Science & Technology - Posted by Tracey Regan-Rutgers on Thursday, November 5, 2009 16:20 - 7 Comments 
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Don’t let the (rebounding) bedbugs bite
Researcher Changlu Wang, left, hopes to eradicate the bedbug, one of the world’s most vexing creatures. Second-year student Vincenzo Averello assists in Wang’s entomology lab. The two are part of a team working to develop environmentally safe methods to capture and exterminate bed bugs.(Credit: Nick Romanenko)
RUTGERS (US)—Changlu Wang and his team are studying the habits of blood-sucking bedbugs in an effort to identify novel ways to capture and kill them. Ignored by researchers for decades, bedbugs are proliferating in the wake of a ban on the pesticide DDT.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
Enormously adaptable, bedbugs are resistant to most commercially available pesticides.
“I predict they will stay a long, long time. No other pesticide does the job that DDT does,” says Wang, an assistant extension specialist at Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. He recalls the time he found 1,300 bugs in a single trap he had set overnight in an apartment in Bayonne, N.J.
He is working with researchers at Rutgers and other universities to develop integrated methods to capture and exterminate them that won’t wreak widespread environmental damage. These include encasing mattresses, applying hot steam, placing interceptors under the legs of furniture so they can’t reach their hosts, and devising traps that will lure and kill them.
The bed bug, nearly eradicated, is staging a comeback. (Credit: Creative Commons)
In the absence of effective controls and decontamination methods, “the typical practice is to spray chemicals or throw away expensive clothes, electronics, and books,” Wang says.
“What’s interesting to me is how the population came back. They had been taken care of, and now we have to figure out how to deal with them again,” says undergraduate researcher Vincenzo Averello.
“The other thing that fascinates me is how resilient they are. They can survive for so long and on so little,” Averello adds.
In the current round of experiments, his first task is to grow thriving populations of bedbugs in small, mesh-covered jars. So they will increase quickly, he is treating them to weekly half-hour feedings on lab guinea pigs, which they reach through the mesh covering their jar top but can’t escape through. The guinea pigs are unharmed.
Bedbugs locate their hosts by sensing their most fundamental emanations. Wang and his research colleagues are exploiting this behavior to catch them.
“They are attracted by heat and carbon dioxide. They are attracted to your breath,” says Wang, who has created an inexpensive trap based on a modified double-bowl cat feeder. The trap contains dry ice, which emits carbon dioxide to attract the bugs, which then fall into the feeder and can’t escape. Wang will be experimenting to see whether the addition of heat increases the trap’s allure. He has also filed a patent for an intercepting device that is placed under furniture.
The compound that attracts bedbugs also kills them at high doses. Wang and Averello will test the lethality of various carbon dioxide concentrations and exposure times.
As entomologists play catch-up with the bedbug, which evolved from cave-dwelling bat bugs, they are still grappling with several unknowns.
“One of the things we still don’t know about bedbugs is why and when they disperse, or how far they travel,” Wang explains. He and collaborators from Purdue University have applied for a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to monitor them and test control measures in a high-rise building in Indianapolis.
But Wang doesn’t find them very interesting.
“Cockroaches and bedbugs are of no use. They are pests completely. They congregate, because it’s easier to find mates that way, but unlike the ant, they have no interesting social behaviors,” he adds.
Rutgers news: www.rutgers.edu/news-center/rutgers-today
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7 Comments
Hmmmm. Some bedbugs were immune to DDT in the late 1940s, and by 1960 DDT was known not to be effective against them at all — so exterminators switched.
DDT wasn’t banned until 12 years later.
37 years after the ban on spraying DDT on cotton in Texas, bedbugs proliferate. That’s a helluva lag time, either for the cessation of use of DDT against bedbugs in 1960, or from the EPA’s change in registration for the stuff in 1972.
And, since bedbugs were already immune to DDT, why do you blame the ban on DDT for their resurgence? Shouldn’t it be blamed on the overuse of DDT?
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[...] With bed bugs making a comeback, researcher Changlu Wang is working on new, environmentally-friendly ways to get them back under control. [...]
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I agree with Ed; every other source I’ve read attributes their comeback to the over-prevalence of DDT, causing them to become immune. Anything to help get rid of these things is much needed – shelling out hundreds of dollars to exterminators was the last option I, and many other poor college students that I know, had. Also, I believe these things are spreading all over the country. I’m in Orlando, and they’re becoming quite common here. Two of my TV shows (30 Rock and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) have made bedbugs a main point of their episodes in the past couple of weeks. That has to say something.
UofRgrad
I was in an expensive hotel in Boston on a business trip. It was in the fall and no rooms were available anywhere because so many people were there for the fall colors. I looked as far out as Worcester and south all the way to RI. The one room that was available for $600 a night in 1999 was available for one reason only. I didn’t figure it out until years later. I kept waking up to this pinching feeling on my legs. In the morning I saw what looked like tiny streaks of blood on the sheets. I couldn’t see any marks on my skin to speak of. It seemed like it must have been a bad dream except for the marks on the sheets. Years later I read about the resurgence of bed bugs and linked the two. I consider myself very lucky that I didn’t take them home with me.
As for the resurgence taking so long – I believe the problem started to fester as more people from countries where bedbugs are endemic started to travel to the US. It takes awhile for the numbers to get big enough to be noticeable, but by the time they are noticed there are so many that the increase becomes dramatic.
I got bed bug 1 year ago and moved 4 times!
Finally got rid of those bed bugs. I go crazy about bed bugs.
Got sleepless night from these bed bugs. ohh..I hate them!
This is what I’ve learned:
1. Wash all your cloth in HOT water ( above 68 Celsius)
2. After washing, put your cloth in the dryer for at least 20 min (HOT)
3. Put all your cloth in a plastic back with zipper (no air can go inside)
4. Vacuum your mattress and bed frame
5. Steam vacuum your mattress is better
6. Spray your mattress 12 hours before your sleep with beg bug spray
7. Put double tape around those four legs of your bed
8. Move your bed away from the wall (so bed bug can not reach your bed through the wall)
- Do this at least for 1 week until your mattress is free of bed bugs
Your mattress is maybe free of bed bug, but you are not finished yet. Bed bugs are still hiding in the tiny holes or carpet. Especially those tiny eggs. They are almost invisible.
9. Vacuum your house
10 Vacuum your house
11. Seal the vacuum bag and throw it away immediately
12. Put a lot of double tape around your house
13. Organize your furniture
14 Put all furniture outside under the sun (must be hot temperature)
15. If you are in the summer, then spray bed
There are more steps, but I can write anymore here…
Interesting article, good to see active research and experiments are being done in efforts to eradicate these pests once and for all.
I had bed bugs in mu room for a period, and it was probably one of the most terrifying experiences in my life. Waking up with ten of those bastards dug deep into my chest is something I will never forget!
An efficient way of getting rid of them would be much appreciated :)