There used to be a soothing bedtime incantation: “Night, night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
It’s no longer suitable for children, not just because it’s wholly ineffective against the resurgence of the bloodsucking parasites now under way in Europe, but because it’s highly likely to lead to racism and hostility.
In an unwise paroxysm of honesty, the French government has issued warnings about the growing prevalence of bedbugs in Paris. This was socially responsible, as by some measures, Paris is the world’s most touristed city. But it gave the misleading impression that Parisian hotels and homes were alone in heaving with vampirish vermin, prompting much parochial tut-tutting in Britain and Europe. Other much-bitten cities opted to stay self-protectively silent, even though it’s common for hotels in many countries to have regular bedbug audits, for which trained sniffer spaniels are in increasing demand.
No one can say for sure why the noxious nippers are on the rise just now, but Paris has no monopoly on les punaises. Germany has bettwanzin, Spain chinches and so on, as anyone with auto-translate on their phone will find during a tootle through Europe. The fastidious are now stowing their luggage in the bathtub and bringing their own bedding.
Still less helpfully for European harmony, a French TV interviewer asked whether the infestation was due to variable hygiene among immigrants. The answer was, of course, “No, you utter moron.” Then came the airing of some sobering statistics about how often indigenous Europeans washed (or didn’t), of which more shortly.
Suffice to say, hygiene is irrelevant to bedbugs. They’ll hide in upholstery crevices and feed on blood anywhere from Buckingham Palace to backstreet Bangalore. They’re harder to eradicate than, say, fleas or fruit midges, but generally less persistent than pantry moths, carpet beetle and those immortal deities, cockroaches.
Humans are sensibly wired to distrust insects, especially bitey ones, but aside from a small risk of allergy and infection, bedbugs are more nuisance than threat.
They hardly lift an antenna in the cause of human endangerment in comparison with the contribution made by the humble bath towel, according to scientists. Responding to the latest shock hygiene survey, showing that a third of UK residents don’t wash their towels above every three months, and some only annually, bacteriologists were greatly lathered. Even the most scrubbed of humans sloughs dead skin onto towels, and given moisture and/or warmth, the bacteria multiply merrily.
Given a year’s worth of such biological brewing, any towel would be a honking biohazard, and possibly capable of self-propulsion.
Similar bacterial rampage occurs in bedding. Most New Zealanders are raised to wash at least one sheet a week, if not both, but a surprising number of poll respondents here launder much less frequently. Bacteria experts prescribe a weekly wash for sheets and every few days for towels. Most bacteria are harmless, and there’s well-founded concern about how hyper-hygiene may retard a healthy immune response.
However, given that faecal bacteria, which aren’t so benign, is dispersed widely with each toilet flush, the growing green no-wash movement is a gamble with invisible foes of great potency.
Though a pain to wash, pillows and duvet innards are also hurl-making if left indefinitely. A study of London hospital pillows found, after just two years’ use, dead skin, dust mites and other insect remains made up to a third of their weight. Let’s not even start with mattresses, which most of us keep for 10 years or more.
Frankly it’s a wonder bedbugs can bear to bunk down with humans.
On the bright side, les punaises will surely prove unreliable. After all, practically every other major workforce in Paris goes on strike at regular intervals.
