Have you ever gone into a hotel room and the first thing you do is lift the sheets to check the mattress for bed bugs? We are completely grossed out about the thought of those little bugs crawling on our body. There have been many, many reports of bed bugs in even the fanciest hotels, that proves these little creepy-crawlies don't discriminate. They move in wherever conditions are prime.

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Here's what scientists say about the increase in bed bugs:

The affordability of air travel has made it easy to reach almost anywhere in the world quickly and cheaply. "Some travelers bring back unintended souvenirs."  Increased urbanization, too, has pushed people closer together, making it easy for infestations to spread if untreated. Additionally, attitudes toward pesticides have changed. Routine pesticide spraying became less frequent as people became wary of its large-scale environmental effects. While today many consumers want "green" pest-control solutions, in a former era powerful pesticides such as DDT would have been on the front lines fighting bed bugs. Ecological concerns about its misuse led the Environmental Protection Agency to ban DDT for most uses in 1972.

Orkin has released their “Bed Bug Cities List.”  This is not a Top 50 list anyone wants to be on.

The list ranks cities by the number of bed bug treatments Orkin serviced from January through December 2015 and after an Orkin inspection verified bed bugs were present. The list includes both residential and commercial treatments.

Here's the list.  The number in parentheses shows it's rank last year.

1. Chicago
2. Los Angeles (+2)
3. Washington, D.C. (+11)
4. New York (+14)
5. Columbus, Ohio (-2)
6. Philadelphia
7. Detroit (-5)
8. Cincinnati (-1)
9. Richmond-Petersburg, Va.
10. Baltimore (+21)
11. Raleigh-Durham, N.C. (+6)
12. Cleveland-Akron-Canton, Ohio (-7)
13. Dallas-Ft. Worth (-7)
14. San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose (+2)
15. Indianapolis (-4)
16. Charlotte, N.C. (+14)
17. Houston (-5)
18. Denver (-10)
19. Atlanta (+6)
20. Buffalo, N.Y. (+6)
21. Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C.-Asheville, N.C. (+26)
22. Nashville, Tenn. (+1)
23. Phoenix (+9)
24. Knoxville, Tenn. (+10)
25. Boston-Manchester (+4)
26. Milwaukee (-11)
27. Dayton, Ohio (-17)
28. Seattle (-15)
29. Pittsburgh
30. Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News, Va.
31. Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla.
32. Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Crk., Mich. (-12)
33. Lexington, Ky. (-9)
34. Hartford-New Haven, Conn. (+3)
35. Charleston-Huntington, W.Va. (-16)
36. Omaha, Neb. (-15)
37. San Diego (+2)
38. Orlando-Daytona Beach-Melbourne, Fla.
39. Louisville, Ky. (-17)
40. St. Louis (+6)
41. Cedar Rapids-Waterloo-Dubuque, Iowa (-6)
42. Champaign-Springfield-Decatur, Ill. (-4)
43. Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. (-10)
44. Kansas City, Mo. (-3)
45. Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto, Calif. (-18)
46. Syracuse, N.Y. (-18)
47. Colorado Springs-Pueblo, Colo. (-3)
48. Albany-Schenectady-Troy, N.Y. (-5)
49. Honolulu (-7)
50. Myrtle Beach-Florence, S.C. (-5)

If you want to check out a hotel before you put down your suitcase, check out the Bed Bug Registry.  It’s a public database of user-submitted bed bug reports.  Remember, like all “user-submitted” reviews/reports,  some of these could be fake reports.  Use your better judgement.

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