Their numbers declined until about 10 years ago - rendering risks to travellers within Australia and many other parts of the world relatively low.

But the bugs have bounced back - with a vengeance.

“I’ve seen a mind-boggling 7000 per cent increase in reported cases of bed bug infestation in Australia since 2003,” reveals Garry Jones, operations manager at Sydney-based Ecolab Pest Elimination Group.

“That’s utterly astounding,” adds Jones, who belongs to an academic working party studying ways to combat the pesky critters.

The article also refers to Stephen Doggett’s oft-cited statistic:

“Reported cases in Australia have increased by 4,500 in the past eight years,” says Stephen Doggett, senior research scientist in the medical entomology department at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital.

Doggett is the author of the ever-impressive and useful A Code of Practice for the Control of Bed Bugs in Australia (click for PDF of 2nd Ed., November 2007).

Useful, I want to stress, in any country where you find yourself facing down bed bugs.

The article also provides suggestions on bed bug identification, treatment, and avoidance from Jones and Doggett.

You can read the full article, “Bed bugs back biting,” here.

• bed bug life cycle photo
• Stephen L. Doggett’s A code of practice for the control of bed bug infestations in Australia (2nd Ed.)
• Bed bug infestations on the increase in Australia, says The Age
• Bed bugs on the increase in Australia too

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Nonetheless, I was interested to see this news report from Down Under, on Today Tonight (If the right video doesn’t load, click “Bed Bugs on the Increase” under Video Archives. And hurry — it may not last long.)

The video features families who encountered bed bugs (experiencing as many as 75-100 bed bug bites) in four-star hotels in Brisbane and Perth, including a man who inspected his luggage after one of these encounters found 40-60 bed bugs on his suitcase.

The people interviewed reported on a range of bed bug bite presentations (from small scabby bites to large wheals), and there was footage of some of the variations, and of (unfortunately) really badly bitten people.

The report also veers off into the related but lesser perils of dirty mattresses — fungi, dust and dirt — and a man demonstrates UV sanitation for those purposes. This is kind of a distraction, since bed bugs are really a different scenario, and can afflict even those with clean homes and brand new mattresses.

However, the key component of the report, for me, was seeing the famous medical entomologist Stephen Doggett, who wrote and revised the Bed Bug Code of Practice (you can download the Nov. 2007 second edition here).

He reports (and we’ve heard this statistic before) that bed bugs in Australia have increased 5000% since 1999.

Because Doggett’s first bed bug code of practice was published in 2005, we often think of Australia as being ahead of many countries in the game of dealing with bed bugs.

But an Australian friend’s comments recently made me wonder if Australians as a whole were just as clueless about bed bugs, and just as surprised when they encountered bed bugs, as we Americans are. My friend did not know bed bugs were something to be concerned about, didn’t seem to know of anyone who’d had them (”know” being the key word here).

“You Americans!” he said.

He says this a lot, in fact, and I often have to nod in agreement.

But in this case, he’s wrong. Bed bugs are, unfortunately, now as Australian as vegemite, Foster’s, Dame Edna, and Rupert Murdoch, and Aussies need to know they’re out there and how to avoid them at home and abroad, and how to get rid of them if need be.

(We’re with Stephen Doggett: get a professional in.)

Thanks to the Aussie reader who sent the link for this report!

• The West Australian on the spread of bed bugs in Oz
• Bed bug infestations on the increase in Australia, says The Age
• Stephen L. Doggett’s A code of practice for the control of bed bug infestations in Australia (2nd Ed.)
• bed bug life cycle photo

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. . . a survey of 121 pest managers undertaken last year by Sydney entomologist Stephen Doggett found that, across Australia, bedbug infestations had risen by a dramatic 4500% since 1999, with the biggest rise in Victoria.

And, though Australia is the home of Doggett’s Bed Bug Code of Practice, and therefore many of us think of it as a place of enlightenment as far as recognizing the seriousness of bed bugs and the proper ways to deal with them.  Nevertheless, the problem is still growing there. For example,

Exopest director and entomologist Simon Dixon said his Melbourne-based company treated 46 commercial and domestic bedbug infestations in 2007, compared with 35 in 2006 and 10 in 2005.

