The Hazleton, Pennsylvania school district went bed bug-wild on Wednesday, after a single student apparently discovered a single bed bug bite after a sleepover, according to the Standard Speaker.

The discovery of a child with a bedbug bite at the Valley Elementary Middle School on Tuesday led exterminators to search five schools on Veterans Day to make sure there was no infestation before classes resumed Thursday.

School administrators checked with the family of the student who was bitten and found that she had attended a sleepover. Her family and the family that hosted the sleepover have a total of six children who attend five schools: Valley, Hazleton Area High School, the Ninth Grade Center, the Hazleton Area Career Center and Heights-Terrace Elementary/Middle School.

Not only did the pest control company search the well-trod paths those six students normally moved along, checking their classrooms, buses, and lockers they all used, but

As a precaution, technicians sprayed a mix of five chemicals in the areas where the students traveled. Temborski said the chemicals don’t harm people and dry in two to four hours, so the closing of school for Veterans Day provided an ideal time to work.

In addition, the two families involved (the girl’s family and the sleepover host’s family) had their homes professionally treated for bed bugs by All ‘Bout Critters Pest Control, the same company contracted to do the work in the schools:

The two families hired ABC Pest Control to exterminate the bedbugs in their homes, and their children won’t return to school until the work is done. Temborski said treating bedbugs takes at least two treatments given two days apart.

There may be much more to the story than is included in this article. ABC said they “found nothing” in the school.

However, it is not clear from the article whether any evidence of bed bugs was found in the homes, or how anyone knew it was a bed bug that left a mark on the little girl in question.

As much as I lament the ridiculous approach to bed bugs in New York City Schools, where busy teachers are apparently expected to trap a sample bed bug and ship it away before anyone will even look into a potential bed bug problem in classrooms, it seems possible that this school district’s response was overkill.

On the other hand, here in NYC, it’s illegal to treat for bed bugs unless you have proof of their presence; I am not sure of the laws in Pennsylvania or the local area surrounding the Hazelton, PA School District.Similar Posts:

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A taste of Alan Good’s latest Global War on Bed Bugs column in McSweeney’s:

It is necessary to explain a biological fact before revealing the list of people I would bite if I were a bedbug: a bedbug partakes of five blood meals in its nasty journey from egg to adulthood. Consequently, your hematophagous narrator could only dine on five of his enemies. If I name more than five people, assume some of them are backups.

(Note, reader, that there are a few people, not mentioned here, whom I’d rather save for when I’ve moved far enough up the karmic ladder to be able to return as a brain-sucking alien.)

I know you’ll want to read the rest.Similar Posts:

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It was not the worst segment we’ve seen, not by a long shot.

It was great to see that Rachael Ray spent the first fourteen minutes of her show on this important topic. It is crucial that everyone learns about bed bugs, and I am glad to see the focus on them here. No doubt many people will know more about bed bugs because of this segment.

I was also glad to see the range of information provided – the emphasis on how bed bugs will hide in the smallest cracks, how they can live in your home (not just in your bed), and the detailed footage of Nathalie’s bed bug prep (including 15 loads of laundry being dried on hot by each of the two bedbugged roommates). Nathalie also drives home the point that a bed bug experience is expensive (she estimated $1000 for materials and treatment).

That said, there were some points which were erroneous or not quite right:

First, as the partial recap on the Rachael Ray site notes,

Dr. Ian Smith reassures [bed bug sufferer Nathalie] that bed bugs may be disgusting, but there are no real health consequences,

The World Health Organization would probably reject that statement. They recently produced a publication stating that noted,

Besides the effects of direct bites, airborne common bedbug allergens that are always released during infestations may produce bronchial asthma. Within a group of 54 asthmatic Egyptian patients, 37.1% reacted positively to a common bedbug head and thorax extract, and 50.1% reacted positively to an abdominal common bedbug extract (Abou Gamra et al., 1991). Numerous routine bedbug bites can contribute to anaemia and may even make a person more susceptible to common diseases (Usinger, 1966; Snetsinger, 1997). Some people can develop a general malaise from numerous bedbug bites; that, along with the loss of sleep and extreme itching of bug bites, can lower a person’s vitality
and make individuals listless and almost constantly uncomfortable.

PDF download: The Public Health Significance of Urban Pests, 2008: 138-139.

Bed bugs are not currently known to spread infectious diseases. But bed bugs can lead to health problems ranging from the very common itchy skin rashes, anxiety and lack of sleep, to (in rare cases) anaphylaxis, a life-threatening reaction.

Viewers were also told about treatment:

Bed bugs won’t go away on their own, but if you catch them early you can avoid an infestation.

