There are a lot of reports about bed bugs in colleges this week, in the wake of the recent high profile John Jay College bed bug infestation (and the less high profile Manhattan College bed bug troubles).

The Loyola Phoenix reports that Loyola University in Chicago was treating bed bugs with steam and pesticides, encasing infested mattresses, and (students claim) telling them not to talk about their infestations:

In addition to the rooms being treated, items that were on top of beds or on the floor near the beds were removed from the rooms to be cleaned. According to [Andrew Naylor, assistant director of Facilities Operations], these items were taken to a company that specializes in cleaning items that housed bedbugs or came into contact with them.

Throughout the process, residents affected by the bedbug incident were communicated with on a consistent basis, said Naylor; however, residents on other floors were not informed of the incident. “It’s certainly not like we’re trying to keep a secret. We just didn’t feel it was necessary to alarm the whole building,” said Naylor.

[Juniors Mike Fernandez and Eric Finnegan] said they were informed to not talk about the incident. “They told us ‘don’t say anything,’ because they didn’t want to start a mass panic and have all the students worry, which is understandable until they got the problem under control,” Fernandez said.

[Emphasis mine.]

Ke Alaka’i reports that Brigham Young University in Hawaii is giving dorm RAs Steri-Fab for treating bed bugs and eggs; Ke Alaka’i says

Bedbugs live in both the seams of and in the crisscross stitching of mattresses. They are visible by pulling down on the edge of the cording.

However, as we understand it, Steri-Fab is not recommended as a sole treatment option (Dr. Michael Potter found Steri-Fab had a “very low egg mortality”) , and bed bugs can live anywhere in a room, not just on the seams of mattresses.

The most encouraging story this week comes from Boston University, where the Daily Free Press reports that housing officials proactively searched on-campus housing for bed bugs in August.

Boston University housing officials have identified the bedbug infestation in dormitories such as Student Village and Myles-Standish Hall as a serious concern within the last year.

The infestations don’t just occur in older dormitories — they can show up in any building, new or old. There were five StuVi1 apartments infested with bedbugs at the start of the academic year, Director of Housing Marc Robillard said.

“Bedbugs travel with people. It has nothing to do with hygiene,” he said. “Some of the nicest hotels in the world have bedbugs because of the transition of people coming into their properties.”

In August, housing officials checked each of the larger residences for bedbugs after the dorms housed different groups during the summer, Robillard said. Housing officials said they are currently unaware of any active cases on campus.

Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences graduate student Emily Wilkinson said she found out her four-bedroom StuVi apartment, which she shared with roommates last year, was one of the five infested.

“I guess they found the bedbugs when they were doing an inspection so they didn’t want to put us [in our apartment],” she said. “They moved us into StuVi 2 and told us it would take two weeks for the whole process to happen. It took more than three, which was annoying.”

[Emphasis mine.]

There’s no guarantee that bed bugs can be eliminated in two or three weeks, and it would be interesting to know how the college performs these proactive bed bug inspections and how it signs off on housing units as being bed bug-free after bed bug treatment.

However, it is a good idea for colleges to have residences proactively inspected for bed bugs; remember, not everyone reacts to bed bug bites, and it can take some time before one sees obvious signs of a bed bug infestation.Similar Posts:

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• Bed bugs infest multiple areas of New York’s John Jay College (CUNY)

My report about the Hillrise Apartments in Cincinnati the other day highlighted what can happen when local officials stop inspecting rental units based on bed bug complaints.

As you’ll recall, funding was cut at the end of 2008 for the Cincinnati Health Department’s bed bug inspection program.

Here’s another story with bedbugged tenants, this time in Columbus, Ohio, where the Franklin County Board of Health is able to inspect homes based on tenant complaints.

NBC4i reports that some residents of The Pointe Apartments on Harrisburg Pike, fed up with bed bug bites,  have evacuated their homes for hotel rooms:

[Tenant Chris White] called officials after an exterminator hired by the property managers didn’t show up May 6.

The property manager wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Neighbors are helping each other look for bed bugs in their cushions and mattresses.

“It’s not my responsibility to do this. It’s the apartment complex. I’m helping friends out,“ he said.

Residents received a letter from the complex officials saying that exterminators would arrive on May 6, but residents said the exterminator never showed up.

Franklin County health officials went door-to-door inspecting apartments.

For the second time since last fall, health officials are issuing orders for pest control as soon as possible.

[Emphasis added.]

Obviously, if there are inspectors who can come in and issue pest control orders, this does not mean bed bugs will necessarily be eradicated quickly and fully.

