Back in 1929, Athens was apparently crawling (sorry) in bed bugs.

What to do?

Time magazine reported on one way of cutting down the population. (Warning: you have to skim past commentary on “ignorant and indolent” bedbugged Europeans to get to this.)

Last week one who has been vexed by Athenian bedbug pricks, Dr. N. T. Lorando, chief physician of the Evangelismos Hospital and Near East Relief at Athens, published in Scientific Monthly a learned treatise on bedbugs and biological bedbug hunters.

In the U. S., Dr. Lorando’s research reveals, red house ants attack bedbugs, dismember them, carry off body fragments to their nests. Florida peasants advocate introducing the ants artificially to homes.

Cockroaches are also voracious bedbug hunters so. in some places, is the kissing or assassin bug.

Disclaimer: no, you do not want red house ants, cockroaches, kissing or assassin bugs in your home. Centipedes also eat bed bugs, but they can sting if perturbed, so don’t call in troops of centipedes. None of this is a good bed bug treatment plan.

That out of the way, this is the juicy part:

But the insect of choice, in Dr. Lorando’s experience is Thanatos flavidus Simon, a spider. Bedbugs will run from an irate human, but they apparently have no fear of Thanatos flavidus Simon. He catches the bugs by their backs and sucks out their blood and juices until only a shell remains. So efficacious is Thanatos flavidus Simon that he thoroughly cleaned an Athenian suburb where bedbugs were so thick that householders were obliged to sweep them off the floors and sidewalks. Dr. Lorando reports that the spider is not poisonous to humans, is less objectionable about the house than are ants, cockroaches or kissing bugs.

Why can’t I find any photos on google images of, or other relevant links to “Thanatos flavidus Simon”?

Perhaps some of our friendly, neighborhood entomologists can tell us if something was spelled wrong by Time.

Could Thanatos flavidus Simon really have “cleaned an Athenian subsurb” of bed bugs?

Could this spider be of any use today?

I have a hunch we first have to find out what moniker he’s really using…

Time was referencing this article:

LORANDO, N. T., 1929: A biological method of destroying bedbugs. Sci. Monthly 29, 265-268.

Thanks to spideyjg, apparently an arachnid fan, for sharing this link in the forums.

Richard Jebb, the first tenant of this building to sue the landlords, lost his case.

A second person, a former tenant, is suing the landlord of the rooming house at 23-25 Temple St. in Nashua, according to the Nashua Telegraph.

Capricia Osirus, a former tenant of 23-25 Temple St., filed a summons in Hillsborough County Superior Court in Nashua last month alleging that the owners of 23-25 Temple Street Realty LLC failed to correct a bedbug infestation in her unit for more than six months in 2007 and 2008.

She’s claiming she suffered “serious, severe, painful and permanent injuries” (presumably the bed bug bites) and that she will continue to be caused pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life in the future.

Osirus, “sustained serious, severe, painful and permanent injuries,” as a result of negligent handling of the bedbug infestation at the building, Sheppard wrote, adding that Osirus had been “caused and will be caused in the future to endure pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life.”

Your thoughts?

This MSNBC article by Anya Yurchyshyn, a Budget Travel writer, describes how Motel 6 is changing its room designs to make the rooms cooler and more functional.

The upgrades may also make rooms less bed bug-friendly than traditional-style US hotel rooms.

Of particular relevance to our topic of interest: upgrades to beds and flooring.

The Motel 6 beds are moving to simple, clean platforms and ditching the box springs and bed skirts:

3. Bed Platform

Beds give the room a sense of openness because guests can see beneath them; the sight line isn’t interrupted by a bed frame and skirt. There’s also more room to store luggage.

I hope you don’t mean we should store luggage under the bed!  That’s a big no-no, where bed bugs are concerned.

Anyway, the beds look like they have a clean, washable covering, as opposed to the bedspread idea traditional in US hotels.

And floors are going naked:

5. Floors

The carpeting is being replaced by floors made of composite wood and plastic laminate. “A lot of people feel that carpets aren’t very clean,” says Priestman.

(That’s Paul Priestman of Brit design firm Priestman and Goode.)

Yes, you can still get bed bugs in a room that has simple furniture and no carpeting.  (And it does not matter how cheap or expensive the hotel is.)

But with fewer frills and fewer layers, it’s easier to locate bed bugs when you inspect the room, and if they’re found, it’s easier for a pest control professional to get rid of them.

