According to the Dayton Daily News, you can get bed bugs from all kinds of sources: 4-star hotels, college dorms, from your neighbors via pipes running from apartment to apartment, and from used furniture. When you’re thinking about how to avoid bed bugs, you have to realize it’s not just about you: your neighbors have to learn how to avoid getting bed bugs too.
Since used furniture is such a likely conduit, why, then, does the article tell us that “Health officials recommend getting rid of any infested furniture. . .”? Surely health officials that believe tossing infested furniture is always the best plan are not thinking about the neighbors who will inevitably pick up that furniture, move it in, and start a new infestation.
Yes, it is sometimes (maybe even often) necessary, as the University of Kentucky site tells us. But cities which tell people with bed bugs to toss out their stuff need to provide services for dealing with the refuse. They can’t have people tossing out stuff that isn’t properly wrapped and they can’t have the stuff picked up by neighbors or junk collectors who can “clean” or cover and resell mattresses, or give wooden furniture a new coat of paint.
Cincinnati does have dedicated trash pickup for bed bug-infested furniture, though we have not yet heard much about how well it’s working.
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