College students move often, sometimes from semester to semester.

They also tend to travel a lot, going back and forth to one another’s dorm rooms and apartments, visiting parents’ homes, friends’ parents’ homes, and vacationing at frat houses in Madison, Wisconsin, hostels in Amsterdam or cheap resorts in Ft. Lauderdale.

Many students shop in secondhand stores and accept gifts of secondhand furniture from parents, friends, or even off the street.

All in all, they can be helpful in moving bed bugs around.

Now the Contra Costa Times tells us that college officials have been talking about how to deal with bed bugs in college housing at a recent conference.

Universities and colleges nationwide are trying to figure out how to keep the biting insects out of dormitories — no easy task when it comes to creatures that can survive pesticides.

At this weekend’s conference of university and college housing officers in Florida, two sessions deal with the pesky bugs, which also have boomed at hotels and major cities around the world. UC Berkeley residence halls had to be treated for bedbugs at least six times during the recently ended school year — up from no incidents the year before.

I am glad that university housing officers are spending time on learning about how to deal with this problem. I hope that Stanford was there to represent; the reports we’ve seen suggest the Stanford officials have a good protocol and are getting good advice from professionals about how to get rid of bed bugs when they rear their ugly heads.

• Bed bugs at the University of Vermont
• Comment dites-vous le bed bugs en français?
• Stanford U bed bugs: being fought with enthusiasm and wisdom
• Bed bugs at Stanford again

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Students in a suite of Living/Learning’s B-building were displaced last week after it was discovered that one of the inhabitants had been bitten by a bed bug, UVM’s Director of Communications Enrique Corredera said.

On Thursday, April 17, it was confirmed that the bites on the leg of a female resident of one of the “German House” suites were from a bed bug, and all of the students living in the suite were moved to other housing by the next day.

The residents of L/L B-220 are permanently relocated to other areas in L/L for the rest of the semester as the suite goes through a three-week treatment process to eliminate any possibility of a bed bug infestation, Corredera said.

Evacuations must be done extremely carefully. Here, the students laundered all clothing and “bagged all belongings” (though what happens after belongings are bagged is unstated, and is of major interest, since bed bugs can apparently live for a year or even 18 months, unfed).

Evacuation of all residents and treatment of the rooms were carried out after one student received bed bug bites on her leg. It is not clear from the article whether any signs of bed bugs were found in the room (in fact, in the absence of such evidence, the student could have been bitten at a restaurant, in a library, or on a city bus).

• bedbugs at Stanford University dorms (again)
• bed bugs at University of Bridgeport
• 80% of Single Room Occupancy units in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are infested with bed bugs; also Rensselaer Polytechnic’s dorms
• Ryerson University: a study in unenthusiastic bed bug control practices

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Jessie Lamotta, now a junior history major at the College, was pestered by bed bugs on Cromwell 3 from move-in day to sometime in October during her freshman year.

“My roommate woke up with little red bumps on her body, and I found little blood stains on my bed sheets,” Lamotta said. “Also, at night when we pulled our sheets back, the bugs would scurry and hide.”

“The doctor (at Health Services) said that my roommate and I had scabies and that we should stay away from other students and not transport any of our belongings to other rooms,” Lamotta said. She and her roommate were given body cream to wash with twice a day.

I seriously hope that the diagnosis of scabies was given much before the students actually reported seeing bed bugs scurrying in the bed, and that students suspected of scabies are given skin scrapings to confirm that condition.

It sounds like the flare-ups were mostly in Cromwell Hall and have been cleared up.

Hopefully the students will be bed bug free from now on.

• Harvard dorm treated for scabies–but what was it really? Also, bed bugs at Columbia?
• Stanford U bed bugs: being fought with enthusiasm and wisdom
• Boston University’s bed bugs: if we don’t talk about them, they’ll go away
• Stanford: stop those bed bugs! Here’s what you need to do.

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(The following is not really bed bug news, but a reminder of a time not long ago when encountering a bed bug in a place of business was a bit like finding a hair in your salad, but maybe more common.)

(These last two are not really bed bug stories, but they tell us something about how widely known bed bugs are becoming: they’re starting to mean something in popular parlance once again.)

• bed bugs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and at Cornell University dorms
• Bed bugs in casino and senior apartments in New Jersey, Binghamton University (again) and another dust mite photo in the news
• bed bug news for 2007-11-16
• Bed bugs under discussion at university housing officers’ conference

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The health department also received complaints of infestations of two apartments at 553 South Main St., and one apartment each in apartment buildings or multifamily homes at 42 Pine St. (the Wilby Apartments), 107 South Leonard St., 182 West Main St., 148 Grand St. and 995 Bank St.

