Commuters on the London underground are used to all manner of sights and sounds. But on the tube on Tuesday, anxiety levels were unusually high.
The reason? Bugs. Bedbugs, that is.
“I’m really, really scared,” said 22-year-old student Della Pirrie. “I’ve been thinking about it all day.”
Pirrie wasn’t the only one. A pest problem that first emerged in Paris two weeks ago may have ended up in London, and beyond, thanks to the Eurostar.
That’s the theory, anyway, to explain an apparent sighting of one of the bugs on the Victoria line, a video supposedly showing one on a passenger’s leg (although experts say it’s impossible to be certain which insect is pictured). Various other sightings have been reported on other tube lines.
A couple of bedbugs have allegedly been spotted on trains in the north of England, too.
This reporter did not spot any bugs during a trip on the tube – and on a train departing from Walthamstow Central most passengers claimed a seat. But others were not taking chances.
Jason Cervantes, 31, who was on his way to work in a dental practice, feared that bed bugs were all over the underground, and said as a precaution he would be “not taking a seat, standing up, and probably taking the overground [instead]”.
At home, he planned to clean his bedsheets regularly and look out for signs. “It’s strange – bedbugs are very serious.”
Pirrie admitted she was an anxious person generally, and her worries had been compounded by stressing over how she would keep her student accommodation bug-free.
“Even if I do my best I don’t know how protected I’ll be. I don’t know if I would get in trouble if I covered my room in pesticides.”
Pirrie had ordered a steamer on Monday night, and had not wanted to travel until it arrived, but needed to attend a doctor’s appointment. She said she planned to avoid sitting down, and would change her sheets in the evening.
She had heard that the Victoria line was “one of the worst rated for cleanliness in general”.
Charles Martineau, 34, a software engineer returning home after lunch with friends in King’s Cross, took a more relaxed approach.
“I’m French, I was in Paris last weekend … so I brought all of them back with me,” he joked.
His mother had told him about the supposed sighting on the Victoria line in the morning, but he thought that fears were “overblown”. He said his friends in Paris were not worried, and had not picked up any bedbugs despite the videos circulating on social media.
He said: “There’s bedbugs everywhere all the time, it can happen to anybody. I’m not particularly worried. There’s nothing much you can do anyway. I’d rather they don’t come but I think it’s all right.”
Transport for London has said it is disinfecting trains nightly, and the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, is consulting officials in Paris to avoid a repeat of the outbreak in London – but the pests are on the increase globally due to greater travel post-pandemic, the climate crisis and pesticide resistance.
