But Bill A6667a later died in the NYS Senate in January of this year.

The good news is that the bill has now been amended and approved by the Assembly once again as A6667b. It has been submitted to the New York State Senate again as of 3/19, and is under consideration by their Education Committee. Click here to read the text of the bill and follow its progress through the NYS Assembly to Senate back to the Assembly, and now to the Senate again.

The bill,

Requires city school districts having a population of one million or more to
notify parents and persons in parental relation of any bedbug infestations
found in a school.

And as the bill’s text details, principals would need to notify parents right away and provide information on preventing infestations and on avoiding the spread of bed bugs from school to home (or vice versa):

1 Section 1. The education law is amended by adding a new section 920 to
2 read as follows:
3 S 920. PUBLIC SCHOOLS; INFESTATION OF BEDBUGS (CIMEX LECTULARIUS). 1.
IN A CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT HAVING A POPULATION OF ONE MILLION OR MORE INHABITANTS, THE PRINCIPAL OF EACH PUBLIC SCHOOL SHALL PROVIDE IMMEDIATE NOTIFICATION TO ALL PARENTS OR PERSONS IN PARENTAL RELATION DISCLOSING A FINDING RELATING TO THE INFESTATION OF BEDBUGS (CIMEX LECTULARIUS) IN SUCH SCHOOL. ALONG WITH THE NOTIFICATION REQUIRED PURSUANT TO SUBDIVISION ONE OF THIS SECTION, THE PRINCIPAL OF SUCH PUBLIC SCHOOL SHALL ALSO INCLUDE INFORMATION REGARDING PROPER PROCEDURES TO PREVENT FURTHER INFESTATIONS AT THE SCHOOL AND TO PREVENT THE TRANSFER OF BEDBUGS FROM THE SCHOOL TO THE RESIDENCES OF STUDENTS. SUCH INFORMATION MAY BE DEVELOPED BY THE BOARD OF EDUCATION IN CONSULTATION WITH OTHER CITY AGENCIES AND SHALL BE AVAILABLE IN VARIOUS LANGUAGES AS DEEMED NECESSARY. THE PRINCIPAL SHALL ENSURE THAT THE BEDBUG INFESTATION AT THE SCHOOL IS PROPERLY ADDRESSED IN THE MOST EFFECTIVE AND SAFE MANNER.

Yes– it’s imperfect: why “one million or more”?
But let’s not focus on that for now.

Instead, let’s consider that this is a big step forward. We need the NY Senate to approve this bill. Parents have a right to know if bed bugs are in their kids’ schools.
Let’s not let this bill die again in the Senate.

These are some education-minded NYS Assembly Members who sponsored AO6667b in the Assembly:

SPONSOR Michael N. Gianaris

Michael Gianaris, (D-Astoria, Queens):

COSPNSR Catherine Nolan, Ellen Young, Richard N. Gottfried

MLTSPNSR Peter J. Abbate, Jr., James F. Brennan, Ann Margaret Carrozza, Luis M. Diaz, Ruben Diaz, Jr., Adriano Espaillat, D. Gordon,
Rory I. Lancman, Margaret M. Markey, Audrey I. Pheffer, Bob Reilly, Darryl C. Towns, Harvey Weisenberg

You might want to write your representative, if they’re listed above, and thank them for sponsoring the bill. If you don’t know who your representatives are, you can search by zip code, by clicking here. Please have a look. It will only take a moment.

Although not involved with sponsoring A6667b, Assembly Member José R. Peralta also cares about the effects bed bugs are having on his constituents. Perhaps you’d like to talk to him too.

But right now, the legislation is under consideration by the Education Committee for the NYS Senate. And we can take action to encourage senators to pass this bill.

This is the NYS Senate Education Committee:

Chairperson:
Stephen M. Saland

Members:
Kenneth P. LaValle, Suzi Oppenheimer, James Seward, Velmanette Montgomery, Carl Marcellino, Toby Ann Stavisky, Charles J. Fuschillo, Eric T. Schneiderman, Thomas Morahan, Martin Dilan, Martin Golden, John Sabini, Elizabeth Little, José Serrano, Joseph Robach, Shirley L. Huntley, and Andrew Lanza

Are any of these senators representing you?

You can find your New York State senators by zip code or by map.

Then send your senators an email. This is an alphabetized email list of senators.

