Bed Bugs are Biting Back

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(WSB Radio) -- Bed bugs are making a comeback. After a fifty year hiatus bed bugs are showing up on mattresses all across the country.
Daniel Suiter, an entomologist at the University of Georgia says over the past several years they've seen an increase in the number of reported bed bugs.
New research in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds bed bugs are back with a vengeance but they do not appear to transmit and disease.
However, bed bugs do bite! Many people do not notice the bites and do not develop any type of skin reaction. But some people will develop itchy bumps or ugly blisters, and a rare few have allergic reactions like asthma attacks.
Before their reemergence in the past decade, bed bugs had largely disappeared from developed countries for 50 years, coinciding with wide use of the pesticide DDT.
Getting rid of the bugs is not easy, according to Lee Ann Riggs with Allgood Pest Solutions. She says the best thing to do it get rid of the bedding and use chemicals to get rid of them.
Bed bugs favor seams in mattresses, crevices in box springs, the backs of headboards, spaces in baseboards, and behind loose wallpaper.