Also, there is a report of bedbugs in the Salvation Army shelter. A complaint received in April resulted in a notice of infestation in the entire building at 148 Grand St. The owner hired an exterminator to take care of the problem.

In most cases, the Health Department ordered property owners to take care of the problem by hiring a licensed PCO.

Meanwhile, in Boston, Massachusetts Institute of Technology student residents of Ashdown House, which has been under attack by bed bugs since last spring, are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Danielle Piskorz reported Friday for MIT’s The Tech newspaper:

A bedbug problem that has been plaguing Ashdown since last spring is close to being resolved. An exterminator contracted to MIT has been visiting rooms several times a week over the course of the summer, and sticky-trap style bug monitors newly installed in each room show no sign of new activity.

I hope that this testing has been done since students have been resident in the rooms. We do know that bed bugs living in rooms or apartments that have been vacated will often move to another location (if humans are sleeping elsewhere in the vicinity, say a neighboring room or another floor). We are also told they may go “dormant,” hiding out until people return. Killing bed bugs is hard when no one is in residence, since they need to be attracted out to bite someone in order to cross the poison and/or mechanical killer and die.

How did MIT deal with Ashdown’s bed bugs? Fairly persistently, from the sound of things:

In Ashdown, the residents of the infested suites were required to have their rooms and clothes cleaned entirely to rid the area of bugs. They were also given new mattresses with covers to prevent the bedbugs from finding a new place to live. The contracted exterminator used “a clear, odorless, safe treatment” to kill the bedbugs, according to an e-mail sent to Ashdown residents from Denise Lanfranchi, Ashdown’s house manager.

According to Bajpayee, exterminating procedures ran in cycles, with the first spraying killing the adults and the second killing their offspring. A problem arose when the original floor was sprayed for bedbugs and the surviving insects ran up to the next. The total number of rooms affected was eight or nine, said Bajpayee. Ashdown has a total of 264 rooms.

To reduce the probabilities of bedbug problems in the future, MIT Housing may consider banning students from bringing used furniture into the dorms, Collins said. Until then, students should “be conscious of who and where they are buying [their used furniture] from.”

“Everybody should be careful,” Bajpayee said.

• Lexington, KY vs. New York, NY: a tale of two bedbugged cities
• Bed bugs at the University of Vermont
• Bed bugs at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec
• Adult home shut down in Monticello, NY with multiple housing violations; 40 beds contained “bed bugs and bed bug eggs”

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According to News Channel 8 (WTNH) in New Haven, University of Bridgeport’s North Hall has bed bugs.

Graduate student Li-Wen Chen had so many bites she sought treatment at St. Vincent’s Medical Center.

The school has fumigated the building, but students say another problem occurred when it came to their clothing. Clothes inside the dorms were sent to the cleaners courtesy of the school, but the students say when the clothes were returned, they were dumped onto tables in the lobby, damp, damaged or ruined.

Students also claim that their rooms were left in disarray following the fumigation. Georgia Chiang, a student from Taiwan, says the poor treatment from the University may stem from their ethnic backgrounds.

“It’s very disturbing. We feel insulted and discriminated against. I do not believe Americans live like this. We do not live like this back home,” said Chiang.

School officials were not available for comment.

Obviously, we don’t know what the full story is here. But it’s a helpful reminder that residents (of dorms, co-ops, apartments, hospitals, etc.) need to be fully informed about treatment and required preparations, and that universities and other management bodies need to make sure their residents’ posessions are treated with care. If residents feel this is not happening, it might make them hesitant to seek treatment if bed bugs persist or return later.

It’s also disturbing to note that bed bugs are making their way around New Haven.

• Ryerson University: a study in unenthusiastic bed bug control practices
• Boston University’s bed bugs: if we don’t talk about them, they’ll go away
• bedbugs at Stanford University dorms (again)
• Stanford bed bugs: university fights back

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On August 17th, 2006 the BBC reported that a residence for doctors and nurses in a hospital in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, was infested with bed bugs. The unit was not attached to the hospital, so patients and visitors, the article said, were not at risk. (However, you do have to consider where doctors and nurses might have picked up bed bugs. A hospital, perhaps? They had to catch them somewhere. But we shouldn’t jump to conclusions–perhaps someone moved in and brought them.) Anyway, I’d bet there are currently a number of doctors in Fermanagh who just discovered the hard way that bed bug bites don’t all look the same.

This article from the BBC from February 28th, 2007 is about bed bug infestations in student residence halls at the University of Exeter. Eight students reported bites (so it’s likely there were more, who did not feel bites, right?):

Bedbugs hit university students

A university is fumigating student accommodation after an infestation of bedbugs in halls of residence in Devon.