Rooms like this make it easier for staff to inspect rooms for bed bugs (as I really hope they are doing), and easier for them to spot bed bugs. It’s therefore easier to respond to bed bug problems if and when they arise.

Since I (cough) “became aware of” bed bugs, I admit to choosing my hotels from tripadvisor.com based not only on reviews (or rather, the lack of reviews mentioning bed bugs), but also in part on the design apparent in room photos.

I prefer hotel rooms that have the kind of bed coverings which need to be washed regularly (like uncovered white comforters), and beds without a lot of frilly action in the bedskirt and bedspread department.

And I’d rather inspect a room where I can really see under the bed, look at the edges of the floor, etc. All in all, I am happy to see any motel chain moving in this design direction.

As a good-sized city, the state capitol of Wisconsin, and a big college town (which means lots of students who tend to move frequently and often try to furnish homes on a budget), you can imagine bed bugs might be taking hold in Madison. From the Capitol Times, last Thursday, on the brink of the biggest moving day of the year: a warning to watch out for bed bugs in curbside furniture and mattresses.

Warning tenants about bed bugs mainly seems to be a yearly event in Madison, coinciding with the city’s big move-out in mid-August, when thousands of people move (either to Madison, from Madison, or from one apartment to another). This article seems to be part of a yearly tradition. Everyone needs to know that mattresses, sofas, and any other items left curbside could contain bed bugs, and transmit them to your home. People also need to know that unexplained itching, bed bug bites, or even sightings of bed bugs could occur in their new apartments, and they should be on guard for these and ready to seek help.

Here’s an article from August 17, 2007 (interesting in that it claims Wisconsin’s “relatively nice hotels” were the first places in the state to be infested — an intriguing statement, if it’s true).

Here’s another piece from the same paper on August 21, 2006, which is also notable, since it reports that a family had an apartment application rejected because they were moving from a building known to have bed bugs:

One family was rejected at a Fitchburg apartment complex last month partly because they had lived at an infested apartment at 2210 Rosenberry Road in the Allied Drive area.

Both Madison City Attorney Michael May and Tenant Resource Center program director Megin McDonell say landlords are probably within their legal rights to reject an applicant for prior bedbugs.

“It doesn’t seem fair, but there is nothing in the ordinance that prohibits that screening criteria,” McDonell said Thursday.

We have not heard of this happening elsewhere, but I do not doubt it has happened.

Another source of concern in Madison: there’s an ordinance in the city which allows tenants to take care of certain repairs and deduct expenses from their rent (the Rent Abatement ordinance).  And according to this October 2006 Capital Times article, pests may be one issue tenants are encouraged to (or may think they can) resolve under this “self help” ordinance:

The intent of the new “self-help” ordinance, approved unanimously by the council Tuesday, is to allow tenants to address certain problems and, after review by the city’s building inspectors, deduct the expenses from their rent payments.

Shakira Parker said she would like to deduct the $75 she spent on insecticides to try to kill the cockroaches in her apartment in the Allied Drive neighborhood.

Several others also listed insect infestations first among the problems that landlords in the area have neglected. Tenants described sending children off to school, covered in bedbug bites.

The Capital Times was uncertain whether pest control might be among the problems tenants are encouraged and allowed to “fix” themselves according to the then-new self-help ordinance, which states that:

If, in the end, the landlord was unresponsive to a problem that the city deemed in need of repair, the tenant could be reimbursed for 125 percent of the costs.

Fixing a leak or patching a hole is one thing, but the idea of tenants self-treating for bed bugs is a terrible one. The ordinance does not allow for tenants fixing problems that could threaten safety or harm living conditions, but if tenants even think they can get reimbursed for treating their own bed bugs under the law, this is bad:

George Hank, director of the city’s inspection unit, said he was “generally very supportive” of the law, but said was concerned with how it might affect the use of insecticides.

If tenants take insect control into their own hands and believe they will be reimbursed for their efforts, he said, they might apply pesticides on top of other pesticides, possibly also duplicating efforts a landlord is already trying.

“That could create health hazards,” he said.

Yes it could. We think bed bug treatment is best done by a licensed and experienced professional who knows bed bugs, both because they can get rid of bed bugs more thoroughly and quickly, and because they know how to do it safely.

Bed bugs may be among the problems Madison landlords neglect, but they are the last problem in the world that tenants should be encouraged to try and self treat. Doing so can make them spread, and even cause harm to the individual.