Other exterminators have noticed a similar rise. Melbourne Pest Control director Mark Chell has fielded nine calls about the problem in the past two weeks. In 2007, he treated about 12 to 15 infestations a month; in 2006, it was only five a month.

You’re thinking 46 a year sounds not so bad. But a rise from 12-15 a month to 9 in the last two weeks seems like a rapid rise. And these are individual PCOs. Add them all together and it’s one big problem. I have been criticized in the past by at least one professional as being alarmist for referring to a bed bug “epidemic;” unfortunately, I still believe that critic was wrong. I’m going with medical entomologist Doggett’s assessment: it’s not just an epidemic, it’s a pandemic:

The bedbug problem is part of a worldwide pandemic, according to Mr Doggett, the author of the Australian code of practice for bedbugs infestations. The code was updated last year as a result of the rise in cases.

The insects have built a strong resistance to traditional pyrethroid insecticides, and pest controllers have to deploy almost 1000 times the concentration of insecticide used on other creepy crawlies, he said.

And “extreme infestations” have been noticed among socially disadvantaged groups, involving thousands to even tens of thousands of bugs in a single dwelling.

Mr Doggett said these occupants usually do not have the money to pay for bedbug control or sometimes are unaware of the bedbugs.

In one case, he was called to a guesthouse in Sydney where a man who suffered from cognitive difficulties was found to be living in a room infested with tens of thousands of bedbugs.

“He would have been losing a significant amount of blood each night (and) he was probably anaemic,” Mr Doggett said.

I hear these extreme stories from NYC PCOs and entomologists too.

If you read about the “extreme infestations” and think, “Poor guy. Well, I’d put a stop to it before it got that bad!” — think again: we’re all connected, and this serious case will lead to many more cases. We need to locate and stop infestations before they grow to this point. For the sake of that sufferer, and also that of everyone around him.

• The West Australian on the spread of bed bugs in Oz
• bed bug life cycle photo
• Stephen L. Doggett’s A code of practice for the control of bed bug infestations in Australia (2nd Ed.)
• Sydney, Toronto, NYC: a tale of three bed bug cities

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“This is an all-embracing examination of our need to sleep. . . . The very practical logistics of sleeping are also tackled: bedbugs and the luxury of a bed to oneself.” Bed bugs figure in exhibit on sleep at medical-themed-art centre in London.

Cincinnati YWCA Women’s Emergency Shelter has bed bugs, according to Porkopolis

“Now only new clothing can be accepted for donation, and all personal belongings of residents must be stored in large plastic bins. They’re also looking at replacing the sturdy, familiar wooden bunk beds with metal ones to help reduce infestations.”

RealTravel - Hotel Paradiso! | Bargara Travel Blog | Bargara Travel Reviews

Travel blogger claims Bargara, Queensland hostel was bedbugged, and more: “There were rats, mice, possums, bed-bugs, and one morning a kitchen full of maggots. gross. there were curious looking stains on the carpets, especially in our bedroom and there was possum s–t on our floor.”

Bed bugs, or incontinent possums: which is worse?  I’ll take the possums any day, mate.

• Bed bug Helloise: a nice, reasonably-priced white metal bed frame with no wooden slats
• More on bed bugs at the Montana Rescue Mission in Billings
• Spring break bed bug warnings!
• Bed bug news round-up: South Jersey apartment complex; Charlotte, North Carolina Salvation Army shelter

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Finally, someone in the business arena sees the light about bed bugs and the bottom line: and it’s not the flashing dollar signs of the over-the-counter bed bug spray industry, either. Kerry Miller published an article entitled “The Cost of Bed Bugs” yesterday in Business Week, about how business owners are suffering financial losses due to bed bugs in their rental properties, hotels, and other establishments.

While many with bed bugs in their homes might say, “So what, how does that help me?” I feel this is really good news–because if big business declares bed bugs a problem for their bottom line, we might see some more action in terms of halting their spread. And that helps all of us. But judging from this article, we’re not quite there yet.

Miller begins with the story of Rosemary Salinas, a manager for five buildings in San Francisco, who in 2004 dealt with an infested apartment in one of those properties, where the bed bugs spread to four other units, the hallways, and walls of the building. Eliminating it cost $40K plus a $9 payout to a tenant who threatened to sue.

