HOWEVER, it’s not just you, Nomo. I also agree in apartments, it’s another ballgame. If you are not the only infested unit (and multi-building dwelling Reader, you are probably not), then this approach–used in just your unit– is not so good. The building’s problems will continue to grow, and that’s not in your best interest.

Perhaps his method works, no? It’s essentially cleaning the bugs and eggs away. If you persist with such a plan, you can probably win, provided there is early detection and the infestation is localized. In other cases, if only it were that easy! Imagine, Nobugs, we could pack up and go back to what we were doing before bedbugs. You could leave the blog for the historians.

Seriously, I do think that people who live in apartments have a larger responsibility to notify their landlords and neighbors and shouldn’t “wait and see” while they try different things themselves, but that’s just me.

DDT coming back is probably not an option for so many reasons, but ask any really elderly people you know about bed bugs, or read some early 20th C literature, and bed bugs come up. They didn’t from the late 40s to the 90s.

I’d love to know if they came back at that shelter. I know many people toss out their beds and get some treatment and are “much better” for a while. Initial treatments can make enough difference that you think the problem is solved. For a long time.

Often they come back, though this may be because a neighbor took the bed.
I hope the shelter destroyed those bunk beds.

Fagerlund appears to be anti-pesticide, but he uses a spray with pyrethrins (PT-565), which IS a pesticide. Tossing out 30 bunkbeds whenever you get bed bugs isn’t very green, so it must be for health reasons that he objects to other types of pesticides, right?

On the other hand, fresh water food grade DE is a super good idea for shelters, which are being re-exposed to bed bugs constantly. Shelters should implement DE after whatever other treatment they get, in my opinion, as should anyone who feels their exposure may be ongoing (for example, if you suspect you got bed bugs from work, regular travel, or a relative).

Fagerlund insists the national reports are exaggerated. “Bedbugs have been with us ever since we left the Garden of Eden, or the cave, whichever you believe,” he said. “It’s just a myth propagated by the pesticide industry that bedbugs are coming back.”

One thing to believe bedbugs never left, which I believe myself, and another to say ridiculous things just for kicks.

Well, at least he helped the people in the shelter!

(I can’t find the moving with bedbugs column but I remember it distinctly.)

But on the subject of bedbugs, there’s much I find annoying. I once read his advice to someone who asked how to move with bedbugs and he basically said take whatever you want. He is convinced that more than one treatment for bedbugs is unnecessary. (Yeah, putting pest control expert in scare quotes is probably not making him any PCO friends. But, he’s so against pesticides, it doesn’t matter.)

A PCO wrote to him about this one treatment stuff. The PCO has his own issues in framing failure as the tenants’ failure, but Fagerlund’s reply is sad.

But the winner is the above quote about the hotel stay. No doubt someone might find it amusing, but it better not be anyone here. ;(

Bed bugs don’t carry diseases. I get a very small mark when they bite me.

I slept in a hotel recently that had bedbugs. I knew they were there and didn’t pay any attention to them. The next morning I had a few little marks that were of no consequence and I left behind a few fat and happy bedbugs in the room.

Oh, the “spray with soap and water,” yes, I saw that. But it’s way too easy and I’ll leave the bugman alone.

In the link you mention, Fagerlund says this:

“Of course, in any bedbug infestation there may be extenuating circumstances that will require attention. This could include lots of boxes in the room, wooden floors with slats where bedbugs can hide, etc.”

It is interesting that he says this. I do think such “extenuating circumstances” are much more frequent than he implies. For example, many, many people have bed bugs in their sofas.

Many people also seem to have them in their baseboards and other areas of the room. We know many PCOs use chemicals to flush them out of such places.

I have no idea if this method works, and it seems to only attack the bed, and surrounding area. Which from everything I’ve read, is not enough.