If your senators are on the Education Committee (and so listed right above), then tell them that you feel parents must be notified when bed bugs are found in school.

Tell senators on the Education Committee that the bill matters because as the information on A6667b provided by the Assembly states, “Currently, if a bed bug is discovered in a school, only the family of the affected child is notified. Additional notifications are left up to the discretion of school health officials.” Tell them that requiring principals to notify parents promptly about bed bug infestations at school and requiring them to provide information about preventing the spread of bed bugs will help keep bed bugs out of our schools, and will also prevent other New Yorkers from suffering from the cost and pain of removing them from their homes or workplaces. Minimizing the spread of bed bugs helps everyone in New York State.

If your senators are not on the Education Committee, drop them an email letting them know how affected you were by the bed bug problem, and how much you support Bill A6667b, currently being discussed by the Senate Education Committee.

The bill died the first time it was considered by the NY State Senate. Let’s make sure that does not happen again.

You can send good emails to three politicians in five minutes, using the information above. (In contrast, it took me an hour and a half to write this post and include all the links!) Please contact your state senators, Assembly people. We need to press politicians for change on the bed bug issue.

Also, don’t forget, if you live in New York City, you also need to tell your New York City Council Members that the city need a Bed Bug Task Force, now. Click here to find out how to contact them, for a sample letter, and for more pointers from New York vs. Bed Bugs.

• Gianaris’ Bedbug Legislation Passes
• NYC schools closer to having bed bug legislation
• Excerpt from article re NYC Department of Ed policy
• NYC Bedbuggers: time to have some local politicians over for a bite or two

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Jessica Burton, who fled an infested apartment, said:

“They’re definitely in our couches, underneath the carpets, definitely in the bed, all over the bed. I was doing dishes one night, seen a couple crawling across the counter, thought it was wood tick.”  

Jessica Burton says she fled her apartment here two weeks ago because it was so filled with bugs, leaving behind virtually everything. Her baby was covered with bites. Moving in last October, Burton says no one told her the apartment had been infested previously. Downstairs from her apartment, we found the bugs everywhere.

Rich Jaffe: “The owners of this building tell me they have dealt with the bed bug problem before and they are continuing to try and get a handle on it, but it’s really tough. They even have an exterminator headed over here on Saturday.”

Unfortunately, bed bug infestations are very difficult to fight.  But they can be treated.  With such a situation, the answer will not be simple, and will need to involve landlords, tenants (including all neighbors), and professional pest control operators.  Having a city/county bed bug task force is important because the bed bug problem needs to be considered and dealt with outside of individual apartments being sprayed.  Or it simply is never going to go away. 

To their credit, local officials are very concerned about the current bed bug crisis in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky — as well as with the future projected “growth” of the bed bug problem:

In this draft report, city and county experts say, complaints about bed bugs could easily quadruple in the near future. If so, costs could reach one million dollars, locally. Problems include chemical resistant bugs and how to fund the task force attack. But for Jessica Burton, the question is where does she go from here.  

“To me, I was proud of this. I woke up every day like I’m on top of the world, pay my bills by myself, don’t need to rely on anybody, then all of a sudden, you’re like …. Wow… That’s what I feel like, wow… Like I’m walking in another world every day cause we don’t have a clue how we’re going to redo it.”

We hear stories like this every day in the Bedbugger forums — stories of people, like Jessica Burton, who are seriously knocked off-kilter by the losses incurred in treating (or in this case fleeing) a bed bug infestation.  

Cincinnati still has a lot of work to do.  But they have already held meetings for residents, declared war on bed bugs, implemented a bed bug hotline, implemented a system for picking up infested furniture, and changed their laws to class bed bugs as “vermin” (local laws about pests did not name bed bugs among pests it was against the law to harbor).   They’ve held multiple meetings of local officials, worked together with their counterparts in adjacent localities; officials in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana also held a tri-state meeting about bed bugs.  

The Cincinnati Health Department’s website features bed bugs on the main page, with links to both a 2-minute public service announcement on bed bugs (download), and a 27-minute video (misleadingly dubbed an “infomercial” in the credits) on bed bugs from Tom Hooper, a Registered Sanitarian (!) from the Cincinnati Health Department (download).  

