Bedbugs and Other Social Stigmas

December 8, 2008 – 4:21 pm

Bedbugs

One of my students was covered with bedbug bites from staying overnight in a youth hostel. Even five-star hotels have bedbugs these days. Bedbugs do not eat your food or make holes in your clothes. They hide during the day and come out at night to bite you when you’re asleep. They prefer to live close to the warmth of sleeping human bodies, so they can usually be found and caught under mattresses or around beds.

There is a worldwide epidemic of bedbugs. Bedbugs do not carry diseases, but they are a significant cause of mental distress. Many people fear them even after they’re gone. This is because you can never know when they’re really gone. A bedbug can live in a dormant state for perhaps a year without feeding.

Are you in bed with a bedbug? When they bite and you move in your sleep, they tend to leave three small bites in a row, which is the telltale sign of a bedbug.

If this ever happens to you, go online immediately to review all the remedies. You want to take action before these insects grow in numbers and get into your books, papers, cabinetry, walls, and floors. Mostly, they like to live in mattresses, however, close to the warmth of the human body.

A social stigma makes this subject unmentionable. But if you find out that you have bedbugs, the first thing you should do is complain about it and tell the people in charge. It might be difficult to get rid of them on your own.

If you have bedbugs at home, here are some effective ways to catch and eliminate them: (1) use double-stick carpet tape to catch them at doorways or before they enter your home; (2) use of special insect powder around baseboards and beds; and (3) use of sprays. If you see the bugs and want to kill them on the spot, people say that almost any spray will do, from hairspray and underarm deodorant to oven cleaner, because spraying these bugs causes them to stop breathing.

Another good way to eliminate bedbugs is: (4) use heat. It only takes 113 degrees F to kill them. Clothing and bedding can be debugged in an ordinary clothes dryer. Entire rooms can also be treated by raising the temperature. Researchers successfully debugged furniture by building a box around the item and putting a heater inside so that the temperature inside the box was raised to 140 degrees F. (Med Vet Entomol 09;23:418-425)

Talking about bedbugs is making me itchy!

Questions for Discussion

Have you ever encountered bedbugs? If so, please relate your experience with these pesky insects.

When I first arrived in New York City, people never talked about how much money they made at their jobs or what rent they paid for their apartments. Those subjects were unmentionable. Now people talk about these subjects all the time. Can you think of other examples of formerly unmentionable topics that became mentionable later?

There are so many stigmas. Whenever people feel ashamed or disgraced, you can bet there is another stigma operating. Can you make a list of social stigmas?

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