Edmonton counting on landlords to track bedbugs

An Edmonton group is counting on the city's landlords to determine just how much of a problem bedbugs are.

Landlords, tenants, public health inspectors agree the problem is getting worse — but no one has any idea how much worse.

Now, the city's bedbug infestation committee wants to count the little pests.

Edmonton landlords will receive a questionnaire about bedbugs and will be asked if their buildings have had bedbugs and how common they are.

Using the data from the survey, the city will then determine if the problem is getting out of hand.

Until now, city officials have had no clear understanding of the problem which is plaguing cities around the world.

"If you can't measure something, you don't know if it's getting better so you don't know if what you're doing is working," Sandra Hamilton, a public health inspector with the province, told CBC News. "We really need to be able to let people know what is happening in the city…right now it's all anecdotal."

Hamilton said she knows the problem is getting worse from the growing number of calls to her department over the past year. She said she gets at least a call a day about bedbugs.

"I really don't have any way to count the number of phone calls last year to the year before," she said. "We really don't have anything to compare it back to."

Edmonton exterminator John Van Ginkel told CBC News he's seeing a large increase in calls from consumers.

"Bedbugs have just increased, like phenomenal. I'm getting more and more calls — I'm basically booked up two to three weeks in advance."

A growing problem

Bedbugs have been on the rise around the world and have shown up in unexpected places — such as movie theatres and banks.

Although bedbugs suck blood like other human parasites, there is no evidence they spread disease. Their bites are nearly painless but leave tiny bumps.

North America's first bedbug summit opened in Chicago on Tuesday morning with a sellout audience and a slate of entomologists representing top universities such as Yale and Cornell.

At the Chicago summit, 14 top experts are leading sessions on the latest bedbug science, chemical treatments, fumigation and detection.