Ky. School Bans Backpacks, Lunchboxes After Bedbugs Appear

By: Amanda Cochran
Topics: Elementary School ,; High School ,; Middle School

A bedbug engorged with blood after feeding on human arm.

(Credit: AP)

(CBS/AP) What would you do if your child came home from school with bedbugs? Freak out?

Well, one south-central Kentucky school is trying to avoid that problem by temporarily banning backpacks, lunchboxes and other items after finding bedbugs in a school building.

A half-dozen of the bloodsucking pests were spotted recently at Salem Elementary School in Russell County. WKYT-TV reports they were found on the floor of a classroom and on one student's backpack.

Though the bugs can cause itchy bites, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says bedbugs are not known to transmit or spread diseases. The bugs hide in dark spots such as mattresses, pillows and curtains, and they hitchhike from place to place on bags, clothing and in luggage.

Russell County Schools Superintendent Kenneth Pickett said an exterminator visited the school and no more have been reported.

27 Comments Have Your Say
Email Story Send to a Friend
Share This Tell Your Friends
Tweet This Tweet This
More Share It

Add a Comment

See all 27 Comments


by sandigogo September 16, 2010 12:50 AM EDT: we have roaches ,ants,spiders,fleas..now bed bugs, the locuses will be next ole lordi..just to make it to the promise land...hee thought you all need a chuckle..gota go got a itch.; Reply to this comment


by dougd120 September 13, 2010 2:29 PM EDT: if backpacks were relevant why don't the world look at this a bit differently.; Reply to this comment


by dougd120 September 12, 2010 6:22 PM EDT: a legal scientist approves a way to give the world a better meaning of something.; Reply to this comment


by dougd120 September 12, 2010 5:07 PM EDT: a need for kentucky students to do well is what's important in life.; Reply to this comment


by hhandyman September 11, 2010 11:52 PM EDT: ghee 1950s solution to a 2010 problem their have been improvements on it without chemical use to kill bed bugs. Do a little web surfing see how to dehumidify your home and kill em by drying them out in place then vaccume the remains and trash it; Reply to this comment


by paxbj September 11, 2010 9:25 PM EDT: DON'T LET THE BED BUGS BITE! Goodnight.; Reply to this comment


by barbaram99 September 11, 2010 1:09 PM EDT: I could not believe it when they started talking about them on the newss. The thing is people help them move from place to place. They like warm bodies so they can bleed and the dark of night. I can understand the school don't want the pests in class. By barring the pack and lunch box won't stop them. The clothes the children wear. Heat is the reason as well.I know hotels are bad. I don't want them as most don't.Don't blame us poor. I am an American as is my family.; Reply to this comment


by Tess_Comments September 11, 2010 10:39 AM EDT: Yet one more reason to stop illegal immigration. Who sneaks into the US? Many are poor. Have they brought bed burgs with them? There has been a rise in TB. Have illegal immigrants brought that into the US?

Yes, to Legal Immigration. Legal immigrants must prove they have been immunized. Legal immigrants bring in less disease.; Reply to this comment


by troubledgood September 11, 2010 4:46 AM EDT: The banning of backpacks and lunch boxes is absurd and Beaves Butthead! The kids bring those bugs in their underware! The underware must be banned! Any person that has a brain of a size of the one a mosquito does, knows that. But the people running our schools do not. Why? because they are brain-dead, meaning that they no longer have brains, but sawdust where the God-given brain once was! Why? because they left God out from the public schools!; Reply to this comment

by ibsteve2u September 11, 2010 3:00 AM EDT

Such pests - and many, many others - were and are a fact of life in the poor countries I've lived in. They always are in countries where a few are wealthy and many are poor; quality homes, hygiene, and pest and disease control are intrinsically linked to wealth in capitalistic societies.

Bedbugs surprise me not; our greater society is simply not doing well...not doing well at all:

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2008.pdf

Expect to see such communicable pests - and worse - appear more often as poverty increases, as their appearance merely signals the onset of a new paradigm: The shrinking of the world of the wealthy in direct relationship to the increase in economic inequality (or the spread of poverty, to be more direct).

In their distaste and disregard for the well-being of the American people, our Republicans erect walls beyond which they will not dare to go for fear of what lies "out there"; they inflict the green horse upon themselves.

lollll...I think it is humorous, because when pests and diseases begin to appear, it is best to be right in the middle of them so as to build the requisite immunities throughout the bacterial and viral evolution process; i.e., to have some basic immunity BEFORE whatever plague inevitably appears.

"The meek inherit the earth" because the people who put and keep "the meek" in poverty end up not having their immunities. So it has been throughout human history...and so that tale appears in the most well-known collections of human wisdom.

The sad thing, to me, is that most of the nation's third-world economies had/have such pests because they evolved disparately; i.e., pretty much everybody started with nothing, and then some few got really wealthy while everybody else was left to eat their crumbs.

America is that rare bird in human history: A nation wherein almost everybody was doing well right up until the greed of a few - of the Republicans - began eating the nation alive.

lolll...sometimes, quite literally...and in the dead of night, to add insult to injury.

Reply to this comment


by troubledgood September 11, 2010 5:06 AM EDT: You make some tolerably acceptable points. But you are wrong that gree is "Republican". Greed was with us, before the Republicans were! Greed in America is endemic. The poor immigrant, the instant he acquires some property, starts fierce battle against the poorer immigrant than himself! It's not the Republicans only! Greed has no color and no partisanship. It has no gender. Notice the evil of the rich in Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and Ophrah and Madonna (not the real one!). They epitomize greed ... but they travel the whole world to promote charity! This is what brings America down: hypocrycy in volumes never known to mankind heretofore!


by Tess_Comments September 11, 2010 10:43 AM EDT: I say do whatever is necessary to help stop the bed bugs. To those who are sensitive to them it can mean much discomfort.