That’s true, but, then the program then went on to suggest self-treatment as a first option:

Start with inexpensive sprays and dusts from the hardware store to treat the affected areas. “Some work, some don’t work; it’s really trial and error,” Dr. Ian says. “When you use a spray at home, you also have to use the dust [spray] because the dust will get into the cracks and crevasses where the spray doesn’t get into and the dust will last longer. So it’s a combo deal!”

I don’t agree that people should start by self-treating in most cases, and I don’t think people should be encouraged to rush out and apply sprays and dusts; if someone is going to do their own bed bug treatment, they need to research the methodoloy and health precautions. People commonly misapply the dust diatomaceous earth, a potentially useful tool which can be a health risk if inhaled into your lungs and which may not be effective at killing bed bugs if misapplied.

And on the question of “catching the infestation early,” let’s face it — most people with bed bugs think they have a small infestation and that they caught it early. We hear from people who assume this because they have not seen bed bugs, or have seen only one or a few, even we know though you can have a good number of bed bugs before ever seeing one or a few. Other people may assume they have not been bitten or just started being bitten by bed bugs. I so wish Dr. Ian Smith had pointed out that many people do not react at all to bed bug bites. You can be bitten quite a lot without ever reacting, and we have heard other people go on being bitten for a while with no reaction, before eventually reacting quite a bit (in some cases, seemingly reacting all-at-once to multiple bites).

In other words, many people are in a poor position to judge how small or new their infestation is. And it’s a common story for people claiming small, early infestations to need multiple careful treatments from a professional who knows how to get rid of bed bugs, before the problem is finally gone.

The Rachel Ray show did show a sample of live bed bugs, and noted the difference between “babies” and adults. Not a perfect explanation of the life stages, but better than most media reports, which only show an adult bed bug. Unfortunately, Dr. Ian Smith said bed bugs were “brown-black” and “about the the size of a pencil eraser,” which may throw off many people, before he later showed some younger, smaller nymphs.

Much more should be done by those in the media to demonstrate the relative life stages of bed bugs, and the appearance of the smallest first instar nymphs before and after feeding. Lou Sorkin’s photos of bed bug life stages, including the comparative photos of fed and unfed nymphs shown on our Bed Bug Photos page,) are a great place to start.

The show talked about tools including encasements (which Dr. Smith called “sealants”), the Packtite, and the Bed Bug Registry, though Dr. Ian Smith was a bit misleading in presenting the website in the following way:

“The EPA just had it’s first-ever bed bug conference because it’s such a problem, and they now have a website bedbugregistry.com where you can find out whether or not there’s an issue in your city.”

First, it sounds like the EPA runs the Bed Bug Registry, which of course, it doesn’t.

Secondly, it implies that if “there’s an issue in your city,” you can find out on the registry.

That’s not necessarily true, and this is an important point – we have heard people who were surprised to have bed bugs in a new home or hotel because it had received no listing on the Bed Bug Registry. In fact, you will only see bed bug reports for your city, town, hotel, or building if someone reported them there; registry users are a self-selecting group, and though the site continues to grow and thrive, most people probably do not know it exists, or don’t add their listings for other reasons.

Another annoyance: when the show displayed an image of a heavily-stained mattress (far and away the most bed bug feces I’ve seen on a mattress, ever), Dr. Ian Smith said, “now that’s an infestation,” as if a much less serious case of bed bugs was not “an infestation.” Smith is right that it is an obvious case of neglect, where someone really is not paying attention, but I don’t agree the term “bed bug infestation” should only be applied in the most severe cases.

If the term “infestation” is to be so-used, then give us a new word for a bed bug issue (which may be as small as one bed bug, ten, or fifty). Some suggestions in this comment thread, where we deal with the “infestation” terminology.

And did you play bed bug bingo as you watched, like some forum participants?

All in all, I have to stress I am impressed with the length of this segment and the value of much information presented. I appreciated the human segment which was fairly well-presented. (Incidentally, Nathalie, one of the two bedbugged roommates, said she worked as a bed bug researcher and writer for M&M Environmental, a NYC firm that treats for bed bugs!)

But I can’t help wishing that the news media would take more advantage of bed bug experts, including the more relevant “doctors,” — Dr. Michael Potter, Dr. Louis Sorkin, Dr. Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann, and others — entomologists who study bed bugs and who are much more qualified to help the public understand the key issues surrounding bed bugs.

Update 10/31:

We knew Nathalie worked for M&M. However, you may have seen her face before; she did a series of youtube videos for M&M about various pest control issues, including bed bugs, some of which are included in this forum post.Similar Posts:

• Rachael Ray to feature bed bug segment on Friday
• New York Mayor Bloomberg signs Bed Bug Advisory Board legislation
• Colleges react to bed bugs: Loyola (Chicago), Boston University, Brigham Young (Hawaii)
• Bed bugs in the media: David Cain on British radio, Dr. Susan Jones in the Plain Dealer
• Johnson City’s John Sevier Apartments tenants get new mattresses

Manhattan College students claim their off-campus apartments have bed bugs, and that the situation is not being managed well.

