At Frankfurt Airport, one of the largest air havens in Europe, has recently offered a new service: they search baggage for bed bugs, often accompanying travelers from a business trip or another vacation. So "uninvited passengers" can be isolated immediately upon arrival at the airport and thereby prevent the settling of parasites in houses and apartments. Notorious bed bugs - the inhabitants of hotels and boarding houses, and any level. Their presence does not depend on the degree of order and purity. And in relatively sterile conditions, barely noticeable insects hunt for "donors" who stayed there for the night.

And if there was a suspicion that the microscopic bloodsuckers could still get into your luggage, now at the airport in Frankfurt am Main there is an opportunity to make sure whether this is so. And take appropriate measures in time.

Demand for a new service is. And passengers resort to it voluntarily, because for the provision of qualified assistance you need to pay 106 euros, explains the cynologist Larry Hansen. He is part of a group called Bed-Bugs-Team. This is so far the only service in the world at the airport to detect such parasites as a bed bug. For several years specially trained dogs of this service have been snooping around the numbers of nearby hotels and airliners. And since 2018, at the Frankfurt airport itself, they have been offering assistance for the first time to travelers.

To get access to work, dogs had to undergo a preparatory course and pass the exam, which they coped brilliantly, says Larry. The flair of Cora and Badi is simply phenomenal: they determine bedbugs with an accuracy of 90 percent or more. To do this, however, the suitcase will have to open.

In total, the service employs five teams: four men, one woman and their assistants - dogs. From half past five in the morning until ten in the evening, Bed Bugs Team employees help passengers check baggage for parasites. You can call the team of experts by email bedbugdogs @ fraport. de three days before landing in Frankfurt. The message should include the name, flight number, arrival date and time. The answer with the confirmation of the request will not keep you waiting. And the duty team will approach directly to the luggage delivery belt.

Standard Bed Bugs Team services include checking a maximum of three bags. For each additional customer pays another 30 euros. Under the guidance of dog handlers, dogs carefully search their suitcases and in three cases out of four actually find bed bugs - most often in folds of used clothes, at the bottom of suitcases or in the seams of backpacks. Experts recommend therefore to store used clothes in tightly knotted plastic bags.

Bedbugs-travelers are not a new phenomenon, but more recently, because of the popularity of travel to different parts of the world,. "Anyway, I now know what to do," - sighs a student with relief, who has just returned from a three-month trip to Nepal, India, Malaysia and Japan. It does not intend to carry parasites home, because two disinfectors operate at the airport. She will hand over the luggage for processing - thermal or insecticide. A day later, "clean" baggage can be taken away. If desired, it will be delivered to the house.

Of course, you can get rid of bugs yourself, argue cynologists. However, this is not so easy.

For a thermal treatment would be an ordinary oven, but this is fraught with a fire, and besides the bedbugs manage to hide in the cracks before heating the stove. The same goes for the washing machine - bed bugs are perfectly able to survive and there. There is still a freezer - it can hold clothes for 12 days. Well, if bedbugs nest in a mattress, it still has to be thrown out. The extreme and most effective measure is the call of the disinfectant to the house. And this pleasure is by no means cheap.

Source: DW.