You have no legal obligation to tell your employer. If you're treating the situation and are taking all the proper precautions (mostly just not wearing any clothes or carrying any bags to the office that have been exposed to bed bugs), the chance of you actually bringing them to work incredibly small.
You can go to work with bed bugs, although you should try to avoid bringing any to the office, shop, or factory with you. This can be done through quarantine. Keep your work and home clothes separate (store them in a plastic zip-lock bag) to avoid taking any into the workplace.
If a bed bug has been found, the work location should be carefully inspected for any additional signs. Very often a stray bed bug or two may enter the workplace by any number of means, and immediate assessment and treatment by an exterminator, as necessary, can resolve the problem before it becomes more serious.
Don't ignore the bed bugs. Acting right away will increase success in eliminating bed bugs. Don't sleep on another bed or the sofa. Bed bugs may follow making it much more difficult to get rid of them.
It is very unlikely, though not impossible, that a bed bug infestation will develop in an office, classroom, or other non-residential environment, such as a department store. However, these sites can serve as transfer hubs for bed bugs to hitchhike a ride into your home.
You don't have to worry about bed bugs infesting the clothes you're wearing, your skin, or your hair. However, you can find these parasites living in clothes that are folded and stored away. These parasites can also hitch a ride with you by latching onto a suitcase, coat, purse, or backpack.
While bedbugs are a nuisance and can be upsetting, they aren't known to transmit disease (their biology is a little different from bloodsucking insects that do transmit disease).
One bed bug could cause an infestation.
Can one bed bug cause an infestation? Well, if it's one male, there's no chance of an infestation. However, if it's an adult female, then the answer is yes - it could cause an infestation.
Bed bugs are not attracted to dirt, decay, or decomposing materials. They are only attracted to blood, and will search it out, regardless of the cleanliness of the environment. Bed bugs detect carbon dioxide emitted from humans and respond to warmth and moisture as they approach the potential host.
FACT: Bed bug infestations have nothing to do with the cleanliness of the home or the people living there. While cleaning up excessive clutter and frequent vacuuming can prevent largescale infestations, the truth is that bed bugs don't discriminate.
Not everyone who stays in a bed bug infested room will take bed bugs home. Nevertheless, it's a good idea to act as if you may have picked up a stray bed bug or two. The most likely place to pick up bed bugs in luggage is on, or next to, the bed.
Bedbug bites usually clear up without treatment in a week or two. Bedbugs aren't known to spread disease, but they can cause an allergic reaction or a severe skin reaction in some people.
If you suspect you have been exposed to bed bugs, the best starting point is a thorough visual inspection. Learning how to detect them will limit the spread of the infestation, reducing the cost and complexity of treatment. Low-level infestations are much more difficult to find and correctly identify.
Rusty or reddish stains on bed sheets or mattresses caused by bed bugs being crushed. Dark spots (about this size: ), which are bed bug excrement and may bleed on the fabric like a marker would. Eggs and eggshells, which are tiny (about 1mm) and pale yellow skins that nymphs shed as they grow larger.
You may be thinking, can you get bed bugs from not washing your sheets? No—bed bugs have absolutely nothing to do with cleanliness levels. However, washing your sheets regularly gives you the opportunity to look for and remove any possible bed bug infestations.
To lure bed bugs out of their hiding spots, you can use a steamer or a hairdryer to heat areas such as mattresses. Neither of these is hot enough to kill the bed bugs, but it can trick them into thinking a human host is near. You can also keep an eye out at night to locate their nests when they are most active.
Generally it takes at least seven weeks for a bed bug to grow from an egg to an adult, so there should be no new adults from eggs during that period. Therefore, if many adult bugs are present one can reasonably assume that the infestation has been there for more than seven weeks.
There are no two ways about it—spotting even a single bed bug in your home is cause for concern. While you may think that just one tiny speck of a pest may not be a big deal, it can signal you have a full-on infestation growing under your nose.
Those individuals who are not sensitive to bed bug bites may not know they have an infestation. Because bed bugs are nocturnally active, it's hard to see other signs of their presence—unless you're accustomed to waking up at 3 A.M. and taking a census.
Wash everything on a high temperature or sanitary cycle for at least 30 minutes. Placing everything in the dryer on the hottest setting for 30 minutes will also kill bed bugs and larvae. Immediately after you're finished putting clothing in the washer, tie up and throw out the empty garbage bag in an outdoor trash bin.
The three-year study also found that it takes only about 11 weeks for one pair of bedbugs to spawn a large enough population to cause harmful blood loss in a baby, and just under 15 weeks for adult humans. Just 3,500 bedbugs feeding on a single baby or 25,000 on an adult can cause problems.
Technically, bed bugs can live through a cycle in the washing machine. The truth is that while washing your clothes or linens will kill most of the bed bugs, the heat of drying your items is what will ultimately exterminate any and all remaining bugs. As we mentioned above, bed bugs do not tolerate heat.
In summary, bed bugs are able to survive brief periods of submersion in water such as going through a washing machine. While this can help reduce the population of bed bugs present, it is important to take additional steps such as using additional methods to ensure complete elimination.
Bed bugs tend to hide as close to the bed as possible, so only launder the fabrics in the immediate area – your bedding, and clothing in dressers near the bed. Hanging clothes in closets can usually be left there, but wash anything on the floor.