For more on bed bugs in Madison, see this brochure “Don’t Pick Up Bed Bugs” from Madison’s excellent Tenant Resource Center (click here to load a PDF).

Note to Wisconsin residents: the Tenant Resource Center is a good place to look into your rights as a tenant in the state of Wisconsin, not just in Madison. Information is given here on your rights in Madison and Milwaukee, and phone numbers are provided for Building Inspectors and other resources in cities state-wide.

Did anyone attend today’s bed bug conference in Cincinnati?

According to a Kentucky Post blurb which preceded the conference,

More than 400 people are expected to learn about the latest ways to prevent and eradicate the bugs. They’ll also talk about ways that landlords can help keep bugs from making a home in their buildings. Bed bug cases are expected to rise by 35% this year in Cincinnati.

If you were there, let us know how it went!

Update: WBNS 10TV has a piece on the Cincinnati Health Department’s bed bug conference. It says officials reported complaints of bed bugs in Cincinnati have doubled in the past year:

Officials said the number of bed bug complaints in the city have doubled since last year. Eliminating an infestation can be difficult.

“In the southwest Ohio region, the bed bug species are very resistant to pesticides that are available,” said Camille Jones of the Cincinnati health department.

It may take months of repeated insecticide applications to remove bed bugs from a home, experts said.

Click here to see the video!

Question: Do you live in Astoria, Queens and have bed bugs?

Want to move out of your bed bug-infested apartment and avoid the hassle of destroying and tossing out your infested furniture and other items, including a futon and a captain’s bed, and stuffed animals?

Want to expose lots of people and their neighbors, co-workers, relatives and friends to bed bugs?

Great!

Here’s what you do:

1. Place ad on Craigslist offering nearly all of your possessions for free.

I apologize if this is a duplicate. I thought I posted it but now I can’t find it, so I’m trying again

FREE STUFF!!!!!! I am moving Saturday morning, so everything needs to go ASAP. Please email me to arrange for pickup. This list is *NOT* inclusive. As I pack, more stuff is being added…

2. Include detailed list of items available and warnings that the items have been exposed to bed bugs in your infested home.

I have to start with the warning: the home these items come from have bedbugs. HOWEVER, many of these items were from rooms where I never saw any evidence of bugs or will be easily cleaned. I just don’t have the time to do it myself!

3. Wipe your hands clean and don’t think twice about the carnage which will most surely follow.

Yes, sure, you gave the warnings, so you’re ethically absolved of all responsibility. Have a nice day!

The truth is, everyday people take bed bug infested stuff off the curb which has warnings attached. People can be idiots.

So if you don’t destroy or debug your stuff, you are spreading bed bugs.

You’re spreading the itchiness and discomfort of bed bug bites, the cost of pest control and replacing possessions, the many hours of sleep, and hours and hours of work. You’ll likely cause others to have to move too, at great expense of time and money.

Don’t kid yourself that the warnings you gave will prevent others from suffering. If you have bed bugs in your home, people could pick them up and take them home just by coming over to get something of yours, let alone taking it in their car or into their home.

Thanks to Aly of A Little Aly-tude for the find, for warning her public, (and for the shout out!)

If ad has been removed, see screenshot here.

This article from the Hounslow Chronicle (in London) on Tuesday reports that some UK housing authorities are no longer paying for tenants’ bed bug treatment, due to the rise in cases.

It tells the story of Claire Prince, 24. She and her four children are sleeping on floors, air mattresses, and in a stroller, since their beds were discarded due to bed bugs.

Sadly, what’s coming between the family and a good night’s sleep is bed bug treatment. And the cost isn’t terribly high, by other regions’ pest control standards:

David [Cain of Bed-bugs.co.uk], who claims west London hotspots for bed bugs include neighbouring Twickenham (TW1), said the problem can only be fixed by professionals but many housing authorities are removing responsibility from tenancy agreements following the rise in cases.

In Claire’s case it would cost her £130 to have two rooms in her home treated by Hounslow Council pest control contractors. Hounslow Homes claim it is the tenants’ responsibility to eradicate the pests. But as a single mum, Prince says this is a cost she simply can’t afford.

I can understand why housing authorities might feel the pinch. Landlords, where required to pay for bed bug treatment, do too.

Unfortunately, if a family cannot get prompt and high quality bed bug treatment, they won’t get rid of their bed bugs. This puts their neighbors — and others who are in contact with the family at work or school or on public transit — at risk of getting the problem too.