Here’s the video of Fox5’s story on the situation at Overlook Manor, at 238th and Waldo Ave. in Riverdale.

It’s important to note the inaccuracies here: the students are speaking as if rooms where students have not noticed bed bug bites are necessarily bed bug-free; this is not so. You can have bed bugs and not have visible bite marks or an itchy skin problem.

It also is not true that a medical professional can examine bite marks and claim with any certainty that they came from bed bug bites.  We hear a skin biopsy can confirm the bites came from an insect, but cannot determine which insect was the cause; visual inspections of bites cannot confirm bed bugs as a source.

Nevertheless, if some people in a building have bed bugs, it is definitely likely that others in the building experiencing new itchy skin conditions may have them as well.

Read the full article here.Similar Posts:

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Check out the new “Bed Bug Supplement” in August’s PCT: Bed Bugs: A Market Opportunity, Pest Control Technology Magazine – August 2009.

I know: the title grates on us.

It’s hard to think of your itchy, costly nightmare with a blood-sucking parasite as someone else’s “market opportunity,” but it is to our advantage as bed bug sufferers if pest control companies take their work seriously, and become as educated as they can about bed bugs.

Inside the supplement, “Bed Bugs: Vectors of Human Disease?” by Jerome Goddard, “Bed Bug Business Concerns,” (an excerpt from the Bed Bug Handbook by Lawrence Pinto, Richard Cooper, and Sandra Kraft), and some new product information under “Bed Bug BYTES” (including a free “Bed Bugs: a Public Health Pest” poster by Bayer, in Spanish and English).

By far the most interesting item to our readers (and the most helpful to PCOs, in my opinion) will be Jerome Goddard’s article, with its tables showing bed bug bite reactions, the potential for disease transmission, and treatments for bed bug bites, all as noted by various researchers.

The section entitled “Bite Reactions” (54) is particularly important for pest professionals to read; you’d be surprised how many PCOs still think that everyone reacts to bed bug bites.  And yet, as Goddard notes,

It seems that the usual response to a bed bug bite appears to be no reaction with a barely visible punctum at the location of the bite.

(Emphasis mine.)

Many pest control techs assume only the room in which a person complaining of bed bug bites sleeps is infested.  These under-informed types probably also don’t read PCT, but hopefully their employers do.

Keeping in mind that this is all aimed at the PCO market, it is good to see well-researched information being conveyed about bed bugs, reactions to bed bug bites, and the potential of bed bugs as a disease vector.Similar Posts:

• What percentage of people react to bed bug bites?
• New York Times Health article on bed bugs: bed bugs bite
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Bed Bugs Do Bite! 11/52

Originally uploaded by clairebelles

This photo from flickr user clairebelles shows bed bug bites she says were from a Washington DC hostel.

Ugh!

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I was highly perplexed to watch this two-day report from CBS 21 News in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Yesterday, Ewa Roman reported on a “Bug Infested Building” in a boardinghouse over the Tara Station bar on 4th St. in Harrisburg, near the Pennsylvania State Capital building:

Bugs on the ceilings and walls. Insects are taking over the building above the Tara Station Bar on 4th Street in Harrisburg.

I was very troubled to discover that while the photo accompanying the article and video clearly shows a bed bug, and the video itself shows clear footage of bed bugs crawling on walls, the reporter repeatedly refers only to “bugs” and “bug infestation:”

But one man did show us bug bite marks on his arms and neck. He even had some bugs on his sweatshirt.

What kind of bug might be biting this man? Hmmm.

There are also fairly obvious shots of extensive fecal spotting in the area where bed bugs are crawling on the walls and ceiling. And yet “bugs” are mentioned six times in the text of the article; bed bugs: not once.

Here, you can watch video of the episode from Monday: “Bug Infested Building.” (I did not embed the video because it is set to automatically play, which can be quite annoying for people who land on the website.)

And then, Tuesday, the same news station apparently caught up with Walley Mowi, the landlord, to ask why tenants were living under these conditions. He claims that tenants are responsible for the infestation because they have messy and cluttered rooms; in fact, bed bugs are not bred of clutter, or attracted to old food, vomit, or dirt.

Any one person could have brought them into the building, and they could even have walked over from an adjoining building. The hotel offices and the pub downstairs should be carefully inspected as they could also be affected.

Remarkably, once more, the reporter (this time Ben Russell) again makes no mention of bed bugs. Just “bugs” (which are mentioned seven times).

