You can get bed bugs by bringing infested items into your home or business. This includes luggage, used furniture, backpacks and purses. Bed bugs are very good hitchhikers. You can pick up bed bugs while traveling, on public transit, in stores, movie theaters and hotels, at work, at the homes of friends and family and when friends and family visit you. Employees also bring them into their workplaces.
If you live in an apartment or condominium building, you can get bed bugs from a neighbouring unit that has a severe infestation. Bed bugs can crawl under and through shared walls from a unit adjacent to, above or below your unit. Bed bugs will travel in walls along electrical wires and pipes and under baseboards.
Steps for prevention:
- Clean up all clutter
- Vacuum often
- Ensure that you wash bedding weekly using hot water
- Take steps to protect your mattress by using a mattress encasement
- Be mindful when travelling, bed bugs travel too!
- Be careful about buying second hand goods such a furniture, clothing, bedding and other linens
- Make hiding places impossible by using caulk to seal cracks and crevices
- Inspect regularly - this is helpful for keeping out any pest!
Having bed bugs has long carried a social stigma of living in a dirty home, of engaging in risky behaviour or of having low income. None of these are true. Bed bugs cause problems for all people regardless of their socio-economic standing.
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