The latter is much more informative, and (in my opinion) contains better quality information. It begins with an explanation of why people need to be worried about bed bugs (citing, among other cases, the Winnipeg 73-unit building that had been infested and treated for three years straight).  It also goes through bed bug habits, identification (including photos of German cockroach nymphs and dog ticks, which people may mistake for bed bugs), inspection, prep, and treatment.  

I don’t agree with absolutely everything in the video, for example, I’ve learned to tell people to get a professional’s or housing inspector’s inspection before they attempt to thoroughly clean and/or declutter their homes. Nothing should be moved until a professional is consulted. Also, many viewers will be mislead by the photos provided of the inspection process, since many — if not most –people will not see such glaring evidence. The information on treatment is also necessarily limited by time constraints, and sometimes a little information is a dangerous thing. I’d like to see more emphasis on professional treatment.

Despite these beefs, and the fact that it may not be the most exciting film ever shot, the bottom line is that landlords, homeowners, institutional managers, and tenants all need to be aware of this kind of information, and I applaud Cincinnati for providing it, prominently, on their Health Dept. website. I assume it is also being shown on television as PSAs generally are, but maybe someone local can confirm this.  

Interestingly, the two videos’ credits tell us they were produced by the Cincinnati STD/HIV Training Center, suggesting that resources previously used to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS are being employed to help stop the spread of bed bugs.   This use of resources implies that bed bugs are being taken seriously as a health problem.

Still, people like Jessica Burton are still experiencing the problem acutely — and it is seriously affecting their physical, mental, and financial well-being.  Bring on the bed bug plan, Cincinnati and Hamilton County! 

• Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana hold tri-state “Emergency Meeting” about bed bugs
• Urgent: if you’re in Cincinnati…
• Schools in Bracken County, KY shut down due to bed bugs
• bed bugs in Virginia Beach (again), Brown County, Ohio, and potential health risks

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Oddly enough, I could not find it on the NY City Council website or on Brewer’s defunct blog.
THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
COUNCIL MEMBER GALE A. BREWER

CITY HALL
NEW YORK, NY 10007
TEL: 212-788-6975
FAX: 212-513-7717
www.nyccouncil.info

Brewer Bedbug Battle Continues!

February 28, 2008 - For the last two years I have worked with the Bloomberg Administration to develop a public education program to inform residents about bedbug prevention, identification, and treatment. Since early January 2008, public education seminars, led by the staff from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, have been held in Queens and Manhattan, with a third planned for Brooklyn in March.

At every gathering hundreds upon hundreds of residents have attended; it is standing room-only because New Yorkers are desperate for accurate information about bedbugs. In our outreach to the community, residents are encouraged to contact 311 if they cannot attend one of the initial launch seminars or to request a seminar for their own community. Due to the overwhelming response, HPD has partnered with Operation Hope in West Harlem to host a seminar this evening. Additional seminars for April and May are planned and HPD is also folding bedbug education into the Owner?s Night curriculum.

But we also have a lot more to do. I am currently drafting legislation requiring the City to provide large plastic bags and brightly colored “Caution! This May Contain BedBugs!” stickers to City residents in order to completely encase infested furniture and other household items intended for curb-side pick-up. Both the bags and stickers would be available through 311 and at City agency offices. Piloted by the City of Boston, this service would increase the public?s awareness of bedbugs, as well as help protect sanitation workers who pick up infested furniture. I have also introduced legislation to mandate coordination of city agencies on this topic and to focus on the transportation of new and used mattresses.

Contact: Shula Warren 347-563-1295

• Gale Brewer invites bedbuggers to her annual open house
• New York City is behind in the bed bug wars
• Second Bed Bug Seminar (2/5 in Astoria)
• Bed bugs in NYC: if we could just get Bill Murray on the case

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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.

• bed bugs, news at 11
• Lexington, KY vs. New York, NY: a tale of two bedbugged cities
• Last week’s Town Hall Meeting in Cincinnati
• The first “bed bug seminar” hit New York City last night

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She wants the health department to investigate whether they’re a health hazard:

Toronto Councillor Paula Fletcher (Ward 30, Toronto-Danforth) has received so many calls from constituents she’s asked the health department to declare them a health hazard. Last month, Fletcher met with Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health. It was decided the Board of Health would issue a report in February on what should be done about bedbugs in the city and whether they should be declared a health hazard.

Here’s a hint, Toronto: stress, anxiety, loss of sleep, are all health issues. You need look no further. Something more sinister is clearly a possibility, but these other concerns are not to be taken lightly.

