You cannot say with any certainty where bed bugs are living; you cannot even guess, just by looking around you.
You could be sitting in a chair in a posh hotel waiting for someone to come down or you could be having tea at a friend's house and you are equally as likely to pick up a bed bug.
The developed Western world has not been through this kind of situation for about sixty years.
However, since 1995, bed bugs have been increasing almost uninhibited and we are approaching the conditions people were living in before the Second World War.
That is a very sad state of affairs indeed.
Especially when you appreciate that before the war, you could put a little poison down and kill them.
Nowadays, you cannot, because some bedbugs have become immune to a lot of the insecticides normally available to family households.
So, in a way we are worse off than we were 60 years ago and unless something comes to our rescue, it can only get worse.
Although bedbugs wreak most mayhem in a bed, that is not usually where people get them from.
They also reside in the creases of material in the seats of buses, trains, taxis, hotel rooms, restaurants and even airplanes.
However, bedbugs are not taken home attached to your skin like a flea or a tick.
Rather they will crawl into a hem or a pocket or under a collar, attracted by your body heat or breath and either go to sleep or lay eggs.
A female can lay 300 eggs in a single day - not a lot in insect terms, but do you want 301 bedbugs in your bedroom closet by the end of next week? I am certain that you have become aware how hard it is to totally avoid the risks of picking up bed bugs and carrying them home.
Bed bugs have natural enemies, but it is arguable that you would rather have bed bugs than the insects that prey on them - cockroaches, ants, spiders and centipedes - and pesticides are not always effective.
The one thing that certainly kills them, besides being trodden on by a size ten army boot, is heat.
No stages of the bedbug's life can withstand temperatures above 45c.
This may be noteworthy, because modern washing powders are intended to get clothes clean at 30c, thereby saving electricity, but they also unintentionally save the lives of the bedbugs on your clothes as well.
You can make certain that your clothes are bedbug-free by washing them at 46-50c and you can kill existing bedbugs in your house by steam cleaning it, which is the professional approach to getting rid of an infestation of bedbugs.
It is time for people to be aware of this fairly new threat to their well-being.
The key things you can do are: accustom yourself with what a bedbug looks like and have your clothes laundered at temperatures above 46c if you suspect that you may have been exposed to an infestation of bed bugs.
You could be sitting in a chair in a posh hotel waiting for someone to come down or you could be having tea at a friend's house and you are equally as likely to pick up a bed bug.
The developed Western world has not been through this kind of situation for about sixty years.
However, since 1995, bed bugs have been increasing almost uninhibited and we are approaching the conditions people were living in before the Second World War.
That is a very sad state of affairs indeed.
Especially when you appreciate that before the war, you could put a little poison down and kill them.
Nowadays, you cannot, because some bedbugs have become immune to a lot of the insecticides normally available to family households.
So, in a way we are worse off than we were 60 years ago and unless something comes to our rescue, it can only get worse.
Although bedbugs wreak most mayhem in a bed, that is not usually where people get them from.
They also reside in the creases of material in the seats of buses, trains, taxis, hotel rooms, restaurants and even airplanes.
However, bedbugs are not taken home attached to your skin like a flea or a tick.
Rather they will crawl into a hem or a pocket or under a collar, attracted by your body heat or breath and either go to sleep or lay eggs.
A female can lay 300 eggs in a single day - not a lot in insect terms, but do you want 301 bedbugs in your bedroom closet by the end of next week? I am certain that you have become aware how hard it is to totally avoid the risks of picking up bed bugs and carrying them home.
Bed bugs have natural enemies, but it is arguable that you would rather have bed bugs than the insects that prey on them - cockroaches, ants, spiders and centipedes - and pesticides are not always effective.
The one thing that certainly kills them, besides being trodden on by a size ten army boot, is heat.
No stages of the bedbug's life can withstand temperatures above 45c.
This may be noteworthy, because modern washing powders are intended to get clothes clean at 30c, thereby saving electricity, but they also unintentionally save the lives of the bedbugs on your clothes as well.
You can make certain that your clothes are bedbug-free by washing them at 46-50c and you can kill existing bedbugs in your house by steam cleaning it, which is the professional approach to getting rid of an infestation of bedbugs.
It is time for people to be aware of this fairly new threat to their well-being.
The key things you can do are: accustom yourself with what a bedbug looks like and have your clothes laundered at temperatures above 46c if you suspect that you may have been exposed to an infestation of bed bugs.