However, tenants who can call upon such services stand a much better chance than those who can’t. And of course, they are able to call again, if the problem persists, as it did in this case, and the inspectors can become involved again.

Note: the Franklin County Board of Health (this is their bed bugs page) is part of the Central Ohio Bed Bug Task Force, a group that stepped up, according to this article in the Columbus Dispatch last September, when local officials started to become aware of the problem and its effects in Cincinnati.Similar Posts:

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A new article from the Boston Herald warns of a difficult bed bug spring, and notes a continued yearly rise in bed bug complaints to the Boston Inspectional Services Department.

The bedbug resurgence that began in the early 21st century is creeping and crawling with a vengeance, according to national and local experts, who warn of a particularly pesky spring.

“As the weather gets warmer, we typically get more complaints,” said Boston Inspectional Services Department Assistant Commissioner Dion Irish. “The bedbugs get more active as the climate gets warmer.”

According to ISD, as of April 15, Hub bedbug complaints already had surpassed yearly totals for the two previous years: 223 complaints in 2009 versus 182 complaints in 2007 and 210 complaints in 2008.

However, there are some things Boston is doing well.  For example, as the Boston ISD website states,

Our Standard bed bug notice of violation also requires that owners inspect all units in the dwelling, and they must treat all horizontally and vertically adjacent units to the infested unit(s).

(Emphasis added.)

We hear from tenants in other cities that many (if not most) landlords will not voluntarily pay to have adjacent units inspected, let alone the entire building — even though their PCOs or entomologists may recommend this.

Having a policy that requires adjacent units to be treated means small and difficult to detect neighboring infestations may be nipped in the bud.  And having the entire building inspected means there’s more chance of detecting additional infested units.

All of this costs money, but when you think of the amount landlords in other cities pay to perpetually treat units one by one, piecemeal (a process which may never remove the problem), it does not seem like a bad idea economically.

The article notes that the city’s aggressive response to bed bugs in the Allston-Brighton neighborhood has made a difference.

Irish said the department is working to make sure there’s quality pest control available to property owners, and noted landlords are responsible for extermination costs or face housing court.

“Whenever we’re aware of an infestation, we require multiple exterminations and monitoring,” Irish said, touting the city’s get-tough policy for improvements in the Allston-Brighton area.

That neighborhood had seen a concentration of bedbug complaints dating back to 2003. Thanks to outreach efforts, a strategy of quick street-side pickups of discarded furniture by the Department of Public Works, and aggressive treatment of infested and surrounding units, “those areas are no longer troubled areas,” Irish said. The number of complaints in Allston- Brighton dropped from 38 in 2007 to 27 in 2008. There are 25 complaints there so far this year.

(Emphasis added.)

Obviously, Allston-Brighton is still troubled by bed bugs, but it appears to have been much less troubled in 2008 than in 2007.  Keeping in mind that bed bug problems will tend to get worse in time, as the problem spreads through a neighborhood, a reduction in complaints like this is good news indeed.

On the other hand, there are 25 complaints in 2009 so far — suggesting 2009 is on track to be big for bed bugs in Allston-Brighton.  Is this a factor of a less aggressive recent approach in the neighborhoods?  Or is it a sign that this is indeed “a particularly pesky spring” for bed bugs in Boston?

In any case, it looks like Boston has lots of work to do.

See Bedbugs back on attack – BostonHerald.com.Similar Posts:

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Claridge Towers, a DC Housing building on M Street has been treated for bed bugs off and on in the last two years, Fox News reports.

Clearly, the problem was not being entirely eliminated by the treatments done.

Part of the problem also seems to be that some tenants were self-treating because PCO treatments did not seem to be working. And not everyone was reporting their bed bug problems.

. . . Carl Payton and Tina Durrington-El said they’ve had their apartment treated before but the bugs keep coming back. So they gave up and began using over the counter products to keep the bugs at bay.

“I get frustrated and I get tired of calling back so I bought my own stuff,” Payton said.

That’s the problem. The Housing Authority says people need to call their maintenance hotline. At Claridge, officials said they had only three complaints that were being addressed until Brown turned to FOX 5. Now the building has five complaints.

Perhaps this outlines a need for the Housing Authority to search all units carefully, regardless of whether people notify them or not. It’s not just the tenants who don’t report known bed bug problems. There will always be additional tenants who are infested and do not have any idea.

Thankfully, finally, Fox News reports all 342 units are now being searched.

The building across the street, Horizon House, also has had recent bed bug problems some residents claim are persisting.

You can watch the story below. Warning, some graphic shots of bed bugs!

