“The biggest problem in the neighborhood, after crack, is bed bugs.” Those are the words of Joseph Jones, a 70-year old resident of a Single Room Occupancy apartment (SRO) in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Jones is quoted this 2009 article from Race, Poverty and the Environment.
This week, Mission Loc@l reports that while a horrifying 73.4% of SRO residents in San Francisco’s Mission District have bed bugs, less than 12% surveyed have complained to the city about any SRO problem, apparently due to a lack of awareness that the option of calling 311 is there.
In order to counteract this lack of awareness, there’s now legislation under consideration to require SRO building landlords to display a poster alerting residents to the availability of the 311 hotline, and informing them of some reasons they might call it.
If the ordinance passes, the fine for failing to put up the poster would be $170, said William Strawn, communications manager at the Department of Building Inspection.
The poster reads: “SRO Tenants: This is your number! If your manager has not responded to your complaints about: bugs, rodents, fire hazards, second hand smoke in common areas, electrical or plumbing problems, no heat, unsanitary conditions, broken windows, or floors, or mold or mildew…Call 3-1-1.”
[Emphasis added.]
The poster is trilingual, in English, Chinese, and Spanish, and also contains contact information for the four San Francisco SRO Collaboratives, non-profit organizations which support SRO tenants.
Josh Vining, a community organizer with the Mission group, said that up until now, the service has been promoted only by word of mouth. Building inspections are less random and more complaint driven nowadays, he said, which makes the calls all the more important.
You hear that, San Francisco? Call 311 and use your complaint to drive some inspections.
All residents of a bed bug-infested building in Fruitland, Maryland were told by their landlord to toss out their sofas and mattresses before the building is treated for bed bugs.
John Justice and his neighbors were told to toss out their sofas and mattresses. The landlord gave all the residents a letter stating that their building was contaminated with bed bugs and that if they didn’t get rid of their furniture they would face fines of 110 to 300 dollars.
Sometimes items such as sofas and mattresses are so infested they need to be tossed out.
However, this is often not the case, and I am troubled to hear a landlord mandate that items must be tossed out across the board, presumably without the items having been inspected. Mattresses in particular can be encased to keep bed bugs in.
There’s no guarantee that tossing out these items will help correct the problem. It will mean residents may be living under very difficult conditions.
And it may backfire for the landlord: residents on limited budgets who have to discard such essential items may end up replacing them secondhand, potentially bringing in new bed bug problems.
Elderly and disabled residents of two buildings in Des Moines which are infested with bed bugs and other pests have filed a class-action lawsuit against their landlord.
. . . filed this week in Polk County District Court alleges that more than 250 people have suffered “unconscionable and substandard living conditions” at Ligutti Tower and Elsie Mason Manor and that management of the apartment buildings has responded with only minimal efforts to kill the bugs.
The case covers anyone who has lived with bed bugs, cockroaches, or rodents in Elsie Mason Manor or Ligutti Tower from 2007 to the present. It is one of the first suits filed under Iowa’s new consumer protection law.
The plaintiffs seek immediate treatment of the buildings, and they also want the landlord to be forced to disclose the bug problems to prospective tenants before renting. They will seek as much as $7.4 million, “in reimbursement for pain and suffering, rent overcharges and replacement of infested belongings.”
Jeff Lipman, a lawyer for the 20 elderly tenants, said the lawsuit was brought under the consumer protection law because “this is one of the few statutes that give the court the ability for immediate relief.”
In other words, a judge could order immediate fumigation but allow lawyers more time to argue about financial damages, Lipman said. Documents say Ligutti and Elsie Mason residents continue to be exposed to the bedbugs and face “extreme scarring, discomfort and sleep deprivation” if more aggressive steps are not taken.
But tenants of these buildings don’t always wait for legal channels in order to seek justice, and have at times taken matters into their own hands:
According to the documents, at least one frustrated woman, moved out – but not before she “collected a glass container of bedbugs and threw them at [building manager Frank] Spoerl.”
Update (3/19): the landlord is now investigating having thermal treatments done on the buildings as early as the end of next week, according to the Des Moines Register.