Salinas now issues regular notices in every building she supervises reminding tenants to call management immediately if they suspect a bedbug infestation. Still, the property owners she has talked to haven’t been eager to do the same. “They don’t want anybody to suspect that they have them, or to think that they could have them,” she says.

Rental property owners aren’t the only ones with that attitude. In a statement on its Web site, the American Hotel & Lodging Assn.—an industry group that co-hosted an international bedbug symposium last fall—says the resurgence of bedbugs in the U.S. has “had a minimal impact on the vast majority of hotels, which maintain state-of-the-art sanitation and adhere to strict standards of cleanliness,” adding, for good measure: “Bedbugs are brought into hotels by guests; it is not a hotel sanitation issue.”

Where bed bug denial and the bed bug blame game meet, it’s not a pretty sight. Bed bugs are certainly brought into hotels by guests (or workers, or management, or in shipments). But they leave with other paying guests. And that is definitely the hotel’s problem. (We’ve talked about the American Hotel and Lodging Association’s head-in-the-sand attitudes about bed bugs before.)

One PCO had actual statistics on hotels they had worked on:

A study by the Steritech Group, a commercial and institutional pest management company, found that nearly 25% of the 700 hotels it tracked over a three-and-a-half year period between November, 2002, and April, 2006, required treatment for bedbugs, though of the 76,000 hotel rooms in the study, fewer than 1% were found to be infested. But the public stigma that bedbugs carry makes the line between discretion and transparency a delicate one to tread.

And, it appears that bed bugs have spread a lot since the 2002-2006 period Steritech studied.

The article goes on to describe how mattress encasements designed to protect against bed bugs have to be marketed as “allergen-proof” not bed bug-proof, in order to sell to hotels, and how bed bug dog services have to pretend they’re sniffing for mold when they visit nursing homes. I don’t mind not making clients panic, but lots of us actually do want to know hotels are trying to protect us from bed bugs.

A loss-control agent at an insurance company mentions he first started seeing bedbug-related claims from property owners two years ago.

Then there are other costs: the negative publicity, erosion in brand value, and drop in business that can result from a poorly handled infestation. Damage control (BusinessWeek.com, 10/17/07) is tricky since unhappy bedbug victims can easily spread word of infestations online via blogs or user-submitted travel review sites such as TripAdvisor (EXPE). “How many people hear about a hotel that had bedbugs and don’t stay there because of it? You just don’t know,” Morello says. Last year an Australian study estimated that bedbugs cost the Australian tourism industry $75 million annually. (No such estimates are available for the U.S.)

Therein lies part of the problem: we haven’t studied it yet in the US. We should learn from Australia–how much does their tourism industry take in per year? What sort of comparison can be made on the impact in the US if the rates of bed bugs are comparable?

Other interesting tidbits here:
Most property owners prefer to settle bed bug claims out of court.

Oh, and–

To treat infested units in her San Francisco building, Salinas hired a company to empty each apartment and freeze the contents for 48 hours. (Extreme temperatures are one of the few reliable ways to kill bedbugs.) The cost: about $2,000 per unit.

It must have been very, very sub-zero freezing. And something must have been done to the rooms themselves. But I would love to know more about companies willing to remove and freeze your stuff. It would be wonderful for people trying to move (many of whom hire someone to gas their belongings with vikane to avoid moving bed bugs). Both methods are exhorbitant, but surely when they become commonplace, the prices must come down?

There’s so much more here, I can’t respond to it all, but let me leave you with the ominous (and stupid) ideas with which the article closed:

[Lawyer Christian] Hardigree has fielded phone calls from property owners interested in putting an addendum to lease agreements holding tenants responsible for bedbug infestations. Others are interested in tweaking the language of contracts with pest-control companies so they can sue if the bedbugs return. (Her response to both: “You can put that language in, but I can’t tell you it would be upheld by a court.”) In any case, bedbugs aren’t a problem that can be solved by the wave of a gavel.