You can watch Tuesday’s update “Bug Infested Building: ‘It’s not my fault’” here. As with the previous story, this reel contains bed bug footage, mention of bug bites, and this time, of dried blood stains on a pillow.

I am dismayed that these reporters are either unaware that bed bugs exist, or are avoiding mentioning them for some bizarre reason. I do not think this is responsible journalism.

Just yesterday I reported how health officials in both Abilene, Texas and Davenport, Iowa believed their cities currently had no bed bug problems, because they were receiving no reports of them. My response: if you live there, tell the health department you have bed bugs.

The people of Harrisburg need to know about bed bugs and how prevalent they are. The bed bugs in this boardinghouse have (according to the news report) been a problem for over a year. And this is not the only incidence of bed bugs in Harrisburg.

If we do not all admit bed bugs are a problem, where we all live, then we will not take action to halt their spread.

If you pretend bed bugs are not there, they will not go away. Similar Posts:

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• New York City Housing Authority: “bed bugs = emergency” + “wait a month” do not compute

Often on the Bedbugger forums, we hear statements like, “I see dark spots and saw a bug in my bed that looked like a bed bug, but I do not have any bites.”

In response, I used to say, “many people do not react to bed bug bites.”

I first formulated this response based on anecdotal evidence: people coming to our forums who knew they had bed bugs and did not react. And PCOs who feed bed bug colonies and do not react.

Then, after hearing Jerome Goddard put the percentage of those who do not react to bed bug bites at 70%, I cited him on that for a while.

Having heard other statistics ranging from 50-60% recently asserted by other entomologists in the media, I have recently been saying that “entomologists tell us 50-70% of people may not react to bed bug bites.”

And now, thanks to Renee’s well-researched post, which shows some studies suggest a small minority do not react, and in the absence of a more definitive answer, I am going to go back to the only answer I know to be true: “many people do not react to bed bug bites.”

I know you’ll want all the information on this from Renee, so check out her post here.Similar Posts:

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• North Carolina shelter with bed bugs: outlook grim

Northern Kentucky University is suffering from the bed bug scourge, independent student paper The Northerner reports today:

Director of University Housing Peter Trentacoste said, “I can confirm we had a (bed bugs) incident. We successfully treated the six rooms.”

It appears they took swift action and ordered a thermal treatment for six infested rooms in Callahan Hall.

I was a tad concerned about how the university determined which units were infested, however:

When University Housing discovered a possibility of bed bugs, it began calling every resident on the infested floor to ascertain which rooms were affected. Students were relocated to begin extermination last weekend.

I am not sure what questions can be asked of students to determine whether they had bed bugs.

I hope the housing administrators understand that bed bugs and their signs can be hard to see, especially in newer infestations, and that entomologists estimate that 50 to 70% of people do not react to bed bug bites.

In other words, students could have bed bugs biting them, and have absolutely no idea.  And it’s essential to detect and treat all infested units if you want to get rid of bed bugs in a building.

It does sound like precautions were taken when students were relocated.  This is crucial, to avoid spreading the problem.

via The Northerner – Crawling on campus.Similar Posts:

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Jane Brody reports in the New York Times Health section today about the spread of bed bugs, and their effects on health.  Of course, she mentions the recent JAMA report, and the fact that bed bugs are not yet known to spread contagious diseases.

Brody outlines the varying effects of bed bug bites:

Most people who are bitten by bed bugs do not react. Of the 30 percent or so who do, many mistake the small, pink, itchy bumps for mosquito bites, although people may become more suspicious and more sensitive with repeated bites.

People who are highly sensitive react with intense itching that prompts scratching and can lead to infections. One Brooklyn family did not know they were sharing quarters with bed bugs until a sensitive relative visited and woke in the morning with very itchy bites.

Still others may experience more extreme reactions, including asthma, generalized hives, and even a life-threatening allergy (anaphylaxis) that requires emergency treatment with epinephrine.

But most bed bug lesions can be treated with an anti-itch product like calamine lotion or a topical or oral corticosteroid and antihistamine. If bites become infected, a topical or oral antibiotic may be needed.

Brody also mentions that a “family living in a $3 million private house in Brooklyn discarded rooms’ worth of furniture” due to bed bugs.

The percentage of people reacting to bites is often cited as being anywhere from 50-70%.

Regardless, all bitten by bed bugs are hit financially, if not physically. (And I’ve said time and again, if you are short of money, this can have a clear and definite negative impact on your health.)

And anxiety?  Stress? Lack of sleep?

More or less ubiquitous among bed bug sufferers, along with the hole bed bugs bite through your wallet.

via Personal Health – Keeping Those Bed Bugs From Biting – NYTimes.com.Similar Posts:

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