Don’t let the bedbugs bite: Infestation comes with stigma and shame
By Glen Schaefer, The Province
No one wants to talk about them, but they’re everywhere.
Bedbugs are in apartments and homes from the Downtown Eastside to trendy Kitsilano, as well as in bars, restaurants, libraries, theatres and hotels. They ride transit and hide in laptop computers.
The blood-sucking parasites can lay dormant for six months after a good feeding, waiting for the next meal to come along.
And that meal could be you.
But help is on the way. Eight years of work by a team of Simon Fraser University researchers has led to a cheap and fast way of spotting the bugs through a pheromone-based lure that’s heading to stores later this year.
Biologist Gerhard Gries said the new lure is a practical offshoot of decades of research.
“My laboratory is interested in studying and examining communications systems, primarily in insects,” Gries said, adding that the misery caused by bedbugs prompted him and his colleagues to focus on the blood suckers.
“The bedbug causes so many concerns, it was a natural conclusion that sooner or later we needed to start working on this insect.” For the full story click here