Bedbugs are back, with a vengeance.
The tiny night-time bloodsuckers were common in Madison and elsewhere in the United States in the 1940s, until DDT ended the threat. But the insecticide damaged wildlife and was banned in the U.S. in 1972, and in recent years travelers brought bedbugs back, according to Phil Pellitteri, a UW-Extension entomologist affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A chemical family known as synthetic pyrethroid has been used to get rid of the unwelcome pests, but they have developed resistance to it, he added.