Bed bugs

Handled calmly and factually, because most of what is written about them is neither.

Two things are worth saying before anything else, because they are true and because a great deal of what is written about bed bugs is designed to frighten.

Bed bugs are not known to transmit disease to people. They cause itching, sleep loss, and genuine psychological distress, and rarely allergic reactions. The disease question, which frightens people most, has a reassuring answer.

Bed bugs are not a sanitation failure. A meticulously clean home is exactly as susceptible as any other. Clutter matters only because it creates more places to hide. If you have them, it says nothing about your housekeeping, and believing otherwise mostly delays people from reporting it.

Identifying them

Adults are 4 to 5 mm, roughly the size and shape of an apple seed, flat and oval when unfed, mahogany to reddish-brown, wingless, with visible horizontal ridges across the back. Nymphs are translucent and much harder to see.

The evidence is usually easier to find than the insect: dark ink-like fecal spotting along mattress seams and bed frame joints that bleeds slightly into fabric like a felt-tip mark, and shed skins — pale, empty, smooth adult-shaped husks — in harbourage areas.

The most common false alarm is a carpet beetle larva, which is the same length but carrot-shaped and covered in stiff bristles. It does not bite and does not feed on people. Bed bug identification · Shed skins and casings

Do not try to identify bed bugs from marks on skin. Bites are not reliably identifiable by appearance, and no bite chart can tell you what bit you.

Why a single spray fails

Bed bugs spend most of their time hidden in tight seams and crevices close to where people sleep, and feed at night. That harbourage behaviour is the mechanism: the population is inside mattress seams, bed frame joints, and behind skirting, not on the open surfaces that get treated. They also survive long periods without feeding, so leaving a room empty does not clear it.

The two DIY practices that have killed people

This needs stating plainly rather than softening.

Rubbing alcohol and other flammable liquids applied as a treatment have caused fatal fires. This is a recurring event, not a theoretical hazard.

Improvised heating of a room or its contents has caused structure fires. Professional heat treatment uses controlled equipment and monitoring. There is no safe small-scale version to improvise.

Do neither.

What genuinely helps, and that you can do

• Encase the mattress and box spring in a purpose-made bed bug encasement and leave it on. This traps anything inside and removes the most difficult harbourage from the problem entirely.
• Launder and heat-dry bedding and clothing on the hottest setting the fabric tolerates. The dryer, not the wash, is what does the work. Move items in sealed bags.
• Reduce clutter around the bed and pull the bed away from walls where practical.
• Use interceptors under bed legs to monitor, which tells you whether what you are doing is working.
• Inspect luggage and second-hand furniture, and keep luggage off beds and floors when travelling.

If you rent

This is where the real information gap is. In most states an established bed bug infestation is a habitability matter, and in a multi-unit building a treatment confined to one unit will very often fail because the population moves through shared walls and plumbing runs.

Report it in writing, keep a copy, and ask for the building to be assessed rather than just your unit — with the reason. Who is responsible for pest control in a rental.

Do not throw out furniture at the first sign. It is expensive, frequently unnecessary, and moving infested items through a building spreads the problem to your neighbours.