These ideas are based on a misunderstanding of how bed bugs work, from a scientific standpoint. You cannot blame the person who discovers and complains of bed bugs, for bringing them in. There really is no way of knowing when and how bed bugs were introduced into a unit. There’s no way of proving how long they were there, since people do not necessarily react to bites, or see bugs. And even if they do react, it may take them a long time to do so.

As for the second idea, many good PCOs who know bed bugs will only offer a brief warranty (60 days is considered pretty good right now). My understanding is that this is because (a) the property owner may be refusing to properly inspect and treat the whole building, and so resurgence may be inevitable in some cases, (b) people can bring in bed bugs repeatedly even they do not realize the source, and (c) bed bugs can be very stealthy–it would be hard to prove the bed bugs were not hiding out in a sealed bag, for example, that was unpacked. (This happens.)

On the other hand, many infestations take 3, 4, or more treatments by traditional methods. If PCOs re-treat aggressively at proper intervals throughout a 60 day period, then customers have a good shot at waving bed bugs goodbye. However, some PCOs are not up to date on the latest methods, or the stealthy habits of bed bugs. And in those cases, unfortunate customers often end up having to seek another treatment provider after the sixty days. It’s bad for the business reputation of the original guys, but some people are just out to make a fast buck. In the long run, let’s hope the best PCOs thrive and expand without compromising on quality.

I would hope that we can press for tenants, owners, and PCOs to be accountable and to use best practices, cooperatively, to fight bed bugs. There are people busy figuring out what those best practices might be. Give up the denial and the bed bug blame game: it’s pointless. Let’s fight the real enemy.

• 25% of hotel rooms have bed bugs? I don’t think so.
• Vikane Fumigation Successful in New Jersey
• How bad are bed bugs in Toronto? Nobody knows for sure.
• Crain’s reports: “Exterminators make killing on bedbugs”

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We’re familiar with bed bug dogs, here at Bedbugger, but it is interesting to read of the situation in NZ.

“She’s not big, she’s clean and she’s a clever dog,” Mr Morley said of the three-year-old. “She can get into little places and sniff inside mattresses.”

Well, I bet she’s less clean when she comes out of some of those mattresses.

Yesterday Joni worked through 20 rooms and even detected bedbugs that were behind a headboard fixed to the wall.

When she finds something, she will tap at it with her paw before Mr Morley asks her to check again with her nose. After bedbugs are found, each surface of the room can be treated with steam within a day whereas chemical treatments could see a room shut off for many days. Mr Morley says the combination of Joni and steam produces a 98 per cent success rate. Manual treatments have a 20 per cent success rate.

I found this interesting, and I’d like to hear more about companies working with a combination of dogs and steam. What it sounds like Morley is describing is a situation in which the dog pinpoints the exact location of bed bugs (or eggs, which the article tells us she can also detect), and then that area is carefully steamed (I assume with a dry steam machine). Steaming that pinpoints a specific area does seem both more reliable and easier than steaming the whole area, hoping to strike bed bug gold.

I’d also like to know what that 98% success rate represents: I assume it means 98% of cases need not be serviced twice. (Or does it mean most cases eliminate 98% of their bed bugs? Big difference, no?)

This does sound promising, though as a customer, I would not mind if they then employed a bit of residual or mechanical (dust) killer to seal the deal. When it comes to killing bed bugs, I don’t think there’s such a thing as overkill.

It sounds like Joni does a lot of sleuthing looking for bed bugs in hotels, and a regular run through with the bedbug dog and an industrial steamer would be greatly reassuring to me as a prospective hotel guest.

In Australia, similar dogs are used to sniff out termites, which mainly affect the coastal urban areas of the country. Joni was trained in Queensland, one of five dogs around the world trained to sniff out bedbugs.

I think this may be based on outdated statistics, since I know of at least five bed bug-sniffing dogs currently working in the United States! Nevertheless, it does sound like bedbuggers in New Zealand and at least some parts of Australia have or will soon have access to this service, which is spreading quickly, as is (unfortunately) the need for it.

