Yahoo posted a pretty good PR article recently by Bell Environmental Services about how to protect your home from bed bugs your kids might pick up at school.

In New York City, bed bug incidents in public schools rose to 3,590 last year, more than triple the 2009-2010 school year.

That’s a pretty significant number.

The article suggests ways of handling your child’s backpack to reduce the chance of bringing bed bugs home from school. Worth a read so go check it out.

And yet another good PR piece, this time by Raveable.com via Marketwatch.com.

In the wake of the 2010 Bedbug Epidemic the number of bedbug reports for 2011 (January 1–September 1) shattered 2010 totals by more than 660%.

If you’re interested, go see the cities with the largest number of bed bug reports. Here’s a hint. You’ve heard the saying “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Apparently not so for bed bug bites and bed bugs. I gave you a few ideas for avoiding bed bug hotels. It looks like you can add raveable.com to the list of places you can research a hotel before you travel.

Since hotels are the number one source of bed bug infestation, research before choosing where to stay on your next vacation or business trip. Specifically, check out customer ratings. If a hotel has bed bug problems people will most likely mention it online.

Yep. I don’t know how people can neglect this simple step in this age of technology. You check the weather to see if you should bring an umbrella but you don’t check a hotel to see if it has bed bugs? Come on now. If you read this site you have no excuses!

The article also makes points about how to check your room and also what to do with your luggage:

To avoid transporting bed bugs back home or to another location, never set luggage on the floor, bed or any upholstered surface. Put luggage on the luggage rack, but keep it away from the walls. Avoid unpacking into drawers and always keep suitcases closed.

Great advice. I used to travel every few weeks for work and I would always put my clothing in the drawers. Now I don’t, although I do hang things in the closet. I figure I know how to check a hotel room for bed bugs well enough to reduce my risks. But checking dressers is kind of tricky. I’m too lazy to flip the thing over and look into every nook and cranny so I prefer to simply not use them.

If bed bugs are discovered at home, immediately remove the mattress and vacuum the entire area. Consider purchasing a mattress protector and or a pillow protector.

The article also gives steps for handling your clothing and luggage when you get home. If you’ve been reading articles on this site than this press release isn’t going to teach you anything you don’t already know. But still—it’s good to see a well written piece like this used as a press release. Bravo to The Healthy Back Store.

How bad was it?

One sister was bitten 86 times. The other, 52 times. It took them about four months to recover.

Do you think it’s important to do a little research

A quick check at TripAdvisor would've shown the hotel rated at 707 out of 1062 in the area. On top of that, a reviewer even warns people not to stay "unless you want bedbugs to eat you alive!!!".

One of the most important ways you can help protect yourself from bed bugs while you travel is to avoid hotels (and hostels) that are known to have bed bug problems. You don't want to end up like the two sisters in the story about. Spend 10 minutes on the internet and save yourself from being a bed bug buffet. Read How to Avoid Bed Bugs Hotels.

I Might Have Bed Bug Bites

One type of email I get frequently is where somebody describes breaking down emotionally just at the thought that they might have bed bugs because they found some kind of bug bite on their body.

It’s easy to get a few marks on your body that might look like bed bug bites, do a web search on bed bugs, come to a site like this and end up convinced you have bed bugs. Even though you’re not a doctor and you’ve never personally seen a bed bug bite before.

In some ways this reminds me of a girl I used to know. Every time she got a sore throat or some other ache or pain she would race to the internet and convince herself she had some kind of horrific illness.

“See?! This is what I have!!” she would say, in a panic, after taking a few of her symptoms and matching them up with the worst possible disease in some medical database.

Despite the repeated episodes of panic, the worse she ever had was the flu.

We all do stuff like this from time to time. My point is that it’s easy to jump to a conclusion without having much information. The thing to do then is to remember just how easy it is to jump to conclusions and instead hold off judgment until you have more information.

It’s good to read up on these things. It helps give you a direction for inquiry. It prepares you to ask good questions. That is how you use the information on a site like this. That is only the first step though. When you have a physical problem, you need to talk to your doctor instead of jumping to a firm conclusion and having a breakdown based on something you read on a website.

45 percent of singles polled said they would cancel a date if someone admitted to a bedbug infestation.

Also:

I consider bedbugs to be in the same category as murderers or drug addicts

Wow. Guess you really, really want to make sure you protect yourself. Luckily you are in the right place to learn.

From The Body Odd at MSN.

Why?

Because heat is a very effective bed bug killer — it can kill all stages of bed bugs including eggs. And you can use heat to treat personal belongings that are otherwise difficult to treat. The PackTite makes the whole process safe and simple. Read the article for more information.

Many beds (like mine) have designs that don’t really lend themselves well to this. I have a sleigh bed which doesn’t have individual legs. It has two big pieces of wood at the head and the foot of the bed that touch the floor. So for each end of the bed I would need to coat all four sides of a piece of wood roughly 4.5 feet wide x 2 inches deep. I don’t want to damage the wood and I don’t want Vaseline on the carpet. I also don’t want it out where my pets can get to it.

If the above applies to you, what can you do? The Bedbug Beacon is a nice choice. You can see the most popular ways of catching bed bugs here.

To do this you can either apply the tape directly to the legs of your bed or you can make a kind of sleeve that fits to the legs of the bed and coat the sleeve with the tape. The advantage of using the sleeve is that it won’t leave sticky tape residue on the bed legs.

Read Bed Bug Traps Compared to get a better view of all the methods. It also links out to pages with more information on using the double-sided tape and vaseline.