Bed bugs have recently exploded into the limelight amid widespread reports of a major outbreak in Paris. The more people share photos of bed bug bites on social media, the more concerned we feel. That’s understandable, but the really worrying thing is the missing information – there is still no publicly available data about the infestations in Paris.
Indeed, data that confirms or denies the location and date of any bed bug cases is notoriously hard to find. The vast majority of people around the world go to the private sector for pest control, but data from this sector is often classed as “commercially sensitive” and not usually shared for research purposes.