• Bed bug dogs in the news
• Consumers, before you hire one, find out what that bed bug dog can do!
• University of Florida tests bed bug dogs
• Results of University of Florida tests on bed bug dog effectiveness are out

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First, WLNS of Lansing, Michigan warns that bed bugs are the pest of the 21st century, that they “wreak havoc on your skin and your life,” their incidence has increased 75% n five years (oh, I’d say much more than that), and fighting an infestation is costly, upwards of $300 per room. After scaring the living bejaysus out of the good (Lansonians? Lansineers?), what one, tiny pithy nugget of practical advice do they give?

When returning from a trip, experts say it’s a good idea to vacuum out your suitcase.

Well, it’s not bad advice, but is that the only thing you’ve got for us WLNS? Looks like your readers might need them a few Bedbugger FAQs.

WVLT in Tennessee also seems to have latched on to the phrase “bug of the 21st century.” (All right, which entomologist let that one out of the bag? Well, if it replaces that nursery-rhyme mumbo-jumbo, then we’re on to a good thing, I guess.)

More suggestions here, including suitcase-vacuuming (again, I’m sensing a pattern here), and the warning to those who are thinking it’s a bedsheet issue,

If you’re leaving for a trip, don’t think taking your own bedding will help. They live in the mattress.

Just make sure and check the bed before bringing your stuff to the room.

Well, sorta, but not quite: they also live in the baseboards, bed frame, electrical sockets, light fixtures, ceiling, floor, and sofa, among other places. The information is more plentiful for Tennessee than for Lansing, Michigan, but the quality is a bit hit-or-miss. They’re obsessed with bed bugs being “in the mattress,” but they also warn people not to toss vacuum bags in the trash, and so on. (Tennesee is also playing a bit fast and loose with the rules of punctuation, spelling, and grammar, so compulsive proofreaders and your high school English teacher should steer clear!)

OSU’s student paper The Lantern reports that an infested grad student dorm at Ohio State University is getting some serious “fumigation” in response to bed bugs. The collection of all students’ non-washable belongings—isolated, bagged, placed in red carts—sounds promising. It’s a bit mysterious what will happen to that stuff (in the red carts, they have to be red carts!), but hopefully it will be picked through with a fine-toothed comb by PCOs with bed bug knowledge, and returned.

If this is so, and if OSU also follows up at 10-14 day intervals (follow-up was not mentioned at all in the article), this would not be unlike the Stanford bed bug protocol, which we believe to be the best reported in any response to college dorm bed bugs. (You can scroll down this list to see past coverage on Bedbugger of Stanford bed bug cases, and gawk at the love fest I’ve put on for Stanford upon hearing the descriptions of how San Francisco’s Crane PCO and the Stanford admin dealt with those cases. It’s beautiful, really.) I only note this because reports have also come from many other colleges of poor bed bug procedures.

Update 5/25: 100 rooms on 3 floors are being treated. Bed bugs were found on the 9th and 11th floors, and they’re treating the 10th as well. (What about the 8th?)

Finally, Australians appear to have been battling bed bugs a wee bit longer than those of us in the US. (Canada, too, a bit ahead in the Bed Bug Olympics.) So no surprise that they’re at the forefront of innovation: this dry steamer does the bed bug killing job, without getting your stuff all wet (that’s dry steam, i.e. no mold!) Their website says,

Duplex Cleaning Machines has a variety of industrial and commercial strength steam products to tackle bed bug epidemic including the Jet Steam, Tosca and JetVac range.

The JetVac Professional Plus is an ideal solution to the bed bug problem as it delivers 160°+ Dry Steam with a tool which applies the steam evenly without blowing the bugs away and then also vacuums away the dead bugs and their eggs.

Wait, they have a steamer named Tosca? Puccini must be tossing in his grave.

But the question on everyone’s mind: when will my PCO have one? I can just see it now, integrated pest management: first, they bring in the bed bug dog. Then the dry steaming and caulking. And finally, the chemical and mechanical onslaught begins. Well, the bug of the 21st century needs the PCO of the 21st century, no?

• Stanford U bed bugs: being fought with enthusiasm and wisdom
• Stanford bed bugs: university fights back
• bedbugs at Stanford University dorms (again)
• Stanford still fighting bed bugs

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Although people often think this to be the case, this site was never intended to be for residents of the US, but rather, for everyone with bed bugs, everywhere. Although I (Nobugsonme) lived for many years abroad, I am in NYC, I am best able to provide information on fighting bed bugs here, and news on what’s going on.

