A growing invasion of bedbugs led to the introduction yesterday of a bill to ban the sale of “reconditioned” mattresses in the city.

The legislation, sponsored by a City Council member from the Upper West Side, Gale Brewer, also would establish a five-member task force to create policy to combat a citywide and nationwide outbreak of bedbugs, on a scale not seen in the 60 years since the insecticide DDT was first used to combat the blood-sucking insect.

“This is a public health threat,” Ms. Brewer said. “It is a housing issue. … If we don’t stop it now it’s going to get worse.”

Banning reconditioned mattresses, which are generally nothing more than old mattresses with new covers, would go a long way in curbing the city’s bedbug problem, the proprietor of Bug Off Pest Control Center in Washington Heights, Andy Linares, said.

While enforcement of the law introduced yesterday would fall to the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs, its author had not yet determined if it would include a ban on selling used mattresses or on picking up roadside furniture. That would be a question the task force would address, Ms. Brewer said.

The project director for the West Side SRO Law Project, Adam Wein stein, said complaints about bedbugs, once unheard of, now occur weekly. Still, awareness of the spreading problem, which was reported in March in The New York Sun, has propelled people to respond more quickly to possible infestations.

“People are aware and are going to act a lot quicker,” Mr. Linares, who charges from $350 to $7,500 for his services, said.

The bed bug – which is small, has no wings, and emerges at night to feed on human blood, leaving itchy welts on its victims but not carrying disease – has also stirred an industry-wide response that has led to better training, Mr. Linares said.

Experts blame the bugs’ resurgence on globalization and frequent travel to far-off places, where bedbugs end up as stowaways on clothing and goods brought into the country.