Everyone needs treatment for bed bugs, regardless of ability to pay. Governments need to find a solution for this. “Each person for him or herself” does not work, because bed bugs can spread easily to others.

As long as someone in your community has a bed bug problem, so do you.

This is a fascinating little news study, a Fox segment focusing on how a Chicago landlord, Barry Chernovsky, and his tenants are blaming one another for bed bugs.

Let me clear things up for you all out there in Chicagoland, and everywhere else (because this debate is going on everywhere):

Mr. Landlord: it is not okay to order your janitor to spray pesticides commercial air freshener in people’s apartments. As you saw, this made a kid have a serious asthma attack. Frankly, it looked like he had a pesticide spray can, and it seems like maybe the implication was he was treating for bed bugs. (That’s a bit strange.)

While we’re on the subject, there are lots of reasons untrained and unlicensed people should not be treating bed bugs in other peoples’ homes. They can harm themselves and others, and they can also make bed bugs worse. It’s also illegal in many places.

Also, Mr. Landlord: it is not okay to declare everything is just hunky dory even if, as you claim, your building is 95% bed bug free after one and a half years of treatment. One and a half years is a long time. I am not sure how big this building was, but there were a number of tenants in this segment. Were they the only ones who still have bed bugs?

Mr. Tenant: the landlord is right to be pissed off that you dragged bed bug-infested refuse from the dumpster back into your home. You may not suffer from bed bug bites because you may not be allergic to them. Or maybe they did not reach you yet, so you think this whole bed bug thing is just a silly notion. However, you should trust your neighbors when they tell you they are suffering, badly. If you still don’t give a hoot, I suggest you play along and avoid being tarred and feathered by an angry mob of neighbors, your fellow tenants.

As an outside observer, I note that some of these wrong ideas and bad behaviors can be chalked up to ignorance, a lack of bed bug education, if you will. This kind of ignorance about bed bugs wastes money, wastes time, and makes people physically suffer.

But besides plain ignorance, it seems like there’s a serious lack of empathy here. It’s a good thing, then, that there are laws to protect us from neighbors and landlords who are lacking in empathy for us.

As Alderman Joe Moore told Fox, the law in Chicago says the landlord has to get rid of pests in the building. Bed bugs take a lot of work and a lot of knowledge.

However, the bed bug blame game, and air freshener, do nothing to help get rid of bed bugs.

I liked the dermatologist in this segment, who understood that bed bugs could “psychologically make you go bonkers.”

The City of Chicago Department of Public Health has its own bed bug FAQs.

Not bad, but it would help to tell people that a sizeable percentage of the population appears to not react to bed bug bites. Those folks are often the key to ridding a building of bed bugs: find out who has bed bugs and has no idea they have them, and you’re on your way. Letting people know that being bitten without reacting is a possibility is essential.

Blogger Roy Edroso did a nice rundown of recent bed bug situation in NYC in the Voice’s Runnin’ Scared news blog Monday.

Edroso is right on the money in suggesting that bed bugs are not just one of those things the alarmist media wants us to think are “on the rise;” this is a real problem which shows every sign of getting worse, and no sign of going away.

And like most New Yorkers, Edroso has his own vicarious bed bug stories:

A friend of ours a few blocks up got bedbugs in 2006. She set all her bedding out in the street with large, clear signage explaining the situation; within an hour, someone had taken her mattress anyway.

Thinking back on that — a guy or a couple of guys ripping the BEDBUGS sign off a mattress and hauling it away — it strikes us that the role of illiteracy, or just plain ignorant disregard, in the spread of this plague is not to be underestimated.

Indeed.

However, there are a few inaccuracies or misleading ideas here:

The City urges affected citizens to “contact your Management Office immediately so that a work ticket for a visit by a NYCHA exterminator can be filled out.” Those of us with absent or unapproachable landlords might try 311. Or maybe DDT.

NYCHA exterminators are only available to those in New York City Housing Authority buildings (i.e. public housing). DDT is not really a good option (though many people think it’s just a matter of finding some).

Calling 311, however, is an option for most NYC tenants (not in NYCHA buildings) whose landlords are not dealing with the problem. It’s a messed-up system, though. Hard to get an inspector in and even harder to get them to cite a violation. (Those who’ve had NYCHPD inspections report being asked to show the inspector where the bed bugs were. This is not always easy. Previously caught samples are not necessarily counted.)

