If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. Straight from the experts, here are the facts behind some of the most notorious myths about the diminutive bloodsuckers. Spreading rapidly with the bedbugs is a mass of misinformation about their biology and behavior. "It's just the beginning of the problem in the U.S.," Schal says. And because bedbugs are indoor pests, there are no high or low seasons throughout the year, he adds, only continual bombardment. Health authorities and pest control operators are regularly flooded with calls, and the epidemic may not have yet peaked. "By every metric that we use, it's getting worse and worse," says Coby Schal, an entomologist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. This revival may be the worst yet, experts say, due to densely populated urban areas, global travel and increasing pesticide resistance-something to consider as the summer travel season gets underway. In the past 10 years, however, the pests have staged a comeback worldwide-an outbreak after the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney was a harbinger of things to come. prior to World War II, bedbugs all but vanished during the 1940s and '50s thanks to improvements in hygiene and the use of pesticides. Cimex lectularius-small, flattened insects that feed solely on mammalian and avian blood-have been living with humans since ancient times. Once a pest of the past, bedbugs now infest every state in the U.S.
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