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It’s a pretty unlucky scenario when patients who checked into the Edmonton General Hospital sleep disorder clinic in order to find the cause of their sleep disturbances are woken in the middle of the night and sent home due to bed bugs.  This article from the Edmonton Journal describes just such a situation.

Sleep disorder clinic patient Dawn Blue was sent home in the middle of the night after another clinic patient saw bed bugs climbing up the wall of the next room.

The clinic had been closed after bed bugs were first discovered on December 17th:

When staff members first noticed bedbugs Dec. 17, they immediately closed the clinic, contacting both a public health inspector and a pest extermination company.

The mattresses and furniture were sprayed and the rooms were fumigated.

The clinic remained closed for its annual Christmas hiatus, from Dec. 19 to Jan. 5, during which time it was sprayed again.

The public health inspector and the exterminator returned before it reopened, and, following a thorough examination, gave the clinic a clean bill of health.

It resumed normal operations, until Monday, that is, when Blue was sent home and the clinic closed once more to allow for more fumigation.

The article states that Dawn Blue discovered the itchy effects of bed bug bites on various parts of her body the next morning.

The time-line is this: bed bugs were spotted 12/17, there were two spray treatments in less than three weeks, and the public health inspector and exterminator then declared the facility bed bug-free on 1/5.  The next bed bugs were found two weeks later on 1/19.

It is not surprising that the clinic would become infested with bed bugs in the first place, since guests were allowed to bring their own pyjamas, pillows, and other items (on order to simulate a comfortable, home-like environment).

What is surprising, however, is that according to the article, the Alberta Health Services spokesperson Rob Stevenson appears to believe that the reappearance of bed bugs in January was “a terrible coincidence.”

He says,

“In the most unfortunate of coincidences and, despite the fact that every day all of the material in the clinic goes through a specific laundering process, between Jan. 5 and Jan. 19, one of the participants brought bedbugs in with their belongings,” Stevenson said.

He appears to be claiming that this is a new infestation, not the re-surfacing of an existing problem that was not 100% eliminated as they had thought.  I am really not sure how someone can make this claim with any certainty, given the circumstances.

In my mind, the appearance of bed bugs one month after their first discovery, and after two spray treatments, does not necessarily mean the facility was “coincidentally” infested a second time by a new patient, as Stevenson seems to think, even if inspectors were able to find no signs of bed bugs in a visual inspection.

Many cases of bed bugs take more than two treatments.  There is no way of being sure the facility did not harbor some bed bugs after being pronounced “clear.”  We’re told even very experienced professionals cannot be 100% sure a space is bed bug-free. Human visual inspections are imperfect, and even well-trained bed bug sniffing dogs — which have a much better success record — are not 100% effective in detecting bed bugs.

Although a new patient can certainly bring in bed bugs at any time (and many Edmonton residents are, sadly, well-acquainted with Mr. Cimex Lectularius), it seems like the odds are also good that some bed bugs and/or eggs remained after the second treatment and simply were not spotted by the inspectors.

Anyway, the good news is that patients will no longer be able to bring items from home into their beds.

Other hospitals take note: we’ve heard complaints from people who believed they brought bed bugs home from maternity wards and sleep disorder clinics.

Steps need to be taken to reduce the spread of bed bugs, and as much as people need to be comforted while in the hospital, it is of the utmost importance that they do not suffer from bed bug bites there; it’s even more important they don’t bring bed bugs home.

You can read the full article here.Similar Posts:

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This does not seem good. At all.

Cincinnati’s newly approved budget cut $290,000 — a choice which, according to this article in the Cincinnati Enquirer, cancels a bed bug inspection program.

What was approved in the budget?

– $1.8 million for police overtime walking patrols;

– Restoration of the appliance collection service, but for a fee to be researched by the administration and approved later by council;

– $1.8 million expected from the federal government in reimbursement for the September windstorm, to go into emergency reserve savings account;

– $250,000 for renovation of the Clifton Cultural Arts Center;

– $248,000 small business loan for Goodies Barbecue restaurant to open a second location in Price Hill;

– $100,000 the mayor wanted to spend educating people about the importance of their participation in the 2010 census.

I understand money is tight and bed bugs may not seem important to many. But they are. And getting rid of them once they spread further is so much more costly than preventing their spread by catching them early.Similar Posts:

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According to the Stamford Advocate, that city’s health department expects last year’s 85 reported cases of bed bugs will be surpassed this year. (Remember, those are just the cases that get reported to the health department):

“It’s going up and it’s going to continue to go up,” said Mike Kraynak, director of health inspections.

