London underground bed bug fears

[50yearsdowntheroad]

We travelled to London at the weekend with DC. They are too big to be carried and too little to stand on moving train so they sat down.

I never sit on the tube or trains as I am terrified of catching bed bugs.

What are the likelihood we brought some home after a short ride (2 x 6 stops)?

Oh we all have bed bugs down here OP, you just learn to live with them.

You get used to the itching eventually.

Vanishingly small. I've lived in London for 30 years and travel by tube daily and have never had them.

They will be riddled.

I don’t know anyone who has picked up bed bugs in the tube and I commute by tube as do my colleagues

so I would say infinitesimally small

Jesus Christ.

This is not serious surely?
Is this a thing? I've been a tube user since the 1960s and this is the first I have heard of "bed bugs on the tube".

Sorry I had to laugh at this response 😆

Tube seats are covered in too much human excrement and bodily fluids to be able to host bed bugs so I wouldn't worry 😅

I caught the tube to work and home again everyday for 8/9 years and never caught bed bugs and neither have any of my friends or colleagues, probably more likely to get the plague

Ive lived in London for years. When friends and family come to visit they shave all over in advance so they dont catch lice from public transport at busy times (on my recommendation: it's what I do anyway). It has been a cold winter but I have a lovely selection of woolly hats.

Tsk, it’s predominantly rats’ excrement and urine @Crunchymum - are you always such an ignoramus? 😂

Christ on a cracker.

This is surely a new low for MN 'anxiety' posts?

OP, you must know that your fears are not normal and are totally groundless. Do you have OCD? Health anxiety? I really strongly advise you to get help with this. It's not good for your children to grow up with these kind of attitudes. My mother has struggled with chronic anxiety all her life and it has affected the rest of the family too.

Are you the same person who cannot sleep in hotel rooms either due to your extreme phobia?

I’m hoping it’s actually a joke?

Just in case it isn’t – OP, do you normally worry irrationally about other things in life? I mean, how did you get to London in the first place? Did you take the train because your children are equally as likely (in other words, not at all!) To have picked up bedbugs from the train seats. What did you do in London? I hope you didn’t let your children touch door handles or sides of the escalator to get down to the tube, far more likely to get some winter bug from that kind of thing then bedbugs from a tube seat.

Why are public transport seats upholstered? Surely plastic would be more hygienic?

Never even crossed my mind.

I've lived in London for 47 years, use the tube all the time and have never caught them.

I have been stabbed five times though, so swings and roundabouts. 😉

Incredibly uncomfortable to sit on plastic seats, especially in hot weather. I assume the upholstery is regularly cleaned. We travel very regularly all over the network and given the huge numbers travelling the upholstery doesn't look particularly grubby. As a routine precaution I wash my hands when I get home or at the next opportunity, but I'd do that wherever I'd been.

I live in London, use the tube loads, will certainly sit on any free seat unless it's obviously covered in something gross (think this has happened once in all my years of using the tube, and that was late at night) and have never got bed bugs or anything else from doing so.

0.0000000000001% my guess

You might as well sit down, op. They climb up your legs anyway and land on you from the ceiling.
Enjoy your next train ride 😁

This post is mad.

Did you not go through the disinfection chamber and footbath as you left the station?
They're clearly marked at all the exits. Only takes a moment and is included in the fare.

As a Londoner we are always getting bedbugs, and scabies. You have to cover yourself in detol and burn all your clothes. Do not stop hoovering... for at least a week. Buy an extra tumble dryer and boil wash and dry all of your soft furnishings...

You didn't hold on to a pole while on the train right?