Bed bugs are trying to get into ‘dirty’ laundry

EU battles weedkiller

PARIS, Oct 1, (AFP): Like a pining lover, bed bugs will seek out your smell and snuggle up to your worn clothes when you are not around, researchers said Thursday.

This explains how these tiny, flightless, reclusive creatures have managed their meteoric spread around the world — by catching a free ride in our dirty laundry, a team wrote in the journal Scientific Reports.

“A mechanism for this long-distance dispersal has never been empirically tested,” study co-author William Hentley of the University of Sheffield told AFP.

Some had thought that bed bugs accidentally fell on our clothing or luggage after feeding on our blood, then tag along home from the hotel.

But the new study showed the pests, known to be attracted to the smell of sleeping humans, actively seek out our worn clothes.

Hentley and a team tested the predilections of bed bugs in a series of unusual experiments.

Human volunteers washed themselves with a non-perfumed soap, then wore a clean T-shirt and socks for about six hours.

The clothes were placed in a sealed, airtight plastic bag before being transferred to a cotton tote bag.

Four bags — two with dirty T-shirts and socks, and two with clean ones — were placed in a room at an equal distance from the centre.

Bed bugs, fed to satiation on human blood, were then released and observed.

Hentley

Researchers

After four days, researchers noted the location of the bugs and found that most were on the bags containing soiled clothes. The experiment was repeated a few times. “Bed bugs have shown a recent and rapid global expansion that has been suggested to be caused by cheap air travel,” the authors wrote.

“Our results show, for the first time, how leaving worn clothing exposed in sleeping areas when travelling can be exploited by bed bugs to facilitate passive dispersal.”

Last year, research showed that bed bugs had become genetically wired to resist pesticides, further aiding their global conquest. The common bedbug, Cimex lectularius, is found in temperate climates in the United States and parts of Europe.

It has proved especially hard to eradicate after potent poisons like DDT were banned in the United States after World War II.

By the late 1990s, the critters were thriving in New York and a 2010 outbreak saw them invade high-end apartment buildings, hotels, even clothing stores like lingerie outlet Victoria’s Secret.

There has also been an explosion of bed bugs in Paris in recent years.

A battle is heating up over whether the European Union will renew at year-end the licence for glyphosate, one of the world’s most widely used weedkillers that some fear causes cancer.

EU states have been deadlocked for more than a year over whether to declare that the chemical - used in US agro-giant Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Roundup — is safe.

More than 1.3 million people this year signed a petition demanding that Brussels should ban it, while leading states like France have opposed a renewal, although Paris is now softening.

The European Commission has proposed that glyphosate’s licence should be renewed for another 10 years in December, on the grounds of a report by the bloc’s food safety agency saying it does not cause cancer.

National experts countries are due to review the decision on Thursday and Friday in Brussels but no vote is expected yet.

“The commission is working with member states to find a solution that enjoys the largest possible support,” a commission spokesman said.

The weedkiller deadlock has dragged on since June 2016, when its previous 15-year licence expired.

Decision

EU states said then they were unable to make a decision, so the Commission gave temporary 18-month renewal of glyphosate’s licence while more scientific evidence was amassed.

Earlier this year the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) ruled that glyphosate should not be classified as a carcinogen, and the commission proposed the renewal in June.

But the ruling has failed to ease concerns among member states and among the public.

Opponents of glyphosate, led by environmental group Greenpeace, point to other research from the World Health Organization that concludes it may be carcinogenic, and are calling for an outright ban.

A 2016 review carried out by experts from both the WHO and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said “glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet”.

France — Europe’s biggest food producer — and Austria are the only EU countries to have come out publicly against renewing the licence.

But the French government earlier this month backtracked and said it could support it if the renewal is for a shorter period, such as five to seven years.

Only five member states expressed support for the commission proposal when AFP contacted all the bloc members and received replies from half of them.

Most of those who replied said they were not yet ready to make a decision.

Europe’s main farmers union, the Copa-Cogeca, said there is no alternative but to renew the licence if the continent wants to maintain yields.

If there is no vote for renewal, it will expire at the end of December. But it will still be possible to use up glyphosate stockpiles for another year.

In a sign of the tensions, the European Parliament has been asked by its political leaders to deny access to Monsanto executives and lobbyists, with a decision possible on Tuesday.

Monsanto maintains glyphosate “meets or exceeds all requirements for full renewal under European law and regulation” and charged the renewal procedure has in “many respects been hijacked by populism.”