Happy Thanksgiving! We hope you have a great holiday and welcome your loved ones back home for a joyous holiday. After having a joyful airport reunion picking up relatives and friends, you may want to take one extra step before letting them enter your home.
That’s right: Parents welcoming college students home for Thanksgiving and winter break should try to prevent children from bringing bed bugs home from college and their travels! This autumn Bell Environmental has seen and treated a growing number of bed bug infestations in dormitories and schools
Be cautious and prepared! What should you do? Visually inspect of your child’s belongings for signs of bed bug activity; place clothes and laundry in sealed plastic bags before bringing them inside your home; put clothes (including the ones the student is wearing) directly in the dryer on high heat for 15-20 minutes (a dryer is preferred over a regular wash cycle to kill beg bugs); and lastly, if necessary, call for a bed bug inspection. Bell’s certified canine bed bug detection teams are the best tool available for detecting and pinpointing bed bugs. What shouldn’t you do? Let your children walk in, flop down on their beds, open their bags, and put things in their closets without taking these preventative measures.
Why do we recommend that families be vigilant against bed bugs? Because if you don’t take measures to prevent bed bugs from entering, or detect them early, these bugs can quickly reach alarming levels and infest many areas of the home making it a more difficult problem to resolve.
(And if you’re going away on vacation, follow Roscoe’s inspection tips for your hotel and when you get home from your trip or anywhere suspect.)
Watch this space, we’ll have more on what the right steps are to prevent problems when you get home soon…..