Pest control experts were called in to the University of Exeter accommodation after about eight students reported they had been bitten.

A treatment programme is under way in the affected rooms and nearby areas.

A university spokesman said the outbreak was not the result of poor hygiene and the bugs had probably been brought in on someone’s clothes.

Bedbugs feed on blood, but can survive for many months without food. Bites are usually no more than a nuisance, although some people can develop an allergic reaction.

This additional BBC report, also from last February, is about a school infested with what are thought to be fleas sounds suspicious to me. (Apparently it did to the person who wrote the headline, too. See below.) Fleas are fairly easy to detect. Bed bugs are not.

School closed in ‘flea’ outbreak
A Devon school has been closed while an outbreak of what is thought to be fleas is dealt with.

St Luke’s Science and Sports College, which was opened in Exeter last year, will be closed until Monday while the building is fumigated.

The college website said there was a limited minor infestation in some parts of the college by “some type of small biting insect”.

The college will be “completely cleansed” and open as normal on Monday.

“The numbers of students affected are very small,” said the site.

“Having taken advice from the NHS, we have been assured there is no risk to anyone’s health.”

College deputy head teacher Julie Phelan said the school was being closed because chemicals used in the fumigation needed time to settle, not because the insects were dangerous.

It could be some other cause, of course, for example, bird mites. But it could also have been bed bugs. Whatever it was, I hope it is gone.

On the other hand, some people have no clue about bed bugs. This CBBC article for kids about “bedbugs” was published only two years ago, but features information about dust mites and a photo of a dust mite, while referring to bedbugs repeatedly:

Kill bedbugs - live like a slob!

Not making your bed could keep you healthy, as scientists say it could stop bedbugs infesting your sheets.

The bugs live on skin cells and sweat that come off you while you sleep. They also release chemicals which cause asthma and other allergies.

But scientists reckon leaving your sheets unmade allows air to circulate, getting rid of the stuff the bugs eat.

The average bed could be home to up to 1.5 million house dust mites, which are less than a millimetre long.

The researchers are looking into ways to reduce the £700m spent treating illnesses caused by mites in the UK each year.

They will soon be putting ‘mite pockets’ in 36 people’s beds around Britain to count their numbers and see what else affects the tiny bugs.

New readers, substitute “dust mites” for bed bugs in that article, and it will be factual.

Dust mites are no picnic, but they seem easier to deal with than bed bugs. Encasements and steam seem to be the way to go.
I’ve sent the Beeb a complaint outlining the errors, and hopefully they will remove it or fix it soon.

Finally, also from the BBC archives, a general story about bed bugs, dated February 22, 2007.

But can someone tell me what’s going on in this photo from Richard Naylor of the University of Sheffield? No, please, do not tell me.

• Eastern Nazarene College: students cannot bring in ANY used furniture
• Are the bed bugs bigger in Texas? University of Texas at Dallas students infested with bed bugs
• Bed bugs. Are. Not. Dust Mites.
• Bed bugs under discussion at university housing officers’ conference

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The university acknowledged that they’re dealing with an infestation of bed bugs. School officials said 15 units on campus were found to have bed bugs. The school has received more than 100 complaints.

Hmm. 100 complaints for 15 student apartment units seems like a lot. Did each unit have to complain more than six times before anything was done? Or is there another explanation for that?

Entomologist Dr. Mike Merchant said bed bugs are basically fleas for humans and that apartments and hotels are dealing with the problem more frequently.

“The incidents of bed bugs has gone up considerably,” he said.

Merchant said that bed bugs are not native to North Texas, but that they stow away in luggage and clothing during international travel.

Dr. Merchant is obviously trying to make the bed bug information more accessible to people. Now, I know Dr. Merchant would not want this to happen, but I think calling bed bugs “basically fleas for humans” might mislead some people into thinking similar steps are needed for treating both infestations.

A lot of people already make the mistake of trying to treat bed bugs with products made for other insects. Now where did I put my flea collar? (Seriously, do not put a flea collar on your person. I have seen someone recommending that on another website and I do not think it is a good idea.)

I also like it where Texas tries to deny responsibility for the problem: “they’re not native to Texas”. Unless I am mistaken, bed bugs are no less “native” to Texas than anywhere else on earth. Before being eradicated for 50 years, I am sure North Texas had their fair share of bed bugs, which enjoyed a reign of hundreds of years.

