Pesticides make for resilient pests.

Pesticides make for resilient pests

For anyone hoping there's a quick, easy treatment for bedbugs in the near future, take note of the hesitation in Coby Schal's response.

Schal is a North Carolina State University urban entomologist — the academic title for a guy who studies cockroaches and, of late, bedbugs — and he gets asked all the time whether a miracle might soon hit the market to stem growing infestations of the blood-sucking pests.

"I wish I had a short-term answer to that," he says. Another pause. "But I don't."

And the pessimism among leading bug scientists is nothing compared to the downer from exterminators, who now rank bedbugs among their worst and most prevalent problems.

Donnie Shelton, owner of Triangle Pest Control in Raleigh, said his bedbug business has increased 400-fold — just this year.

He bought a dog, named Scout, who is specially trained to sniff out bedbug infestations. Next month Shelton will offer a heat-based eradication system, which uses industrial heaters to roast the bugs dead in their tracks.

Pesticides, he says, are increasingly ineffective.

"They become more resistant every single day," Shelton says. "They're insane. You can't do anything with them. Everything in the arsenal isn't working."

Overuse of pesticides has likely contributed to the bedbugs' resurgence, and that exact process is one of the mysteries Schal's team at NCSU is trying to figure out.

Until only recently, bedbugs seemed to be a scourge of the past, but their comeback has been a triumph of selective resilience that would be a marvel if it wasn't so creepy.

"Bedbugs just drive people mad," Shelton says. "The thought of an insect coming out and biting you when you're sleeping — it makes people crazy."

Schal suspects the bugs that are now infesting the United States hitchhiked here from Africa or South America, where pyrethroid-based insecticides have been sprayed liberally to eradicate mosquitoes that carry malaria and so-called kissing bugs that transmit Chagas disease.

When poisons are used over and over again, the vulnerable bugs die, while the hardy ones live and breed, creating a master race that is impervious to the toxins.

Mike Waldvogel, another NCSU entomologist, says there are steps people can take to prevent infestations in the first place. People who travel should unpack in the bathtub, where they're more likely to see a hitchhiking bug, and immediately wash and dry all their clothes. He also recommends sequestering the suitcase outside or in the garage.

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20101114/GPG04/11140582/Pesticides-make-for-resilient-pests