliers must dispose of not just the mattress, but the bed frame, and all the bedding, which can cost anywhere from 300 ($325) up to 10,000 (nearly $11,000) depending on the category of hotel. Then the hotel must stay on lock down until pest control has verified the bed bugs have been eradicated, leading to a further loss of earnings.

Its traumatizing hotel managers, we talk about it among ourselves, but timidly"

Bed bugs do well in warmer weather, so increased summer temperatures in northern Europe has increased their stretchThe Guardian reported that their reproductive cycle shortens in hotter climates. Another factor is that people no longer air bedding as they used to in the past, so bugs are left to proliferate.

The Guardian reported that bed bugs have become such a big issue that they have featured in the current mayoral elections (which take place in March). Candidate Benjamin Griveauxbefore he dropped out of the race over a sex tape scandalpromised to clean Paris of bed bugs in 100 days. He promised anti-pest brigades, with free of charge interventions for low-income households. This week, the French government launched an emergency hotline to combat the infestation.

American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) entomologist Louis Sorkin feeds bed bugs on his hand in ... [+] New York, April 17, 2014.

Heavily populated urban areas make the transfer from home to home easier especially as bed bugs is a misnomer; they actually love to settle in any kind of soft furnishing or fabric, which means they often move around on suitcases, clothes, etc. rather than people. Often they are associated with poverty because people lack the finances to deal with them but they arent fussy. Their love of warm furnishings means they are as likely to love your Hermes suitcase as your Decathlon rucksack.

The bottom line is that it is easy to carry bedbugs back from holiday, from hotel to home, no matter how clean or swanky. They are commonly found on public transport too, on seats on London Underground for example.

Stuffed, red bed bugs, freebies handed out at the Global Bed Bug Summit in Denver, U.S.

Travelandleisure.com offer two pieces of good advice if you want to check for bed bugs. The first is to check mattresses around the seams and if still unsure, blast the mattress with a hair dryer as the heat should make them come crawling out.

And if you discover the little creatures, its worth noting that there is no evidence to suggest they carry disease. In the end, it might just be better, as stated in The Conversation, to live with the little creatures. As the author points out, the stress of discovering them in your life is probably more harmful than anything they actually do.

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An Explainer On Bed Bugs In Paris. Are They Really A Problem? - Forbes