As a New Yorker, I am intrigued to hear a public official express concern that the bed bug problem is growing, though it so obviously is.

And here’s the law in Stamford:

If a bed bug case is reported in rented housing, the city requires landlords to exterminate until the problem is resolved, Kraynak said. First, a resident must find a bed bug and take it to the city as evidence. If a lab worker confirms it is a bed bug, the city sends an extermination order. Usually, if the apartment is six units or less, the city requires the entire building be treated. In larger complexes, the city requires treating only the affected unit and those surrounding it.

I haven’t heard of other cities which invite residents to bring a sample in.

In New York, in stark contrast, we hear inspectors (if they turn up to inspect following a bed bug complaint) like to see them harboring in the “natural habitat” of your home (in daylight, of course, and in plain view). Oh, and we’re told they often expect the resident to be able to find them. As you can imagine, the wily bed bugs don’t always cooperate.

Stamford has some other things going for it, too:

Kraynak said residents must report a bed-bug problem, but a few preventive measures are in place. [City Health Inspector Amy] Lehaney works to educate neighborhood associations. And the health department provides information, including examples of the insects, at its front desk in the government center.

For those who don’t have a problem, Kraynak recommends caution.

“Don’t pick up a mattress from the sidewalk,” he said. “It’s against the law to sell used mattresses. And when you go into a hotel room, check the bedding and make sure you don’t see signs of an infestation.”

So Stamford is educating residents, helping walk-ins learn to identify bed bugs, and it’s also illegal to sell used mattresses in Stamford?

Good news!

In New York, officials turn a blind eye as the used mattress trade works overtime. There sure are a lot of mattresses on the curbside right now. I’m sure it saves New York City a lot of money in terms of garbage collection when those scavengers come and pick them up for re-sale.

I could not find anything about bed bugs by searching on the Stamford Health Inspections website at this time, but it sounds like they have some good policies in place so far. Let’s hope they do even more to fight the spread of bed bugs in Stamford.Similar Posts:

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Remember the House of Representatives’ Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2008? It would institute a grant program for states to inspect hotel rooms for bed bugs.

Well, according to the Library of Congress’s Thomas system, it’s now being considered by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

The Washington Watch site now has five comments up and a poll (to state whether you’re for or against the Bill).

I’d encourage more people who’ve had bed bugs to weigh in, since the poll is currently 90% against, 10% for.

Of course, members of the House of Representatives are likely more intelligent than certain members of the public who comment on such sites, but why not express our point of view?
However, keep in mind that online polls do little or nothing to affect politics.

As always, writing your representative is the only way to be sure s/he knows this issue matters. Have you dropped your Representative and the Committee on Energy and Commerce a note yet, expressing your support of the bill?

Please find your state Representatives here (you can search by your zip code), and drop them a quick email or give them a quick phone call telling them you support HR 6068.

And since the bill is currently being considered in the Committee on Energy and Commerce, I strongly urge you to drop them a note, telling them why the bill matters. You can do it here.

It takes only a couple of minutes to tell political representatives why this bill matters. Similar Posts:

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The Hamilton Spectator reports on the spread of bed bugs in that Ontario city.

The story focuses on Lisa Courtney’s bed bug battle:

Courtney tossed out her bed, mattress and linens. CityHousing, Hamilton’s social housing agency, had her Cumberland Avenue apartment treated and life returned to normal.

But now, the bedbugs are back. Courtney’s anxiety has shot up with reports of three neighbours with the same problem.

“I’m psychotic now, because people down the hall have them, too,” she said.

Landlords need to learn that you can’t simply treat the unit of the person who complains about bed bug bites. You have to have all adjacent units (above, below, and on all sides) carefully inspected and treated if necessary.

Apartment managers would be advised to read this article from Techletter.com about dealing with bed bugs in the properties under their care.

Since bed bugs can be hard to detect, especially in the early stages of infestation, landlords may also consider that treating all adjacent units where bed bugs have not been found may be a good idea. The City of Boston’s Housing Division actually requires this when the Inspectional Services Department finds bed bugs in an apartment:

Our Standard bed bug notice of violation also requires that owners inspect all units in the dwelling, and they must treat all horizontally and vertically adjacent units to the infested unit(s).

Boston landlords treat adjacent units even if they turn up no visible signs of bed bugs.

You don’t know how often Bedbuggers tell us (often in the forums) both of the following: (a) I have had 4+ bed bug treatments and the problem persists, and (b) none of my neighbors have bed bugs. When pressed, people invariably say neighbors were “asked.” Since as many as 50% of people don’t react to bites, asking doesn’t do much. Many times, inspection also turns up nothing. And then a few months later, lo and behold, bed bugs are back.

