Ohio residents will likely continue to battle bed bugs through the winter, experts say, when most other insects are halted by the cold.
“I don’t think (the weather) will have any impact at all. They’re domesticated,” said David Denlinger, a professor of evolution, ecology and organizational biology at OSU. “They don’t have to survive outside.”
Although both extreme heat and cold can be used to rid homes of bedbugs, Denlinger said heated homes will offer plenty of shelter to bedbugs as the seasons shift.
A nationwide surge in bed bug population has left Ohio officials scrambling to mount a defense against the bloodsuckers in what is now the most bed bug-infested state.
In 2009, Columbus suffered from 4,400 building infestations of bed bugs, a number Paul Wenning, special projects coordinator of the Franklin County Board of Health, said has tripled since health department officials began tracking bed bugs in 2007.
The increase in bed bug population is thought to be a result of several factors, including increased international travel and limits placed on pesticides effective against bed bugs.
The Ohio Department of Agriculture requested that the United States Environmental Protection Agency exempt Ohio from the ban on in-home use of Propoxur, an effective pesticide against bed bugs. But the EPA denied the petition in June based on the hazardous effects on children, opting instead to meet with state officials and create an alternative strategy.
In response to the pest invasion, the Ohio Department of Health and Franklin County Board of Health, along with several school districts and pest control companies, formed the Central Ohio Bed Bug Task Force to inform citizens of central Ohio about ways to identify and treat infestation.
According to a fact sheet by Susan Jones, an associate professor of entomology at OSU, bed bugs are flat, brownish-red insects about half-an-inch long. Indicators of a bed bug infestation include “blood stains from crushed bugs and rusty (sometimes dark) spots of excrement on sheets and mattresses, bed, clothes and walls.”
Bed bugs feed at night and their bites are painless for one in three adults, according to the fact sheet. Bed bug bites look like mosquito bites, and the two are often confused.
Despite the growing problem in Columbus, the OSU campus has been largely unaffected by the pests, officials said. There was one confirmed case of bed bugs on campus in 2009, in Drackett Tower.
But university officials aren’t taking chances. Between July 1, 2009, and June 30, 2010, the Office of Student Life spent $41,912 on pest control for the Columbus campus, including monthly inspections and preventative treatments.
Still, experts warn that an increasing number of complaints about bed bugs in Ohio might not be indicative of an explosion in the bed bug population.
“There are not necessarily more bed bugs than before,” said Chad Gilbert, a spokesman for Terminix, a Memphis, Tenn.-based pest control company.
Students living in the dorms are asked to call 2-HELP if they see signs of a bed bug infestation.
