In our last post (May 30) we chronicled the woes of a Fox News Channel staffer who has sued the company charging that she now suffers post traumatic stress syndrome because of “a continuous and ongoing bed bug problem at work.”

Jane Clark’s plight points out the extreme difficulty of treating bed bug infestations, particularly in office buildings, hotels and motels, apartments and condominiums, and any place where you have a large number of rooms inhabited by a large number of people who come and go daily. Clark is only one of many traumatized by these small insects that feed on human blood — and she’s not the first to sue.

The very nature of these nuisance pests makes the scenario playing out at Fox News Channel likely to be repeated with increasing frequency as the bed bug problem in the U.S. escalates. Bed bugs are easily transported. They move into a building on the clothing or in the luggage of an infected person. You can pick them up on a bus, taxi, subway or airplane if you happen to sit on a seat recently vacated by an infected person. You can bring them home from a hotel room or a friend’s home.

Next time: How Bed Bugs Spread