Red faces at Rentokil and its PR agency BrandsLife, which claimed research showed the typical train carriage might be home to 1,000 cockroaches, 200 bedbugs and 200 fleas. The shocking findings were widely covered in the media, but prompted some cynicism amongst scientists who actually know a thing or two about such matters. After a series of blogs questioning the research, Rentokil has published “a clarification and an apology”. This was a worst-case scenario, Rentokil now admits, based on assumptions such as the carriage never being cleaned or carrying any passengers to stamp on the pesky insects.
Note: I want to stress that the figures were presented in the media not as possibilities which “might be true” as the Independent notes, but as averages.
Of course, to those who know bed bugs in particular, cleaning train carriages, or being present to “stamp on” bed bugs is not sufficient to eliminate a bed bug infestation.
Still, Rentokil’s apology notes that other assumptions behind their hypothetical scenario were that the bus in question was left in an isolated place, with an optimal male-female bed bug ratio, a plentiful food supply, and yet — and this is the kicker where bed bugs are concerned — with no humans present.
Some debate around a story doing the rounds over last couple of weeks, when our PR Agency released numbers calculated on a hypothetical worst case scenario, which were presented as “average” or “typical”.
The blogger who got to the bottom of this story was Ben Goldacre (see his March 12 post in the Guardian). He points out in this post on Bad Science that Rentokil’s press release about the potential for pests in public transportation came the day after the company secured a £200 million five-year contract with the London Underground. The Twitterverse picked up Goldacre’s tweets about how Rentokil and PR firm Brands2Life were apparently ignoring his request for information on the figures, which no doubt helped bring about the apology (Twitter fans may enjoy this sampling).
Make no mistake, bed bugs have the potential to seriously infest public transportation. But it’s important that “research” is shared beyond the level of a soundbite and is based on information or at least presented as hypothetical and based on realistic scenarios.
Sensational reports can distract the public from the real problems posed by a pest such as bed bugs, which do get around (but not if they live on abandoned buses).
Got bed bugs? Sometimes it can be hard to tell, but determining whether you have them may be getting easier. The Bed Bug Beacon is an inexpensive active bed bug monitor for at-home use. It looks like David James, creator of the Packtite, has come up with another winner. Like the DIY dry ice monitor developed by Changlu Wang at Rutgers, it uses CO2 to detect bed bugs, but without all the dry ice hassle.
Changlu Wang’s DIY dry ice monitor is an excellent development in bed bug detection, but there were some reasons why it may not be a great tool for everyone who is trying to figure out if they have bed bugs.
First, you have to properly locate all the materials. Dry ice is the main challenge, and buying it is not easy, convenient or cheap, as some forum users discovered. In this forum thread, user New Blood reported s/he was only able to find dry ice for sale in quantities of 10 lbs. for $20. Even if dry ice is found in ideal quantities of 3 lb. a day (at $2 a lb.), and purchased every evening, New Blood estimated it would cost around $40 a week just for the dry ice. Therefore, initial setup of the DIY dry ice monitor would take it well over $50 for the first week’s use. And you have to shop for dry ice every evening.
Second, the DIY monitor requires users to do research and carefully follow directions. The most important of which concern dry ice, which is dangerous to handle.
Like the DIY dry ice monitor, the new Bed Bug Beacon uses CO2 to detect bed bugs, and gives the DIY monitor a run for its money; the manufacturer says it will be priced under $50. However, it uses pellets which are safer for the user, and easier and cheaper to obtain. The Bed Bug Beacon is reusable and comes with enough supplies to last 2 weeks; refills cost about $10 for 3 weeks more monitoring.
In effect, it’s cheaper and easier than making your own DIY monitor with dry ice. And in tests, David James found the Bed Bug Beacon to be as effective as the DIY monitor in side by side tests. (See video below for more on the trials.)
It’s important to remember, the purpose of this tool is detecting whether you have bed bugs, or still have them after treatment. It is not a tool for controlling a bed bug population. (Neither is the DIY dry ice monitor, though some of the press on it would have you thinking so.)
Supplies may be limited at the product’s launch, but you can pre-order the Bed Bug Beacon CO2 Monitor from US Bed Bugs now, for an expected shipping date of March 22 (where it currently lists at $49.95 with free shipping using code BBFREE).Note: as of 3/20, the item is not yet being shipped by the manufacturer. There is likely a lead time of a few weeks on new orders at this time.
