Shortly after Sheila Goldacker moved into an apartment in Nottingham, she woke up feeling itchy. Her arms, back and stomach were dotted with red spots. Her sheets, she noticed as she leaned in to fix the bed, were speckled.
Goldacker ripped off the sheets and discovered a scene straight from a horror film: her mattress was crawling with tiny brown bugs.
"At that point I freaked out," said the 45-year-old legal secretary. "I get itchy every time I talk about it."
FOR THE RECORD - An article about bedbugs in Friday's Health & Science section incorrectly attributed a quotation to Christine Garcia, manager of residential facilities at the University of Maryland, College Park. The quotation should have been attributed to David Hawley, a manager for Capstone Development Corp., a private contractor that owns and manages dormitories on the College Park campus. The Sun regrets the errors.
Goldacker had bedbugs, a pest once nearly eradicated in the United States. The recent comeback across the country has left exterminators scratching their heads and Americans scratching everything else.
The bloodsucking insects have increasingly set up housekeeping in apartment complexes, private homes, college dorms and hotels, experts said. In Baltimore, for example, exterminators report the number of infestations has increased exponentially in the past five years.
Until lately, most people only spoke about the parasitic pests when wishing children goodnight. "Sleep tight," says the familiar rhyme, "and don't let the bedbugs bite."
A common nuisance through the early part of the last century, bedbugs were nearly eliminated in the United States in the 1950s by strong pesticides such as DDT. But the chemicals that once killed bedbugs have been banned as unsafe. No highly effective treatments have been developed, entomologists and exterminators say.
"Put your money on the bugs," said Jay Nixon, president of American Pest Management in Takoma Park. "I don't think we've hit the peak yet."
So why bedbugs and why now? Blame globalization. In many parts of the world, bedbugs continued their bloodsucking ways as their cousins in the developed world were nearly wiped out. With increased immigration and international travel, bedbugs have latched onto luggage and indulged their wanderlust.
Home Paramount, a pest control company, has been handling about a dozen bedbug cases a month in the area, primarily at hotels, said sales director Brad Chalk.
Jim Webster, a manager with the regional office of Terminix, said that he has noticed a sharp uptick in cases. The exterminator treated nearly 100 bedbug cases in Baltimore this summer, including five in hotels, two of which were high-end, he said.
But there are no guarantees. "They're almost nearly impossible to treat," Webster said. "We can't honestly guarantee that the problem is not going to recur."
