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In mid-March, she was bitten by a Mohave rattlesnake just feet from her apartment while trying to save her cat. "You can feel it grip on. It's like cutting through butter. It grabbed my thumb and went down through the tendon. When it turned around it nicked me on the other side," said Wallace. The Mohave's venom put Wallace in a coma. She spent a total of nine days in the ICU and had to be readmitted to the hospital three more times. Wallace was left with no feeling in much of her hand. A few months prior Wallace told...

Why more patients share rooms with the blood-sucking pests. As if adapting to health-care reform and curbing the “nightmare bacteria” weren’t challenge enough, hospitals are increasingly plagued by another problem: Bedbugs. More than a third of pest management companies treated bedbug infestations in hospitals in 2012, 6% more than the year before and more than twice as many as in 2010, according to a survey released today by the National Pest Management Association. The percentage of exterminators dealing with bedbugs in nursing homes has also almost doubled since 2010, to 46%. Bedbug experts also report seeing them in ambulances. Hospitals...

Bedbugs are on the rise again in the U.S., which means business is booming for pest control companies like Orkin. With increased travel, both internationally and domestically, and higher bedbug resistance to existing pesticides, Orkin has seen an almost 33 percent boost in bedbug business compared to 2011. The company has just released its rankings of U.S. cities in order of the number of bedbug treatments from January to December 2012. The “Windy City” of Chicago tops the list, followed by Detroit, Los Angeles, Denver and Cincinnati.

Chicago has moved to the top spot of a list no city wants to be a part of: the most treatments for bed bug infestations. Pest control company Orkin said Tuesday it did more business in Chicago than any other city last year. Chicago had been second on the list in 2011 behind Cincinnati. ... Chicago in 2012 was ranked just ahead of Detroit, Los Angeles and Denver

A bedbug infestation at a Northwest Washington fire station left firefighters sleeping in their personal vehicles or in the firetrucks to avoid being bitten by the bugs in their bunkrooms, a report on the conditions at D.C. firehouses found. The 180-page report by the Office of the Inspector General details a wide swath of problematic conditions at D.C. fire stations across the city, including a lack of working smoke detectors, leaking roofs, flooded basements, rodent infestations and inoperable heating or cooling systems. Among the findings, 19 stations had significant rodent problems with one reporting that dead mice had been found...

One bed bug found crawling across a book has led to officials confirming the presence of the bloodthirsty, resilient creatures at the L.A. Central Library. There have been at least two separate sightings of lone bed bugs at the library

.........Hotels contacted by The Washington Times about bedbug reports either referred calls to their corporate headquarters or didn’t return messages. Charlotte has a long way to go before its bedbug levels approach cities such as New York, Cincinnati and Washington, D.C., where recent infestations have made national news, but a study this year by pest control company Orkin shows activity there has been on the rise. The survey, released in March, rated Charlotte as having the 33rd-most bedbug reports of any city in 2011. The list was topped by Cincinnati, Chicago and Detroit. By contrast, the GOP’s choice for its...

With spring break coming up, travelers may want to make sure they don't pick up the souvenir no one plans to take home - bedbugs. Bedbug cases have been increasing dramatically over the past three or four years, said Dawn Gouge, entomologist and associate professor at the University of Arizona. "Pretty much everywhere where anyone goes on vacation is where you'll find bedbugs," said Gouge, noting that even travelers who stay at high-end resorts can be exposed to the parasites.

Exterminators were back in the Longmont Public Library on Monday morning after a weekend visit by a “bedbug dog” found nine infested chairs, including two that were treated last week. ... The pests were initially spotted Aug. 18. An exterminator on Aug. 19 found five chairs had been infested and used carbon dioxide to freeze the insects. On Sunday, two of the treated chairs caught the attention of Macaroni, a beagle-mix trained to sniff out living bedbugs, indicating that the insects had either survived or been brought back into the library. The library has not closed and the treated chairs...

Just as students head back to college and families finish summer vacations comes the latest bad news from pest control companies: Bedbug infestations are getting worse and becoming more common in some places, including dorms, hotels, nursing homes, hospitals, office buildings, and schools and day-care centers. According to a survey released Wednesday by the National Pest Management Association and the University of Kentucky, pest control companies say there has been double-digit growth in infestations in the past year. About 54 percent of pest companies reported treating bedbugs in college dorms, compared with 35 percent in 2010; 80 percent reported treating...

