They are as big as an apple seed and feast on human blood at night. Bed bugs are said to have infested 11% of French households between 2017 and 2022, according to an Ipsos survey carried out in July 2022 for a working group set up by the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Health Safety. Labor (Anses), which delivers a report on Wednesday July 19 on the health but also socio-economic impact of these pests.
These small insects most often hide in mattresses and box springs, and are carried in clothing and luggage. After their meal, the fertilized females lay, throughout their adult life, about five eggs a day in a place sheltered from light. Disappearing from everyday life in the 1950s, these insects have made a comeback over the past thirty years in many developed countries thanks to increasingly nomadic lifestyles, consumption favoring the purchase of second-hand and growing resistance to insecticides.
Fear of stigma
First lesson of the ANSES report: contrary to popular belief, the presence of bed bugs at home does not reflect a lack of cleanliness, and anyone can be the victim of an infestation. “It’s totally independent of the social environment”, insists to Agence France-Presse Karine Fiore, deputy director of the social, economic and societal sciences department at ANSES. On the other hand, the level of income is a factor in the persistence of the infestation, because the fight can prove to be very costly: 866 euros on average per household, allocated to various control measures, first and foremost cleaning and treatments.
Beyond the cost, victims are sometimes afraid of being stigmatized, which can prevent them from talking about it and putting in place rapid actions to prevent the bedbugs from spreading, underlines ANSES. To remedy this, it calls for the establishment of a mandatory reporting mechanism and support for individuals through financial support, especially for low-income households.
The Agency has calculated the cost of the fight for French households. It reached 1.4 billion euros for the period 2017-2022, i.e. 230 million euros per year on average. For the social landlords questioned as part of the report, the cost amounted to an average of 74,500 euros in 2021. Student accommodation (Cnous and Crous) estimated that they spent 700,000 euros on it in the same year.
Psychological consequences
As for the health cost, it represented 83 million euros for the French in 2019, including 79 million euros associated with a drop in quality of life, sleep disorders and impacts on mental health, 1 million euro related to work stoppages and around 3 million euros for physical care. While skin lesions are the most common manifestations following bites, bedbug infestation can indeed lead to various psychological and even psychiatric consequences (sleep disturbances, anxiety, feeling of panic), the report points out.
“Any policy aimed at stopping the proliferation of the infestation in France, however costly it may be, must be judged by the yardstick of the benefits that can be derived from it in the long term”, estimates ANSES. The Agency recommends favoring non-chemical methods, such as treatment with dry heat or freezing, and calling in professional pest control if the infestation persists.
