Can You Get Bed Bugs From A Movie Theater?

It is possible and it is uncommon. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says bed bug infestations in non-residential places are rare, and that what those places really offer a bed bug is a stop on the way to somewhere better. The seat is not the problem. What you carried in and set down next to it is.

That distinction decides what you should actually do after a night out, a shift or a school pickup. Our bed bug treatment page covers what happens once bed bugs are confirmed in a house. This post is about the step before that, when nothing has been confirmed and somebody is standing in a doorway holding a coat.

How Often Do Bed Bugs Turn Up In A Theater Or On A Bus?

Often enough to be a real question, rarely enough that it should not run your life. The National Pest Management Association asks pest professionals each year where they have treated bed bugs. In its 2015 Bugs Without Borders survey, 16 percent reported treating a movie theater, up from 10 percent two years earlier.

Read that number next to the rest of the same survey and the shape becomes obvious. More than nine in ten of those professionals had treated apartments, condominiums and single family homes, and about three quarters had treated hotels and motels. We published the full ranking in our post on bed bug prevention in hotels. Where people sleep is where bed bugs live. Everywhere else is traffic.

Why Is A Seat Such A Bad Home For Them?

Because a bed bug needs a sleeping host within crawling distance, and an auditorium does not have one. University of Kentucky entomologist Michael Potter writes that bed bugs cannot fly and cannot leap the way fleas do, though they crawl quickly over floors, walls and ceilings. They travel by being carried, not by covering ground.

The distances involved are small. A University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension publication (ASC250) reports that bed bugs move a little over four feet per minute and will travel an average of about 20 feet in search of a blood meal, with some reports of more than 60 feet. A bed bug in row G has nothing to work with. Nobody sleeps there, and the audience is gone two hours after it arrived.

• A bedroom gives them a schedule. The same host, in the same place, asleep, for hours, every night.
• A public seat gives them a gamble. One short visit, nobody asleep, and no harborage within reach that leads back to a meal.
• So the population stays where the beds are. What leaves a public building is usually a single hitchhiker, not a colony.

What You Set Down Matters More Than What You Sit On

This is the part that surprises people. A 2017 study in Scientific Reports by Hentley and colleagues at the University of Sheffield found that bed bugs in a bedroom sized arena were twice as likely to gather on bags holding worn clothes as on bags holding clean ones. The same team found that raising carbon dioxide to the level of an occupied room pushed bed bugs out of their hiding place to start hunting.

Put those two findings together and the gym bag on the locker room floor is a more interesting target than the bench above it. The EPA's guidance for public places lands in the same place from a different direction: keep your belongings separate from other people's, use a sealed plastic bin where there is a known problem, and pay attention to break rooms, coat closets, cubbies and upholstered resting areas. It also notes that clutter gives bed bugs places to hide and makes it easier for them to leave with you.

None of that requires living defensively. It is the difference between a coat on your lap and a coat in a heap, repeated a few hundred times a year. If a sighting does happen at work, our post on a bed bug found at the office covers what the employer should do next.

The School Sent A Letter Home. What Does That Mean?

Usually less than parents fear. The EPA's guidance for school administrators, teachers and staff says bed bugs are brought into buildings on personal belongings, that anyone can bring them in, and that a school is not their preferred habitat but can act as a hub for travel to other places, homes included.

The same guidance makes two points worth repeating at a kitchen table in North Canton or Akron. Finding a confirmed bed bug on a student or their belongings does not necessarily mean that student's home is infested. And there is usually no need to close the school or send students home, which is why the recommended response is a discreet trip to the nurse and belongings isolated in a sealed container, rather than an announcement. For prevention it asks schools to avoid storing jackets, backpacks and personal items in close contact with each other, and to cut classroom clutter by keeping teaching materials in clear boxes with lids.

If pesticides are needed in a school, the EPA says they must be labeled for bed bugs and applied by a licensed applicator. Ohio has its own rules on top of that, which we covered in our post on pesticide use in Ohio schools.

A Short Routine That Covers All Of It

One habit does most of the work, and it is the dryer. EPA guidance puts items in a dryer on high heat for about 30 minutes to kill bed bugs. Heat is what settles the question, which is why it is also the basis of our ThermaLock heat treatment for a whole room.

• Worn clothes go to the dryer, not the bedroom chair. High heat for 30 minutes, before anything is folded or put away.
• Coats and bags land somewhere hard. A hook or a tile floor, not the bed and not an upholstered chair.
• Bags get zipped in public and opened over a hard floor. That way anything that fell out is visible.
• A clear lidded bin beats a cardboard box for anything you carry back and forth to a building with a known problem.
• Nobody sprays a seat, a chair or a backpack. Store products do not solve this and can spread it, which we explain in our post on why sprays and foggers fail.
• If you think something came home, look at the bed, not the coat. That is where evidence shows up, and our room by room check walks through it.

The vehicle is the step most people miss, since everything from a public building rides home in it. Our post on bed bugs in a car covers that one properly.

When Is It Worth Having Someone Look?

When the question has moved from a seat to a bedroom. One bug seen in a public building, with nothing at home, is a story. Marks that keep appearing after nights in your own bed, or dark spotting along a mattress seam, are a different thing and will not resolve by themselves.

Bed bug inspections are free here, and that is deliberate. A homeowner in Canton, Hartville or Green should not be weighing whether it is worth finding out. Schedule a free inspection or call 330-494-6199, and we will tell you what is in the room before anyone talks about treating it.