Next, Fletcher wants people to talk about how to get rid of bed bugs, and prevent their spread:

In the meantime, says Fletcher, “We will have a bedbug summit with all the people who are interested in and involved in this issue.” Fletcher is advocating the city address the problem with education, not enforcement.

“Some people said they were living beside a house and the bugs were travelling from the house or apartment next door,” she said. “I’d like to see a focus on what needs to change in terms of behaviours; what do you need to do to stop bringing them in and what do you need to do to get rid of the bedbugs.”

This is all familiar ground for us.

Fletcher seems a bit distracted by the idea that bed bugs primarily affect a certain region of Toronto:

The bedbug problem seems to be concentrated in areas south of Bloor Street, says Fletcher.

“They might be north of Bloor, but the infestations and pockets are definitely south of Bloor. Right now tracking them is not a requirement but that’s one thing we’re looking at is how are we going to track and where are we finding them?”

While they may be more common in certain neighborhoods (and certainly spread more easily to those next door than to those across town), they will spread anywhere, and are certainly moving in all directions. And not just from neighbor to neighbor, but to workplaces, co-workers, people who frequent the same gyms, doctors, schools, and shops. Public transportation is likely to be affected. (David Cain tells stories of encountering this situation in London.)
Fletcher mentions the concern of people bringing in used furniture, and getting them to not do so is a public education issue. But her ideas about eradication methods are quite progressive:

“Sometimes people are bringing bedbugs into a whole building inadvertently and they are travelling unit-to-unit. I’d like to see a model where there are teams of people who go into a building to assist and not simply spraying, but cleaning, washing, getting rid of them and then when the spraying happens, you have a better chance to eradicate them.”

The article also quotes PCO and bed bug dog handler Michael Goldman of Purity Pest Control, who claims that “most hotels” have bed bugs, at least in one room. This is a far cry from the claims made by other companies.

The article also concerns itself with the need for notification of other tenants when bed bugs are found in a building.

Unlike schools that send home letters when lice are found in a school, superintendents rarely post a notice saying bedbugs were a problem in a unit, says Fletcher.

Finally, there’s a nod to Vancouver, which has some of the more progressive bed bug-fighting protocols in place (though we rarely get details of them).

Vancouver has launched one of the best pilot projects in its downtown east side as the city prepares for the 2010 Winter Olympics. “They’re vigorously trying to figure out what to do with bedbugs and they have a program set up but it’s very labour-intensive.”

The Vancouver pilot included tenant and landlord education, public education workshops, pest control and development of a health and safety protocol.

I hope politicians in New York City and other US cities with bed bugs (from Boston to Cincinnati) will take note, and that they’ll trade notes with their counterparts in other cities, from San Francisco to Toronto and Vancouver.

The number one complaint I’ve heard now from professionals (entomologists and PCOs) in several cities is that their local politicians will not listen to those with bed bug experience. This is a grave mistake.

Though it is not explicitly mentioned here, it’s clear Paula Fletcher is listening.

However, there was one small problem. This:

“The chemical approach isn’t necessarily the only way or best way to go. It’s one piece of a bigger puzzle,” says Fletcher, who would like the city to help people control bedbugs. “What people have to learn is that to control bedbugs they must become good at cleaning their bedding. People have to be taught how to do that.”

People do not get bed bugs, nor do bed bugs persist, because people do not know how to clean their bedding.

Reminds me of  when the chief medical health officer in Vancouver, John Blatherwick, implied bed bugs were spreading in Vancouver due to hanky panky in downtown eastside hotels.  Doing or not doing “naughty things” had no bearing on the spread of bed bugs.  What is it with politicians and their weird ideas?

Read the rest of the article here.

• bed bug news for 2007-11-16
• Reg Ayre of Toronto Public Health: bed bugs a “health concern,” not a “health hazard”
• Toronto Board of Health gearing up to fight bed bugs
• Vancouver official blames hanky-panky for bed bugs in nice areas

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Wantmyskinback writes:

At the end of December, when I first began communicating with the Bedbugger Yahoo support group, and also reading the Bedbugger Blog, I was struck by two things. 1. the wealth of excellent information being brought to me and 2. the lack of attentiveness to this problem by my city. Many of us were/are asking, “where is Bloomberg? where is the government? what happened after the september meeting with council member Brewer and the Bed Bug Task Force? ” I wanted to know these answers too. So, I asked.