• Texas A and M researchers: chickens and bed bugs?
• Eastern Nazarene College: students cannot bring in ANY used furniture
• bed bugs at University of Bridgeport
• Bed bugs also causing havoc in England & Northern Ireland: university residence, hospital staff residence, possibly a school, infested

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From Vancouver 24 Hours:

The majority of low- income single-occupant rooms in the Downtown Eastside are infested with bed bugs, according to a report from the City of Vancouver. Environmental health officers inspected 3,100 DTES hotel rooms and found 80 per cent had bed bugs. The city hopes to expand a small pilot project educating residents and hotel owners about the critters.

This refers to the story we featured yesterday, though I don’t think we had that statistic on how many rooms were inspected and what percentage of them infested.

Also a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute dorm is infested, as the Polytechnic Online reports:

Overall, fourteen students were affected by the bed bugs and had to be relocated temporarily while their rooms were sprayed down. The three rooms directly affected were fumigated on March 15 and 16, while the other rooms were sprayed on March 19, because there were students with exams and it was more convenient to wait for the precautionary measures, according to Jerry Faiola, Director of Environmental and Site Services. Six rooms were fumigated on the third level of the building as were all of the second floor rooms. All the rooms were also marked with signs explaining what was happening.

The students had to bag all their clothes and have them cleaned in hot water, as well as move all their belongings into storage, so that the fumigator could get into the baseboards and other crevices easily. Two of the beds in the nine rooms fumigated were discarded because the drawers on the bottom served as a harbor for the bed bugs.

Students were relocated to other areas on campus, or moved in with friends for the few days they weren’t allowed in the rooms. “It was just better that we dealt with the other rooms now rather than have something happen during finals, or a time when it would be really inconvenient,” said Diodato.

The article says the PCO inspected units above and below (though does not mention whether there were any units on the side, which also should be carefully inspected). In any case, I hope they will follow up with inspections and further treatment, since one professional treatment is almost never enough.

• Bed bugs at Berkeley will be treated with… say what?
• Ryerson University: a study in unenthusiastic bed bug control practices
• Boston University’s bed bugs: if we don’t talk about them, they’ll go away
• Bed bugs at the University of Vermont

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Already forced to sleep on the floor, couches, and even pool tables, the residents have also discovered their new pets surfacing in their clothes and notebooks while in class.

If you have bed bugs coming out of your notebooks and clothes while out of the home, you have a serious problem. It is unclear what the students and college are doing besides having exterminators spray. and I wonder if they know about washing and drying clothes on hot, and keeping them sealed in bags, sealed mattresses and box springs in sealed bedbug-proof cases, and so on.

Monique Mercier, Administrative Coordinator of Student Housing, said she has received many calls from worried parents, but that she has provided students with preventative spray bottles.

She contended that controlling the bed bugs is now the responsibility of the first-year residents.

‘I can’t believe they’re still alive,’ she said. ‘The situation is impossible to control. We’ve been doing everything we can, but we’re not experts; we’re following the advice of professionals.’

She added that McGill and Montreal are unequipped to manage such a situation.

“Controlling the bed bugs is now the responsibility of the first year students.” Great policy. But I do understand her frustration. McGill University and the City of Montreal need a plan to deal with bed bugs. And parents should be worried, as should we all. Those students are going to each go to a different family home come the winter break. and the problem will spread. It’s already spreading to other students (if they’re seeing bugs in the classrooms).

My heart goes out to these first year students, who have other things they should be worrying about and working on instead of a blood-sucking parasite. McGill is a private university and should be worried about losing fee-paying students, who may drop out if they are stressed out and not getting enough sleep.

A second article in the York University Excalibur paper added additional details:

During the final fumigation two weeks ago, residents had to vacate their house for eight hours. McGill Residences provided them with accommodations at Royal Victoria College for the duration of the evacuation.

Hmm, I hope the folks at Royal Victoria College monitor those rooms, since it would be really easy for the bugs to have been moved there.

And I know I sound like a broken record here, but: did they really fumigate (ie tent the building and gas it with Vikane, which works but is costly and a big production)? Or did they use bug bombs (which don’t work for bed bugs, period)? Or did they do some other kind of spraying which the author is erroneously calling “fumigation”?

I should stop typing those last three questions, and simply add them to this blog’s template. ‘Cause, dude, it’s like I have to ask that every day!*

*Sorry for the lapse into surfer talk, but reading about colleges reminds Nobugsonme of being a student. She was young, foolish, and had lots of studying to do. Thank goodness she did not have bed bugs then.

• Bed bugs at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec
• Stanford U bed bugs: being fought with enthusiasm and wisdom
• Bed bugs under discussion at university housing officers’ conference
• bed bugs at University of Bridgeport

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