CINCINNATI — In this Ohio city, it seems, it really is tough to stop the bedbugs from biting.
When complaints about the bloodsucking insects first trickled in to Cincinnati’s public health department three years ago, officials assumed it was an anomaly — or perhaps the overactive imagination of a bug-phobic public. After all, Cimex lectularius had all but vanished here by the 1950s because of the frequent use of DDT and other now-banned pesticides. But that trickle of complaints has grown into a flood: A recent public survey found that 1 in every 6 people here has had a run-in with the biting bugs in the last 12 months.

Dozens of fire stations in Cincinnati have had to dump furniture or have their living quarters exterminated because firefighters unknowingly brought the eggs in on their boots or pant legs. Assisted-living complexes have spent tens of thousands of dollars on pest-control companies because, the thinking goes, visitors may have carried in the bugs on their purses or bags.
City health department officials said they now receive more frantic calls about the insects than about mice, rats and cockroaches combined. If things continue, “we won’t be able to keep up with the requests for inspections,” said Camille Jones, assistant Cincinnati health commissioner and member of a city-county bedbug task force. “It’s a problem that we expect to only get worse.” Cincinnati is not alone in its itchy woes. Reports of a welt-covered public are coming in from college campuses, high-end hotels and even movie theaters across the country.
University officials at Texas A&M in College Station have flown in bedbug-sniffing dogs to root out the insects. The University of Florida in Gainesville reportedly has spent tens of thousands of dollars to clear dorm rooms and campus apartments of infestations.