Quantities at this time are limited to one per customer.The Bed Bug Beacon will also be available soon on the manufacturer’s website and from other distributors.
Note: your purchase via our link to US Bed Bugs helps support the running of this site at no cost to you; please read this site’s Disclosure Policy for more information.
Click below to watch the promotional video with information on field trials.
In case the embedded YouTube videos are not kind to you, click here.
I exchanged some emails with Penelope Green when she was writing the story, and I think she did a good job overall. I figured this was a good time to add a FAQ to our repertoire about bed bug sniffing dogs and what you need to know if you’re thinking of hiring one.
(My comments below are about bed bug sniffing dog teams generally, and are not specifically in reference to the firm or dog team referenced in the article.)
The most important thing for customers to know is that bed bug sniffing dog alerts need to be visually verified — by this, I mean the dog handler looks carefully in the vicinity where the dog alerted, to find evidence of bed bugs.
As I said to Penelope Green in an email last week,
Dogs that are trained [well] can be effective in sniffing out bed bugs. However, it’s important that when a dog alerts to bed bugs, its handler follows up by visually confirming the presence of bed bugs. Without a visual confirmation, the customer has no way of knowing if this is a false alert, and false alerts do happen.
False alerts have led to customers spending thousands of dollars on treatments. And in one case, a user of our forums received differing results from one bed bug sniffing dog after another (at hundreds of dollars a pop), as she tried to determine whether she had bed bugs or not.
A visual confirmation is the only way to be sure you did not receive a false alert. This is not just my own personal opinion. It’s the opinion of others who know a lot more about this topic than I do.
One of these is Dr. Michael Potter of the University of Kentucky, one of the foremost bed bug experts on in the world. Dr. Potter concurs that bed bug sniffing k9s can be very effective, and as he says, he’s followed at least five teams closely while they were at work.
Dr. Potter says a good bed bug canine team can be especially helpful in situations like movie theaters, where a large amount of space must be searched. But Dr. Potter feels dog alerts should be visually confirmed with a careful search.
Watch him in this brief video from the fall 2009 New York Pest Expo (Bed Bug Edition), where in reference to this problem of bed bug sniffing dogs alerting (without alerts being visually confirmed), Dr. Potter describes a dog handler who marks each spot where the dog “signs” and does not visually inspect these.
In response, Potter exhorts handlers to “Show me the bugs!”
So, if you’re considering hiring a dog team it is especially important to talk to the handlers about whether they visually confirm bed bug alerts. If they say this is impossible or unnecessary, remember that there are other handlers will do this, and it will give you peace of mind. As Dr. Potter says in the video above, it is not always possible to find a bed bug (e.g. one hidden inside a box spring or sofa). However, in many cases it is possible.
If a company tells you their dog is 100% effective, be vary wary. No dog (or human) is 100% effective in detecting bed bugs, and some are much less so.
If you hire a bed bug sniffing k9, here are some other things which would be helpful to ask in advance of hiring a team I am paraphrasing the recommendations of a handler in our forums who goes by the username LVK9 (a Las Vegas bed bug k9 handler):
What is included in the inspection?
Do handlers mark areas where the dog alerts?
Do handlers visually confirm alerts?
What type of documentation is left with the customer?
How much time is included in the visit?
If the k9 inspection company is also a pest control firm, can you use the pest control firm of your choice for any necessary treatment?
If you choose to use a different firm for treatment, does the price of the k9 inspection change?
Other handlers suggested you may also choose to ask what the charge would be for a follow-up inspection after treatment.
One thing consumers should be aware of is that there are warring camps in the bed bug k9 industry. One of the places the war has played out is on our forums, among handlers from different schools of thought; if you want to ask questions of those in the industry about differing approaches to dog training, certification, or protocols, this forum thread is one place to do so.
Except for this June, 2009 article from the Atlantic, the news media does not tend to mention that there are various schools of thought about bed bug sniffing dogs; instead, articles typically refer to only one team or one trainer’s dogs and protocol. As the Atlantic story clarifies, methods and protocols can vary a great deal.
Handlers with dogs from one trainer or another, or whose bed bug sniffing dog is certified by NESDCA, or not certified by NESDCA, are often adamant that what they have is what you need. So let me cut through some of the politics for you:
There are a number of companies which appear to effectively train bed bug sniffing dogs (including J&K Canine, who trained the dog mentioned in today’s NY Times article, Florida Canine Academy, and others). The name of a trainer alone is not insurance that the dog is effective, since continued training and effective handling are key.
