If you travel at all, either for business or pleasure, you should know the bed bug drill. Leave your bags downstairs or put them in the bathtub and check the mattress, box spring, dresser and behind the headboard. This has become a ritual that many travelers wouldn’t even think of bypassing. However, not all travel destinations are created equally. According to the folks at Insight Pharmaceuticals, there are ten cities in North America that you want to avoid above all others. Not surprisingly, the cities fit into distinct red flag category for bed bug infestations.
Leading the list of bed beg cities is Columbus, Ohio. On the surface, you may not consider this beautiful and fast growing city to be a bed bug haven, but when you look closer, you realize that Columbus is home to Ohio State University and over 50,000 undergraduate students. It isn’t that students are necessarily bed bug magnets; it is more the fact that with such a high turnover of apartments and furniture, you get bugs passed on from person to person to person. When you have a school of this size, it is almost impossible to ward off a mass infestation.
Number two on the list is New York City. While Columbus may have been a surprise for some, New York isn’t. With a population density that’s off the charts, it is no surprise that bed bugs would flourish in such a place. Add in the fact that the city is quite old, which means bugs have millions of places to hide and you have all of the ingredients you need for a massive bed bug outbreak. According to the study, reports of bugs has gone up 50-fold in the last 5 years. With bug awareness at an all time high in Manhattan, let’s hope those numbers start levelling off and soon.
Number three on the list was Toronto. Much in the same way that New York is the business capital of the United States, Toronto is the business capital of Canada. With thousands of international flights in and out of the city every year, it fits nicely into the international port city classification. Fellow Canadian metropolis Vancouver also takes a spot on this list for exactly the same reason. With such a heavy flow of international visitors in and out of the city year round, you are bound to get bugs by the millions. If you are headed out on a trip soon, and one of the cities mentioned above is your final destination, you may want to check under that mattress twice.