The comment went to moderation because of the links. It wanted me to check for spam, I guess. It now appears where you originally posted, Nomo, just above your “Uh oh.”

Loved the rant, by the way. I’ll comment further later, once I gather my thoughts.

And yet, after 6 months of bedbugs, I’ve finally started to really read the university fact sheets and advice that is out there. Yes, I’ve read a lot of it before, but not with such exhausted impatience. Advice from the experts obviously and yet, surprisingly, a lot of it is not pretty. (Yes, I know, hopefully they’re all working and too busy to rethink them.) What I find most confusing is the way they present the idea of IPM.

We are incessantly told that IPM is the answer to bedbug infestations. Integrated Pest Management, I looked it up to be sure, appears to be an ecologically-aware approach to pest control that uses a variety of methods of treatment with the aim to reduce the use and reliance on pesticides. What does that mean exactly, for your average bedbug infestation? Well, according to this Cornell document (PDF) aptly titled “Bed bugs are back! An IPM answer” it means vacuuming, cleaning, making the bed “an island” and sealing crevices. OK, so far so good, I think. Effort and thoroughness plus time:

Whatever techniques you use to manage the infestation, give them time. It’s extremely difficult to penetrate all of the bed bugs’ hiding places, so even if your IPM approach is working, you may see a few living bed bugs for a week to ten days. After two weeks, if you still see many bed bugs, restart your IPM efforts.

Wait a minute! A lot of impolite responses come to mind. ‘What, are you kidding me?’ perhaps the most prominent. If I still see bugs after two weeks, restart my IPM efforts? Really, tell me more. What about the dreaded P word? Indeed! The document has a small section, almost an afterthought, that is titled “What about pesticides?” Uh huh, what about pesticides?

Pesticides are another option for killing bed bugs, but as early as 1948 there were reports of bed bugs that were resistant […]; such resistance complicates efforts to manage populations using pesticides. Luckily, several types of less toxic products for killing bed bugs are now available, and because some of these products work in different ways, bed bugs also won’t be able to develop resistance to them as easily.

Maybe it’s unfair to pick on this one fact sheet from Cornell which was written in 2003, and I don’t even want to touch the DDT question which I omitted from the quote. But really, pesticides are another option? And luckily less toxic products are now available? Less toxic and also less effective, surely, no? If you have any idea of what having bedbugs is like and what trying to kill them is really like, do you not think just maybe this document is piling on insult upon injury upon insult? What is it that I don’t understand about IPM and bedbugs? Why do I have this throat-constricting feeling that this document thoroughly fails ordinary people like me, the bedbug suffering public, as we look for answers to our bedbug nightmares?

At least the University of Kentucky has a mildly more compelling view on pesticides:

While the former measures are helpful, insecticides are important for bed bug elimination.

Indeed.

Rant over.

Wrong direction to take a conversation about landlord/tenant responsibilities.