It’s also not enough to ask whether the dog is “certified;” it’s my understanding that effective bed bug sniffing canines may or may not be certified by NESDCA. Florida Canine Academy also re-certifies its dogs yearly. Additional certification bodies may be springing up as I write this (remember, this is more or less a brand new sub-industry in canine scent detection). Recommendations from other customers and a confirmation that the handler visually confirms alerts should do a lot to guide you in selecting a dog.
Keep in mind that bed bug sniffing dogs can be a wonderful tool, but they are not all alike. And remember that every time one sits or scratches or paws at something in your home, it does not necessarily mean there are bed bugs there.
Be like Dr. Mike Potter, and ask your dog handler to “Show me the bugs!”
(What Cruiser does is detect the scent of a bug or an egg; it’s up to an exterminator, said Mr. Ecker, to visually confirm the presence of bedbugs in the spots a dog has noted.)
This means customers may have to hire a pest control firm, after already hiring the dog team, before they ever find out with any certainty that they have bed bugs present. This is why we recommend you hire a dog team which visually confirms any alerts (or at least makes a concerted effort to visually verify each alert).
Lou Sorkin also reminded me about the following statement in the article, which I did not comment on above:
Like all scent-detecting dogs, Cruiser and Freedom work for food; put another way, they are fed only when they find their target, which keeps them accurate and keen on their jobs.
It is not true that all bed bug sniffing dogs are trained with food rewards. This practice is the source of some controversy.
—
Note: this is a FAQ and a work in progress. As such, your insightful comments and suggestions are appreciated below! If you have a connection with the bed bug canine scent detection industry, you may mention this in your response, but please do not use the comments as a forum for advertising your services.
Christopher Francoeur was evicted from 415 MacLaren St. in Ottawa, after refusing to have his apartment in the infested 249-unit building treated for bed bugs.
According to a Landlord and Tenant Board ruling, the resident, Christopher Francoeur, refused to let anyone in to spray.
Francoeur claims he simply got home late from an appointment, but it does not explain why the city was turned away or locked out on seven previous occasions. The article claims the city
. . . visited Unit 1908 at least eight times. Each time, the bedbug warriors were turned away for different reasons — once because, they say, Francoeur, a 35-year-old convicted drug dealer, changed the locks.
Francoeur claims the public housing building had bed bugs before he moved in. However, this is no reason not to try and cooperate with the city’s plan to treat all the units. It is hard enough to get rid of bed bugs in a multi-unit building. If the landlord is willing to treat all units concurrently (and repeatedly, we hope), the other tenants have a better chance of getting rid of this problem.
The board ruled last month that Francoeur “substantially interfered with the reasonable enjoyment of the residential complex by the other tenants.”
We hear all of the time about such cases, where a tenant — for whatever reason — refuses treatment.
(And I love, by the way, how “reasonable enjoyment of the residential complex” translates to “trying to eliminate a blood-sucking parasite.”)
A NYC reader emailed today telling me that while she does not have bed bugs yet, she just heard someone in her building — a number of floors above her – is refusing treatment.
Even though laws may allow such tenants to be forced to cooperate with treatment or evicted, the process of enforcing them may take some time.
A bed bug was spotted on a second grade student at Sardinia Elementary School in Ohio. It’s a brand new school, and the school responded by sending the child home with information for her parents about what they needed to do.
The superintendent says the precautions are necessary to make sure other students and staff are not affected. The superintendent says cleaning crews removed carpet and used steam cleaners in classrooms. Busses were thoroughly cleaned as well.
“One was spotted and that was enough we wanted to make sure we got in front of it In the afternoon the students’ book bags and backpacks which is what could carry the insect, they put those all in clear plastic bags and gave a handout to the parents to notify them of what had happened and how they’re supposed to handle that.”
Steam can effectively kill bed bugs but if they are harboring on the premises, multiple treatments with steam as well as residual pesticides and dusts may be warranted.
I have a serious problem with several things here:
1) Just because a bed bug in the school is spotted on a particular student does not mean that student brought the bed bug in. A bed bug could crawl from the school itself, from another student’s desk or bag, and so on. The bug could have been picked up in a school bus or other transportation, or at any location in the school. Even in a brand new school, as the story stresses in this case.
