The first step in fighting bed bugs is to find reliable sources of information to educate people about what the bed bugs look like, including all types of life stages, and how they spread from one area to another. Seeking the EPA to grant the use of Propoxur pesticide to treat bed bugs is not a proper solution. Because bed bugs can develop resistance to any pesticides, including Propoxur if it is used extensively over a long period in and around structures, especially without a practical rotation of other bed bug approved pesticides that have various active ingredients and mode of actions. As you may know, the first reports of bed bug resistance to DDT were made by 1948, especially when DDT had failed to control bed bugs in military barracks in Hawaii. By 1956, NPCA (currently known as NPMA) began to recommend Malathion rather than DDT. Recently, ROMERO ET AL (2007) have indicated in their research that resistance to pyrethroid insecticides (a group of pesticides commonly used in the structural pest control industry) is already widespread in the US.
It seems to me that many people tend to ignore or maybe fail to know why we have a huge resurgence of bed bugs. So far, what we know about the origin of bed bug outbreak is based only on guessing and not on actual reasons and facts. The Internet is packed with wrong information, which leads people off target. Anyhow, let’s find out why and how the bed bugs have made the huge comeback, so we can be better prepared.
Additionally, people should know that foggers or insecticide bombs don’t work on bed bugs. They have been shown to be fire hazards, as well as they can accidentally set off fire sprinklers. Bed bugs are resilient pests, for this reason, their management should require the employment of both chemical and non-chemical (i.e., heat treatment) pest management tactics, especially if all non-chemical methods prove insufficient to solve a bed bug problem
To conclude, battling bed bugs should be a collaborative task force between government, public and stockholders. The application of pesticides alone is not the ultimate solution to bed bug problem; instead, the integrated pest management (IPM) tactics should be carefully discussed and implemented.