I went on the NYC.Gov link, and looked up City Council, and found my district council member who’s email address was prominently displayed. I wrote an email, anonymously from this email account (which isn’t my real one, obviously), describing my situation in detail. Within a few days I received a thoughtful and courteous response from the assistant to the council member who was assigned to follow up with me. She said in her email, that the Bed Bug Task Force from last September was still being forumed and that she would “investigate the scope of the current legislation and see if we can work on the prevention aspects (do more than just ban the sale of used mattresses). ”

My continued communications with her have led her to the Bedbugger Blog website, to the NYTimes article written by Bonnie Friedman, and then, to my delighted surprise, I recieved this reply from her saying:

I just spoke with CM Brewer’s office and they have begun having focus group meetings regarding the legislation they proposed. While the legislation is still in Committee, the focus group consists of several agencies, including Dept of Health, Dept of Consumer Affairs, and Dept of Sanitation; as well as a representative from the Mayor’s Office. The main focus of this group at this time is the formulation of an education campaign.

I suggested they invite a PCO to this focus group and a victim of bed bugs.

I immediately got on the phone with her, and exposed who I was to her (the undue shame associated with Bed Bugs as Bugalina put it is probably what stops alot of us from reporting our cases publicly). She was surprised, she told me, that only two people from my district contacted them during the month of January. That is appalling! I happen to know from my PCO that my district is literally “crawling” with bed bugs! She also spoke to me about NYCHA, which is the New York City Housing Authority which has a bed bug office, and helps people in NYC housing.

I personally urge all of you to contact your political representatives, whether you are in NYC, or elsewhere. Otherwise they do not know how many constituants in their districts are suffering. Please write your council members. Please use your government to make things happen. The only way we can get the information and to get things done is to SPEAK UP. It was quite easy to reach them via email (they have phones too), and they ARE interested in what we have to say. Unfortunately, NYC takes longer than other cities to get on it, but once we voice ourselves, they may move faster!

Notes from Nobugsonme:

Many thanks to Wantmyskinback for the update and for the reminder that we need to keep contacting government officials who may remain unaware of the scope of this problem, and who generally don’t take action unless their constituents tell them to. Use your name, tell them you’re a voter, and describe the toll bed bugs have taken on your life. You do not have to be the best writer in the world, you just have to take a minute and send an email or a note. If you want to point out information in the media, like the article by Bonnie Friedman, October’s major article in the NY Times, an article in your local paper (if you’re not in NYC), or a link to http://bedbugger.com, then it might help them begin to see what all the fuss is about.

If you’re my neighbor, in NYC, you can look up and correspond with your New York City council member by clicking here. State senators: click here to search via zip code.

Don’t forget to alert national government representatives too. US citizens can find and correspond with state senators here. (Click the wee “Find your senators” drop down menu at the top right of the screen. “Write your congress” by using the zip code searching tool on the left of this screen.

If you are not in NYC–please comment below with a link to your Chicago alderman (is it alderperson, now, Jess?) or other local government.

I can’t include local governments around the world, but if you have the tech skills to find us, you can find them by googling–most are online. Let your city and regional government know you need help with bed bugs. There is more that can be done–legislation, and perhaps even funding for better treatment of this quickly spreading problem. If you live in a country that did not see bed bugs much for 30 years, don’t take this lying down. (Sorry, I am entitled to one pun per day.) Insist politicians do anything they can to help us get good, safe, quick treatments, and necessary research.

And while you’re at it, state and US senators, Canadian, British and Australian MPs, and so on. This is not just a blog for US Bedbuggers. We get lots of readers daily from Australia, NZ, South Africa, the UK, Ireland, Canada, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Columbia, France, and around the world. Tell us how you get in touch with your government officials (local, regional, national), and I’ll add the links to a FAQ on activism.

If any local politicians (NYC or anywhere) are reading this (and come on folks, we all google ourselves, don’t we?) please leave a comment below. We’d love to know that you care about us, voting citizens with bed bugs.

• Gale Brewer invites bedbuggers to her annual open house
• Update on New York State bed bug legislation (parental notification re: bed bugs in school)
• Gale Brewer’s Bed Bug Update
• The NYTimes is back on the case

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