Concerned Voice readers would do well to get behind New York vs. Bed Bugs’ campaign to get the city to do something.

On this episode of This American Life, residents of 349 St. Johns Place in Brooklyn talks about what it’s like to sleep with (and deal with) bed bugs.

It’s in Act II, “Sleep’s Tiniest Enemies,” about 45% of the way into the program.

(If you already have trouble sleeping, you might want to skip the first part of this section, where the woman from Baltimore describes her problems with roaches, which directly precedes it.)

Remember 349 St. Johns Place in Brooklyn?

Thanks to Renee for the tip.

Public housing tenants in a Grand Forks, North Dakota public housing development are suffering from bed bug bites, according to a story in he Grand Forks Herald Saturday.

The article, “Bedbugs infest GF apartment complex again,” said twelve units were infested in the 76-unit Cherry Heights complex (at 110 Cherry Street), which houses those over 62, the disabled, and people on low incomes.

The word “again” in the headline referred to the fact that one unit in the building was infested back in March. This suggests that either (a) all bed bugs in the original infestation were not killed and later spread to others, (b) bed bug infestations were present at the time in other units that were not known about, (c) one or more tenants or staff have brought bed bugs in since the March infestation, or (d) all of the above.

The article says,

After the report of bedbugs in March, the affected apartment and surrounding units were treated.

“We felt that we did have it under control. We felt we did everything that had to be done,” [executive dirctor Terry] Hanson said.

From April to July, the housing authority received no reports of bedbugs. But it’s not clear whether this is a fresh case or a lingering one, Hanson said.

It is possible that other units besides surrounding ones were infested at the time. It’s also not clear how many treatments occurred back in March. Most bed bug infestations take more than one treatment to clear up. Some take many more. If tenants do not react to bites, they may not know if bed bugs are gone. The housing authority should therefore not rely on subsequent “reports of bed bugs” before following up with further treatment.

The Grand Forks Herald said the building was being treated next week with pesticide spraying by Ecolab, and that tenants in the twelve units being treated would be asked to vacate their homes for two days during treatment.

I can only hope residents have been educated about how to avoid moving bed bugs to the hotels, motels, friends’ or relatives’ homes where they might stay during that time.

Bed bugs spread easily and one must take precautions to avoid moving them in one’s clothing or possessions. (This FAQ gives some pointers on how to avoid spreading bed bugs to others.)

The Bismarck Tribune also did a brief story on this yesterday.

If you based your assessment of the bed bug epidemic on news stories which have come out most recently from Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, and now North Dakota, you’d probably be thinking that bed bugs are mostly a problem in public housing.

This is far from the truth. All kinds of people get bed bugs in all kinds of homes. I have a hunch, though, that public housing bed bug stories are more likely to make it into the news.

Bed bugs are now more widely found on media reports on broader topics than bed bug infestations and new bed bug-proof mattress encasements. For example, this article from Time about Barack Obama’s upcoming week-long vacation visit to his native Hawai’i:

Obama is also scheduled to hold a fundraiser at the posh Halekulani Hotel in Waikiki that could rake in more than $500,000, reaping the rewards of being the first presidential nominee to travel to Hawaii since Richard Nixon in 1960. There’s no word on where he might be staying during his visit, but he may want to avoid that particular hotel, which suffered a plague of bed bugs in April, according to the Pacific Business Journal.

This is a past story from Bedbugger about a woman who claimed to encounter bed bugs at a function at the Halekulani Hotel, and bring them home.

You may be interested to know that, unlike the head of the Tennessee Hotel and Lodging Association who was quoted here yesterday as calling bed bugs a “non-issue” in Tennessee hotels, the Hawai’i hotel industry group is admitting bed bugs are a problem in Hawai’i, and is taking steps to improve the situation.

According to this article in the Pacific Business Journal,

The state House approved a nonbinding resolution in 2006 that asked the Department of Health to work with the state’s tourism liaison and the Hawaii Hotel & Lodging Association to raise awareness on dealing with bedbugs.

A symposium on dealing with bedbugs is in the works, said Murray Towill, president of the Hawaii Hotel & Lodging Association.

Great news! I am glad to hear that government and industry are admitting there is a bed bug issue in Hawai’i, and working to address it together.

There’s no doubt in my mind that bed bugs are spreading in hotels in all fifty states. Hotel industry folks everywhere should be working on stopping the spread of bed bugs, not playing ostrich and hiding their heads in the sand.