(Illustration: Robert Meganck)

For those of you fearing that the news out of today's Montgomery County Council bedbug debriefing would be that an epidemic is rapidly spreading in the county: relax.

County Health Officer Ulder Tillman said at the hearing today that the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for conducting health inspections, has only received "sporadic complaints," but there have been reports of bedbugs in "a few nursing homes, even a few hospitals, hotels, and obviously some shelters."

While we await an answer to our request to view those complaints, Tillman did offer some helpful advice on how to prevent and eradicate bedbugs: cut down on clutter, using hot water or other forms of heat to kill them could be dangerous (the temperature needs to reach 110 degrees), seal creaks and crevices in your home, and adopt "judicial uses" of chemical pesticides (that means don't go overboard).

"The [Environmental Protection Agency] is very much concerned that there will be an overuse of chemical pesticides," she said.

She also did say that bedbugs can cause some psychological distress (Tillman said before her presentation that "ever since I've been doing the research on this I've been itching all the time, so I want to get this out of my system and move on."). The distress can be so bad that some seek therapy, as did a Howard County woman who sued an apartment complex over bedbugs.

But the best way to prevent bedbug infestations is to educate the public on how the insects spread. So although the department only received sporadic complaints, debriefings like today's are still quite necessary.