However, I’d love to make the site more helpful for Bedbuggers everywhere, as I know you would too. This is where you come in. Tell us everything you can to make this site relevant to your country-people. Use the comment function and point us to useful information and useful stuff.

I get google alerts for all bed bug-related stories on the ‘net. But these are weighted towards US stories in particular. If you see bed bug news covered on a website (especially a newspaper or television website in your country), please drop me an email and let me know (nobugsonme at yahoo dot com).

If you see suggestions on the FAQs for treatment methods which you feel do not apply in your country, or suggestions of products not available to you, or if the product has a different name or is sold by a particular company, please post a comment directly on the relevant FAQ telling us. We’d be happy to give people information specific to the UK, Canada, Australia, or anywhere else, but first we need the information.

(This request comes with the usual disclaimer that people who are themselves selling things should advertise on the site rather than posting phony ads in the form of “happy customer testimonials”: you know who you are.)

A few of the FAQs may be closed to comments, usually because people were using them to post comments about other issues besides the information in the FAQs. If you find this to be the case, you can email me at nobugsonme at yahoo dot com, and I will re-open them. It’s best to post your corrections to the FAQs, rather than emailing them to me, since I get a lot of email every day and don’t have time to copy and paste lots of addenda to the FAQs. For the same reasons, it’s also best not to post information in the comments on this FAQ (below) which would be better placed on the FAQ about protecting your bed, travel, etc.

Thank you for making the site a better resource for Bedbuggers everywhere!

• updated FAQ
• Do not adjust your set
• Welcome Bedbuggers!
• bite photos

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I have the same hunch about Toronto and Vancouver. In 2003, when NYC claimed to have 16 bed bug violations (as per this 2005 NYTimes article) and the local and national press was still reporting bed bugs as a bizarre anomaly suffered by mattress-foraging Greenpoint hipsters, , the Canadian media outlets were writing much more about bed bugs. More to the point, Toronto was already surveying the incidence of bed bug infestations, of which PCOs treated 847 that year in that city; a whopping 70% were in single-family dwellings. (The study notes that Toronto Public Health, in contrast, had only 46 complaints by comparison: this is why I keep insisting that NYC is likely to have many more than the recorded number of complaints filed to 311.)

The US CDC published the Toronto study on their website, but to my knowledge no similar survey of the incidence of bed bugs as reported by PCOs in a US city in one year has been undertaken. But if this were done now in NYC, as I argue it should be, Mayor Bloomberg would have to admit we have a very serious bed bug problem here, indeed. (Denial ain’t just a river in Africa.)

As far as Australia goes, This article from The Age, an esteemed Australian news outlet, speculates about the origins of the Aussie bed bug epidemic, and dates it to the 2000 Sydney Olympic games, when people from all over the world descended on Sydney. The article states that

. . . Australia is in the grips of a bedbug resurgence. There was a 5000 per cent increase in the treatment of bedbugs between 2000 and 2005 - with Victoria one of the worst affected states, according to Westmead Hospital scientist Stephen Doggett.

I do find the Sydney Olympics theory (which I’ve also seen elsewhere) slightly less offensive than the “immigrants brought bed bugs to Astoria” theory of the origins of NYC’s bed bugs. It’s more probable, to me: Foreign tourists from countries where bed bugs were, at the time, more common, visiting hotels which are later visited by Australian business people and domestic travelers = bed bugs! The Olympics theory is even more probable if the rise in Australian bed bugs spiked in a way NYC’s and Toronto’s bed bug cases didn’t. I don’t know if that’s true or not.

Stephen Doggett is the fabulous bed bug scientist who gave us permission to post his Bed Bug Life Cycle, which allows us to see all stages of the bed bug life cycle side by side. He’s also the principle author or the Code of Practice for the Control of Bed Bug Infestations in Australia (June 2005), which can be downloaded here. Anyway, there’s a point to all that digressing, besides expressing our gratitude to Stephen Doggett once again, which is that the fact that the Australian Environmental Pest Managers Association has had time to build up a Code of Practice for the Control of Bed Bug Infestations which is now almost two years old, reinforces my view that they were slightly ahead of us in suffering the bites. (Again, possibly because they had a spike, brought on by this Olympic influx, whereas we in NYC have had a slower arc?)

