They’re back and just laying in wait to feast upon your blood! The resurgence of the bedbug has brought new infestations across the world and the number of cases having been steadily increasing since the mid-1990s. Prior to this time, it was believed that bedbugs had been completely eradicated in the United States by the widespread use of a synthetic pesticide known as DDT.

Bedbugs attack in the pre-dawn hours with the peak of their feeding frenzy occurring just an hour before sunrise. The blood-sucking vermin pierce the skin with two hollow tubes. With one tube they inject saliva that contains anticoagulants to prevent your blood from clotting as well as anesthetics to mask any pain, while with the other tube they extract your blood while you sleep unaware. After gorging for about five minutes, the bugs return to their hideouts among the crevices and folds of mattresses, sofas, and sheets to gloat and await their next indulgence.

The bug bites usually can’t be felt until minutes or even hours later, when they begin to cause intense itching, and may sometimes take as long as nine days to be visibly manifested as raised red bumps or flat welts. The manifestations are the result of the skin’s allergic reaction to the bug-injected anesthetics. In some rare cases, allergic reactions to bites may cause nausea and illness, but in an estimated 50 percent of cases no visible sign of bites occurs at all, making it difficult to identify and eliminate infestations. The only good news is that bedbugs are not known to transmit any diseases.

The largest bedbug outbreak since World War II began in the spring of 2009, with the vermin taking up occupancy in hotels, hospitals, college dorms, and homeless shelters alike. Worst of all, because the U.S. government has banned DDT as well as other highly effective pesticides, it is facing tremendous difficulties in forming a new strategy for successful attack against the nasty critters.

According to researchers and the pest control industry, there are currently few chemicals available that are approved for use on mattresses and other household items that can effectively eliminate bedbug infestations and because bedbugs are blood feeders they cannot be lured by bait. Another problem that must be addressed is that pesticides are not effective in eliminating the bugs from every crack and crevice in which they hide.

Due to effects on public health and the environment, the EPA chose to ban DDT and other chemicals that were effective in bedbug eradication. Worse yet, the continued use of these chemicals in other countries has led to the beginning of the bedbug’s development of a chemical resistance to them. With the growth of international travel, the chemically resistant bedbug has been given access back into the U.S.