The EPA goes to the mattresses

The enemy is stealthy and bloodthirsty. It attacks innocent victims without warning, while they sleep.

Fortunately, the federal government is on the case. The Environmental Protection Agency convened the first National Bed Bug Summit -- a veritable Yalta conference for the species Cimex lectularius -- in an Arlington hotel ballroom last week.

With help from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and even the Pentagon, the EPA assembled scientists, state and local officials, and a colony of exterminators to buzz about such topics as “Bed Bug Perspectives,” “Bed Bug Basics” and “Government Responses to Bed Bugs.”

“These insects can have a life-altering impact,” warned panelist Richard Cooper of Cooper Pest Solutions.

“They are showing up in some of the finest hotels,” said Saul Hernandez, an aide to the congressman who introduced H.R. 6068, “The Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2008.”

All this for an insect the size of an apple seed that has a painless bite and is not known to spread disease?

University of Kentucky entomologist Mike Potter called the bed bug nothing less than “the most difficult, challenging pest problem of our generation.” Tossing out phrases such as “doomsday scenario” and “perfect storm,” he ventured: “In my opinion, we are not going to get out of this thing” -- the bed bug thing -- until we “allow the pest control industry to go to war.”

The layman might think that in an age of Osama bin Laden, not to mention pandemic flu and poisonous peanut butter, the threat posed by the tiny insect might be rather manageable. But that was not the prevailing view at the National Bed Bug Summit.

“A year ago I thought bed bugs were a thing from a couple of centuries ago and maybe in a children’s bedtime rhyme,” said Joan Quigley, a New Jersey state representative. “I had no idea they were a modern scourge.” But when she scratched the surface, she found the bed bug matter to be “a can of worms,” so to speak. “I had no idea how many stakeholders there were in the bed bug issue.”

An official from the New Jersey Apartment Assn. (Jersey is a hotbed of bed bug activity) agreed. “I hesitate to use the words, ‘It became a sexy issue,’ but it became a cause celebre,” said the official, Conor Fennessy. “It kind of got legs for a while.”

Actually, six legs and two antennae, according to the 8-inch drawing of a bed bug on the sign outside the Sheraton ballroom announcing “National Bed Bug Summit -- Please Sign In.” The sign-in area was well stocked with coffee (sleep disruption is common in bed bug circles). Inside the ballroom, 200 people, some in military uniform, others in Orkin Man-style uniform, listened as Lois Rossi, from the EPA’s pesticide division, spoke of “the size of the problem we have with bed bug infestations.”

Bed bugs had been all but eradicated decades ago, panelist Potter said, but thanks to increased travel, pesticide bans and resistance, we’ve “let bed bugs get back in the game.”

Now, said Hernandez, the congressional staffer, “bed bugs invade luggage, burrowing deep into clothes, and are transported back home, where they infest their victims’ homes . . . and the affected people have no choice but to trash their furniture, clothes and linen.”

Audience members were squirming and scratching by the time Cooper told them of where he’s found bed bug infestations: “behind picture frames or other wall hangings, or inside the bindings of books or on stuffed animals. Or how about an entire reproducing population with over 30 eggs inside the head of an adjustable wrench?” On the projection screen, the bugs in his presentation looked about 3 feet long.

After a representative of the National Pest Management Assn. divulged the “startling” fact that, in the pest control business, the bed bug had surpassed the fire ant and was closing in on the flea, Harold Harlan, from the Armed Forces Pest Management Board, described the savage beast’s method of attack.

“They have piercing, sucking mouth parts -- that’s important,” said Harlan. “They feed only on blood” -- known as a “blood meal” in the bed bug community.

Dini Miller of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute reported her findings that a particularly nasty strain of insecticide-resistant super bed bug had taken up residence in Arlington. “It’s pretty amazing how tough these bugs are,” she said, showing a spray can of “Bedlam” aerosol. “Very determined, these bed bugs.”

But what about that recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. finding “little evidence” that the bugs transmit disease?

Well, consider the “mental health aspects” of the bed bug. “When you’ve got bed bugs, your bed is not your comfort,” said Tom Neltner of the National Center for Healthy Housing. “It can have a tremendous impact on the mental health of people.”

Potter, who said he had spent “the last three years of my life digging deep into the history of bed bug management,” offered a challenge: “I’d like to take anybody who thinks bed bugs is not a big deal, and we’ll sprinkle a few in their house and see what they think.”