In this interesting article by Doggett, (clicking there will get you a PDF —>) “Bed bugs: the Unwanted Guest” from a 2006 edition of Executive Housekeeper (for those in the Australian hospitality industry), the author claims that from 1999-2006 the US has suffered a “ten-fold increase” in bed bugs, while in Australia there’s a 1000% rise in infestations treated from 2001-2006. (This number really conflicts with the 5000% increase also citing Doggett as a source, but I suspect it relates to the context from which the figures emerged.) Since statistics are tied to years when data was taken, it’s impossible to settle the US vs. Australia bedbug-chronology question based on this. (By the way, you can read other articles by Doggett here.)

What’s being done to stop bed bugs in Australia, besides the sharing of best practices? Australia is a favorite destination of young travelers (both native and international), who often stay in the country’s extensive assortment of backpacker hostels. This article, from the Sydney Morning Herald, details a new law passed in the city to protect those who stay in backpackers hostels:

The Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, has a plan to stop bed bugs biting Australia’s most lucrative tourists: backpackers. Under the plan, all new hostels will have to provide washed mattress protectors and pillow covers to reduce the extent of bug infestations. The rules will make every hostel use dense foam in its beds “designed to eliminate potential harbourage of vermin including bed bugs” while providing coverings for mattresses and pillows, washed after each backpacker.

I do hope those are sealed, not just washable, mattress and pillow protectors. (In fact, I am hoping they’re washed on the mattress, since removing them seems like a dangerous thing to do, bedbug-wise.)

The City of Sydney has no power to apply the rules to existing hostels, as they are applied during the development approval process in the conditions attached to a hostel’s consent.

Not only do the laws not apply to existing hostels, as one hostel association spokesperson pointed out, many hostels are operating illegally, and they also obviously won’t have the rule enforced. It’s a start though, and budget travelers who are aware of bed bugs and the laws and which hostels are covered can vote with their feet.

Besides adding mattress covers and using foam mattresses (I’d love to see documentation on what those do):

The rules . . . ban triple bunks and discourage carpets, also to cut down on the spread of bed bugs.

Last year the Herald reported council findings that almost eight out of 10 eastern [Sydney] suburbs backpacker hostels had infestations.

The bottom line is that some things can only be legislated so far; mattress pads rip and will need to be checked and kept in good repair or replaced. (As an aside, I visited a YMCA retreat center that had cheap vinyl covers on the beds which were full of rips, and therefore pointless.) For this to be helpful, hostel managers need to care. (And what about hotels? Some do have zippered covers. They all should, and they should be of the sturdiest type, and checked often. Even the best-made ones can get torn.)

The article from Executive Housekeeping had one other tidbit I forgot to mention. (This is a post of asides, but there’s just so much in these sources and I want to get it all in.) In emphasizing the need for hotels to use experienced PCOs who know how to deal with bed bugs, Doggett mentions the case in one Sydney hospital where an employee residence was infested; a small infestation that would have cost AU$500 to treat, ended up costing AU$50,000, all because the infestation was handled poorly by an inexperienced PCO. I just thought that was a fascinating case study, but I bet it happens all the time, and I know similar things, on a smaller scale, have happened to many of you. College dorms are another prime example, since most news reports we get to see detailing dorms being treated (with the exception of Stanford) appear to be mismanaged, if the news reports are accurate.

I hope we can continue to record what’s being done to fight bed bugs in various places. And I hope some of our readers from down under will drop us a comment and say hello!

I almost said, “G’day,” but I know you were dreading it coming from me, as much as I dread, but await nevertheless, the “sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite” crap that gets trotted out by the end of 80% of media reports on bed bugs.

Down with bed bugs, and down with cliches, Dear Reader.

• The West Australian on the spread of bed bugs in Oz
• Bed bug infestations on the increase in Australia, says The Age
• Stephen L. Doggett’s A code of practice for the control of bed bug infestations in Australia (2nd Ed.)
• Bed bugs on the increase in Australia too

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