Can You Pick Up Bedbugs on Public Transport in Barking and Dagenham?

The borough is well served by rail: the District and Hammersmith & City lines, the Overground, c2c and the Elizabeth line all run through it, and plenty of people here spend an hour or more a day on a seat that thousands of others have used. So it is a fair question.

How a Bedbug Gets Onto a Train

Bedbugs do not live on people. They feed and then go back to hiding in a crack, a seam or a fold. They do not jump or fly, and they do not cling to skin or hair.

What they do is crawl into dark, tight places, and a bag, a coat or a folded jacket is exactly that. A bedbug that has hidden in someone’s rucksack at home can crawl out on the train, and occasionally find its way into another bag or the seam of a fabric seat. That is the route, and it is a slow and unlikely one.

How Real the Risk Is

Low for any one journey, and not zero. A single bedbug brought home is not the same as an infestation; it needs to be a female that has already mated to start one, and even then it takes weeks before there is anything you would notice.

When we are asked where a problem came from, the answer is much more often a hotel stay, a visitor’s luggage, a second-hand bed or sofa, or a neighbouring flat. Transport is possible, but it is rarely the most likely explanation, and it is the one people tend to reach for when they cannot think of another.

What Is Worth Doing

• Keep your bag on your lap or between your feet, not tucked into the gap beside a fabric seat.
• Do not put your work or school bag on the bed when you get home. A hard floor in the hall is a better place for it.
• Look before you sit if the seat is fabric and you have a moment, but do not make a ritual of it.
• If you see one on your clothes, brush it off into a tissue, and when you get home put what you were wearing through a hot tumble dry.

What Is Not Worth Doing

Stripping off at the front door every evening, bagging every coat, or avoiding trains altogether does very little. Neither does spraying your bag with an insecticide from the shop. The effort is better spent knowing the early signs so that, if one ever does get home, you notice before it has become a bigger job.

If you already have bedbugs at home and are worried about taking them out on your commute, that is a different question, and our guide on clothes, work and school covers it.

If You Think You Have Brought One Home

1. Catch it if you can, on clear tape or in a sealed pot, so it can be identified.
2. Tumble dry the clothes and the bag lining on the hottest setting they can take.
3. Check the bed over the next couple of weeks: the mattress seams, the corners of the frame and the headboard.
4. Ring us on 0800 955 1018 if you find anything, or book an inspection from £120 if you want to be sure.

If treatment is needed, it starts at £220, and the borough page explains how heat and chemical fit different kinds of home.

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