As bedbugs have made a comeback, aided by resistance to pesticides and spread by worldwide travel, scientists have found that panic over the blood-sucking pests may be more dangerous than their bite. Some people are misusing poisonous chemicals in a desperate bid to eradicate the pests, federal officials said Thursday. 
 
 At least 111 people in seven states — 64 of them in New York City — have been sickened by the overuse or misuse of common pesticides against bedbugs over the last eight years, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. One person who became ill, a woman in North Carolina, died after dousing her home and herself with pesticides. 
 
 The poisonings serve as a warning, experts said, that people could do more damage to their health by misusing pesticides than they would suffer from the bedbugs, which are upsetting and unpleasant, but not known to be carriers of disease. 
 
 “People lose their minds and, yeah, they’ll do a lot of things trying to get rid of them,” said Dini M. Miller, associate professor of urban pest management at Virginia Tech. “Certainly the overapplication of pesticides is one of them.” 
 
 When Lilah Gray started getting bitten by bedbugs, all she could think of was getting rid of them. Her husband sprayed and saturated their double-wide trailer home in Rocky Mount, N.C., with pesticides. But convinced that she could still feel the bugs crawling on her, Ms. Gray soaked a napkin with Hot Shot Bedbug and Flea Killer and applied it directly to her chest, then soaked her hair in pesticide and put a plastic bag over it. 
 
 Within a few days, Ms. Gray, 65, who had a history of breathing problems, was hospitalized and breathing with the aid of a ventilator. She died on May 26, 2010, of respiratory failure, which, a federal official said Thursday, is believed to have been exacerbated by high doses of pesticides. Most of the other poisoning cases were mild, with victims commonly having headaches, dizziness, shortness of breath, nausea and vomiting. 
 
 Ms. Gray is the only known fatality. But the actual number of poisonings could be far larger, because the federal study looked only at the 12 states that conduct surveillance of pesticide-related illnesses. 
 
 New York City had the most cases, followed by the rest of New York State, Washington, Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, Texas and California. New York City health officials said the numbers were higher in the city because the health department had actively searched for suspected bedbug poisoning cases. 
 
 The most common reasons for poisoning were excess use of insecticide, failure to wash or change bedding that had been treated with pesticide, and failure to notify the people living in the home that the pesticides had been applied. 
 
 Almost all of the cases, including the death, involved the use of pyrethroids, pyrethrins or both, which are commonly found in drugstore and hardware store pesticides, and widely available in over-the-counter shampoos used to treat head lice in children. 
 
 When Ms. Gray complained of bedbugs, her husband applied Ortho Home Defense Max to baseboards, walls and the area surrounding her bed, and Ortho Bug-B-Gon Max Lawn and Garden Insect Killer to her mattress and box spring, according to the federal report. Neither is registered for use on bedbugs. 
 
 Over several days, Ms. Gray’s husband used nine cans of Hot Shot Fogger and nine cans of Hot Shot Bedbug and Flea Fogger in their home. Ms. Gray also applied the bedbug and flea killer to her skin and hair. 
 
 Ms. Gray’s daughter, Theresa G. Thomas, said she had pleaded with her mother to stop using the pesticides. But, Ms. Thomas said, “She felt things were crawling all over her.” Ms. Gray slept on a sheet placed over a mattress that had been freshly saturated with pesticide, her daughter said. 
 
 Federal investigators believe that Ms. Gray died of “pesticide exposure in conjunction with chronic medical problems,” including heart, lung and kidney disease, according to Dr. Geoffrey M. Calvert, senior medical officer at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. 
 
 Ms. Thomas, a school counselor, said she had had a hard time getting her mother’s doctor to listen to her concerns about the pesticides, and felt vindicated by the federal report. 
 
 “I hope we can save another family from going through what we went through,” she said. 

 ATLANTA – Worried about bedbugs? Maybe you should be more concerned about the insecticides used to get rid of them. 
 
 A government study counted one death and 80 illnesses linked to bedbug insecticides over three years. Many were do-it-yourselfers who misused the chemicals or used the wrong product. And most of the cases were in New York City. 
 
 The study released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the first to look at the issue. 
 
 The CDC was able to only get data from seven states, including New York, where bedbugs have become a highly publicized problem and where health officials have also been extra vigilant about unusual chemical poisonings. 
 
 Investigators said they didn't know what to expect, but were relieved to see a relatively small number of cases. 
 
 "At this point, it's not a major public health problem," said Dr. Geoff Calvert, a CDC investigator who co-authored the study. 
 
 Bedbugs are wingless, reddish-brown insects that bite people and animals to draw blood for their meals. Though their bites can cause itching, they have not been known to spread disease. 
 
 "There's nothing inherently dangerous about bedbugs," said Dr. Susi Vassallo, an emergency medicine doctor who works at New York City's Bellevue Hospital Center and occasionally deals with patients talking about bedbugs. 
 
 Vassallo, who is also a toxicologist, said most of the insecticides used against bedbugs are not a health risk but should still be applied by a trained exterminator. 
 
 The CDC looked at reports from California, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, New York, Texas and Washington, the only states that tracked such illnesses. The study counted 111 cases in the years 2003 through 2010. Most occurred in the last few years, when bedbug reports rose across the country. More than half were in New York City. 
 
 Most were people with headaches or dizziness, breathing problems or nausea and vomiting. 
 
 The one death in 2010 was a 65-year-old woman from Rocky Mount, N.C., who had a history of heart trouble and other ailments. She and her husband used nine cans of insecticide fogger one day, then the same amount two days later, without opening doors and windows to air out their home afterward. She also covered her body and hair with another bedbug product, and covered her hair with a plastic cap. 
 
 CDC officials said it's not clear that the insecticides were a definite cause of illness in each of the cases, and it's possible some were coincidental. 
 
 About 90 percent of the cases were linked to pyrethroids or pyrethrins, common insecticides sometimes used against bedbugs. But in some cases, an incorrect and more dangerous product was used. That happened in Ohio last year, when an uncertified exterminator used malathion — which should never be used indoors — to rid an apartment of bedbugs. A couple and their 6-year-old child got sick. 
 
 The report was released through a CDC publication, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 
 
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 Online: 
 
 CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr
– Don’t let the bedbugs bite—but if they do, don’t panic. While the creatures themselves aren’t known to cause much more than itching, the chemicals used to get rid of them have been linked to 111 illnesses and a death between 2003 and 2010, a CDC study finds. Some 64 of the reports came from New York City, though the CDC could get data from only seven states. The numbers of cases are thankfully small, investigators found: “At this point, it's not a major public health problem.” Many of the illnesses occurred after people made mistakes in an effort to do their own exterminating, USA Today notes. Take the disturbing case of a 65-year-old woman who washed her hair in pesticide and placed an insecticide-soaked towel on her chest. She died of respiratory failure. The upshot, experts tell the New York Times: Fear of bedbugs may be a greater threat than the bugs themselves. “People lose their minds and, yeah, they’ll do a lot of things trying to get rid of them,” says a professor.