Albuquerque police responded to a report of dead body in apartment and found the man’s body surrounded by bedbugs. The insect infestation was just the beginning of the problems for the apartment complex. The city warns potential renters to look closely before leasing an apartment at Uptown Park. “We would not recommend living in any of those three units,” city spokesman Chris Ramirez said... “When they got there, they realized once they went into the apartment, that the apartment was completely infested with bedbugs,” ... Neighbors were itching to find out what happened.

An Aurora woman said she was turned away by a doctor for a pain injection because her home is infested with bed bugs. Christine Lewis was set for a spinal injection at the Medical Center of Aurora South. She said everything was going fine until a nurse asked her about the bug bites that covered her arms. Lewis said she was denied the injection and treatment. She said her doctor showed her the door. “He made the comment, he's like, it could be in your hair, it could be in your clothes and we can't have you bring that into...

As part of the Federal Bed Bug Workgroup, EPA helped develop a national Bed Bug Summit in early February. The agency has worked with various federal agencies to explore and develop techniques for combating the influx of bed bugs… Rutgers University will implement a statewide bed bug educational outreach program…

Here's some news to make your skin crawl: Bedbug infestations will explode this year, particularly in the summer, experts say. Once you've got bedbugs, it can cost $1,200 to get rid of them professionally, White said. "The big problem is not getting bit, it's bringing them home," .

British Airways grounded two jumbo jets after a passenger complained of being badly bitten by bed bugs during two separate long-haul flights. The airline fumigated one of the planes on which it confirmed there had been an infestation and apologised to the woman for her ordeal. Businesswoman Zane Selkirk revealed her body was ‘crawling’ with bugs and ‘covered with bites’ during a ten-hour transatlantic flight from Los Angeles to London Heathrow in January. The 28-year-old believes she was also bitten on a second flight in February during a business trip from Bangalore in India to Heathrow. The revelations will certainly...

ROSEMONT, Ill.- The first-ever North American Bed Bug Summit, which opened Tuesday near Chicago, attracted a sellout crowd to hear experts on the tiny biters, organizers said. That appears to be one more sign that bed bugs, once almost routed in the United States by pesticides, are back in a big way, the Arlington Heights (Ill.) Daily Herald reported. "Ten years ago we got about one call about bed bugs a year, and now we get at least one call a day," Melaney Arnold, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health, told the newspaper. Organizers of the two-day...

Nike’s tourist-friendly flagship store here is closed down because of bedbugs... Nike is the latest big retailer in Manhattan to get bit by the bedbug infestation. Abercrombie & Fitch also was shut down the bed bug infestation that is ravaging New York, as well as one Times Square theater.

Reports of bedbug infestations are on the rise, news that strikes fear into the hearts of frequent travelers. While hotels and motels aren't the only places where these insects can hitch a ride on clothes or other belongings -- after all, you can pick one up just by visiting a friend's home, and recent findings in movie theaters and offices prove how easily these bugs get around -- the high-traffic buildings are some of the highest-risk places to encounter these tiny insects that live by feasting on human blood while we're sleeping. By knowing what to look for and taking...

For reasons still unknown, bedbugs really seem to like the state of Ohio. The problem is so dire in Cincinnati that some people with infested apartments have resorted to sleeping on the streets. Cincinnati created a Bedbug Remediation Commission in 2007 and, like other local and national governments around the world, the city is trying to mobilize strategies to control infestations of the resilient insects, which can hide in almost any crack or crevice and can go a year or more without eating. On Aug. 10, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a consumer alert about off-label bedbug treatments,...

TVNewser has learned the human resources department of TBS Inc. has sent out an email this afternoon alerting staffers of a bed bug problem in their New York City offices at Time Warner Center -- home to CNN, CNNMoney.com and other Time Warner entities. The Time Warner Center Facilities Department advises that bed bugs have been detected in Time Warner Center. This determination was made after testing was conducted on several floors of the building.