2) A recent study showed nearly 1 in 6 people in Cincinnati had had bed bugs. A really high number of Ohio residents have them right now. Any student, teacher, or staff member could have brought that bed bug in, and so banning the student from school while her parents carry out certain steps is not warranted in my mind. Perhaps it would be if we had confirmation that the family did indeed have a bed bug infestation. But I would guess any number of people in that school have an active bed bug infestation right now, and it’s unfair to single out the person caught with a bed bug on them.
3) “Cleaning” does not eliminate bed bugs reliably. Even steam cleaning, which will kill bed bugs if done properly, needs to be repeated in most cases and augmented with other treatment methods. I hope this school is getting good assistance from experts who know their bed bugs.
You can watch the Local 12 news video here. I did not embed it because it’s one of those annoying ones that does not wait for one to press the “play” key, instead simply loading as the page loads.
AFP reports that the government in Madrid, Spain is educating its public about bed bugs and how to get rid of them:
Authorities in Madrid have declared war on a growing and formidable enemy — bed bugs that are infesting hotel rooms throughout the country at an alarming rate.
The government for the Madrid region has published a manual to make people and businesses more aware of the tiny pests and how to get rid of them.
The number of bed bugs actually declined in Spain in the 1950s and 60s.
But “today the situation seems to have completely changed, the declared number of cases has risen, in some cases quite significantly, approaching the level of an epidemic,” said the manual, seen by AFP on Wednesday.
It’s important for everyone in Madrid to realize that any location can become infested, not just hotel rooms.
Bed bugs seem to be spreading very quickly in all well-traveled areas of the globe. Few cities or regions are willing to declare them as “approaching an epidemic,” perhaps out of fear that tourists will stay away.
In fact, I’d much rather visit a place where business owners and individuals are educated about and talk about the prevalence of this pest, how to detect them, and how to get rid of bed bugs, as opposed to visiting a city where the hotel industry is mum on the issue, as if it did not exist.
Providing additional resources and directing the CDC to provide leadership on the bed bug issue.
Authorizing “a research program to helped develop effective methods of controlling bed bugs and other resurgent household pests.”
That
When EPA registers new products, alters or reevaluates the registration of existing products or considers petitions for emergency exemptions, it should consider factors such as (1) the impact on Americans “quality of life” when residential and other pests are not able to be controlled; (2) the risks that arise when consumers resort to overapplying ineffective products or use unregistered products or other homemade remedies and 3) the opportunity for the proliferation of inefficacious or “snake oil” type products when affordable, effective products do not exist.
And that
. . . efficacy data for all pesticide products claiming to control bed bugs, to provide assurance to the professional industry, consumers and federal and state regulatory officials that such products work as advertised. This is especially important for bed bugs control products because it is not immediately obvious when a product does not work.
Making a “concerted federal effort” to address the bed bug crisis, including the formation of a Federal Advisory Board; suggestions were made that
Congress should require the Secretaries of the Departments of Health and Human Services, Commerce and Housing and Urban Development and EPA Administrator to report to Congress on steps the federal government could take to combat the bed bug epidemic. Congress should demand greater intergovernmental cooperation and coordination by instructing the Secretaries of the Departments of Health and Human Services, Commerce and Housing and Urban Development and EPA Administrator to take measures to coordinate the federal government’s response to the crisis.
If legislators hear about the bed bug crisis and gain information on the issues above, perhaps the Federal government will be able to take some action to help improve the situation.
The Daily Mail (UK) reports that
Research by pest controllers Rentokil shows that, on average, a single train compartment houses a staggering 1,000 cockroaches, 200 bed bugs, 200 fleas, 500 dust mites and 100 carpet beetles.
Well, blimey! Someone should do something about that!
It’s not that bed bugs and other pests can’t infest train carriages (they surely [...]
Dayton detectives raided an apartment for drugs Friday night, and found the home infested with bed bugs, WDTN news reports.
But, the worst part for detectives was having to collect the evidence from a bed bug infested apartment.
Lieutenant Brian Johns of The Dayton Police Department said, “I’ve been itching ever since, but I’ll be okay. If [...]
