TO ERNEST HEMINGWAY, Paris was a movable feast. To a bedbug, so are Parisians. In videos on social media, the seats of the city’s metro are seen swarming with bedbugs, tiny insects no bigger than an apple pip, which feed on human blood. The health risk from bedbugs is minor: itchy bites and a small risk of allergies and secondary infections. As the present panic suggests, the bigger impact tends to be psychological, says Clive Boase, an entomologist and pest-control consultant.
Mosquitoes, leeches and other parasites are unpleasant, but do not colonise your home. If a traveller brings bedbugs back from their holidays, they can start an infestation that can be very difficult to shift. Schadenfreude among the non-French is unwise. The story is not so much one of bad hygiene and dirty trains as it is another cautionary tale of globalisation, climate change and evolutionary biology. Warm cities provide ideal environments for bedbugs. Cheap travel helps them spread. And after decades of widespread use, the chemical insecticides used to kill them are losing their powe