New York City is waging a giant war against a microscopic foe: the bedbug. The pesky nocturnal pests have become such a problem in the city.
Officials concerned by recent outbreaks at fancy hotels and apartment buildings
NEW YORK: New York City is waging a giant war against a microscopic foe: the bedbug. The pesky nocturnal pests have become such a problem in the city, officials announced they’ve created a task force to help educate the public on how to avoid and get rid of them.
Hotel guests have filed several lawsuits recently claiming they were bitten by bedbugs, and the city now fears the bugs have spread into residential neighbourhoods in all five boroughs.
According to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, there have been recent outbreaks at places like posh hotels and fancy Upper East Side apartment buildings.
The department says that in 2004, the city received 1,800 complaints about bedbugs. Last year, they counted more than 7000 complaints of the parasites.
The city announced three bedbug seminars in the coming months to educate people. Experts say there are many misconceptions about bedbugs. “People don’t like to report they have bedbugs because they think it’s from an unclean habitat, or they try to take care of bedbug infestations themselves. Or some people think that bed bugs are in beds only,” says Louis Sorkin, an entomologist at the Museum of Natural History.
And that’s what could be most surprising — that bedbugs can be found in far more places than just your bed.
“They can live inside your cell phones, inside your TV, in dressers, on the seams of curtains, inside of your clothes,” says Henny Calle of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
Sorkin says it’s important to look in light switches, electrical outlets, even wiring around the house. “Bedbugs will use these as highways and get on the wiring and go from one room to another or one apartment to another,” he says.
He adds while many people look for brown bedbugs, most of them are babies that are clear and hard to see. They’re also extremely thin, about as wide as a piece of paper.
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