You also don’t know how often I hear (often in discreet emails) about professionals eventually discovering the badly-infested unit, with so many bed bugs they’re falling from the walls in broad daylight — invariably a bed bug infestation later discovered in a building where some other poor soul thought they were the only ones infested. Sometimes neighbors don’t know they have bed bugs because they can’t see them.

Other times bed bugs are clearly visible, but residents don’t know what they are, or fear repercussions for bringing the problem to light, or are impaired in some way such that they cannot recognize the problem or act on it, or (in rare cases) they know and just don’t care (shudder).

The good news is Hamilton is taking bed bugs seriously:

Stan Yung, a Hamilton public health manager, says the city is already intervening. It has been tracking cases since 2005 and now has a new public education campaign.

(I look forward to hearing how they are tracking infestations.)Similar Posts:

• Residents at the Bella Vista apartments learn their building has bed bugs by watching the news

Finally.

The Daily News reports that New York City is going to get a bed bug education campaign.

The article reports that there will be town hall meetings about bed bugs in Washington Heights (1/28), Astoria (2/5) and Bushwick (3/12).

Housing officials will roll out the campaign with a town hall meeting Jan. 28 in Washington Heights, where the creatures have rampaged through tenements, churches, bodegas, taxi garages and upscale co-ops overlooking the Hudson River.

Residents there have been under siege: The number of complaints has skyrocketed from 62 in 2005 to 366 last year, when 119 landlords were hit with violations.

More community forums will follow in two other neighborhoods with recent bedbug outbreaks: Astoria on Feb. 5, and Bushwick, Brooklyn, on March 12.

Tenants, homeowners and community leaders will be taught in English and Spanish how to identify bedbugs, exterminate them in a safe and low-cost manner and guard against future contaminations.

Just as important, they’ll be told what not to do, like spray an apartment, which can scatter the pests, or pour gasoline on mattresses, which poses a fire hazard.

This is all good, but I hope it will be just the start of a wider campaign to raise awareness. Television, billboard, newspaper, and bus shelter advertisements should be implemented to raise awareness, though there has been no suggestion this will happen. If the city wants to fight bed bugs, it is going to cost money, but not nearly as much as continuing to ignore the problem would have cost us in lost tourist income.

Awareness is just the start; as we’ve been saying for a long time, we need local government to track infestations. Someone needs to know where the bed bugs are and how widespread infestations are. Calls to 311 are just the tip of the iceberg. The city is still in denial about the true scope of the problem.

Another goal of the campaign: Alerting immigrants with limited English to watch out for unscrupulous merchants.

“Selling refurnished mattresses to Dominican immigrants who think they’re brand new – without telling them they’ve been reserviced – is a big business in my district,” said City Councilman Miguel Martinez (D-Washington Heights). “Unfortunately, many of those mattresses are crawling with bedbugs.”

This is important. The resale of mattresses should be banned. It should be illegal to pick up and resell any items marked as infested with bed bugs. And people need to learn to mark them as such.
Ultimately, though, the city is going to need to take a tougher line with landlords and tenants. Tenants must report bed bugs, landlords must treat them properly, PCOs must be contracted to come back until bed bugs are gone.

City inspectors should consider employing bed bug dogs to help them detect bed bugs, since visual inspections are time consuming and quick inspections often miss bed bugs.

Finally, financial assistance will be needed on several levels: homeowners and landlords may need assistance with proper treatment. And elderly, disabled, and other people will need physical and financial assistance with doing proper preparation for treatment.

I hope the city will institute a bed bug task force and staff it with entomologists who are true experts on bed bugs–and I hope these experts will be listened to and their suggestions followed. And soon.

This is no hero on a white horse, folks, but it is a start.

Check out the Daily News story here.

Update later in the day on 1/15:

Here’s a video from ABC7 Eyewitness News at 5 pm today.  (Click on the number “2″ next to the bed bug photo, to see the video.)

It is not clear what the city is going to do, besides hold these meetings and work on the mattress resale issue. I guess we will know more tomorrow when the plan is officially unveiled.

The ABC7 video features Jeffery Eisenberg of Pest Away, and a Pest Away tech reporting that they use two chemicals in fighting bed bugs (Suspend and Gentrol).

The newscasters quipped to one another at the end,

“You said you’d get a new bed, right?”

“And you said you’d get a new house!”

Sorry ladies. It’s not that easy.Similar Posts:

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