A Toronto man has filed a civil suit against the Howard Johnson Hotel on Ellice Avenue alleging he caught a case of the bed bugs while rooming at the establishment.

Steven Lipson claims after a one-night stay at the hotel in January 2007 he developed welts and itchiness. Lipson alleges a dermatologist confirmed he was bitten by bed bugs. He is suing the Howard Johnson for damages claiming he suffered pain, embarrassment, and permanent scarring.

There isn’t much to chew on there, but we don’t often hear about Canadian bed bug lawsuits, so it does feel quite newsworthy.

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The owners of the embattled Tropicana hotel have placed a bounty on bedbugs, offering housekeepers $25 a pop for each one brought in alive.

The offer was posted in the hotel’s housekeeping offices, raising eyebrows among workers wondering whether they should pull out magnifying glasses while changing sheets.

“Don’t forget to check for bedbugs!” one flier exclaims in English and Spanish. “Check every room — every day.” The posting features enlarged images of the minuscule bloodsucking menaces.

The union suggests staff need training in how to find bed bugs, but the management say their pest control firm Ecolab already provides such training to housekeeping staff. The hotel denied there was a bed bug “problem:”

The Sun’s inquiries to Tropicana parent company Columbia Sussex drew a stiff rebuke, including the implied threat of a lawsuit.

“There isn’t a problem. Period,” spokesman Hud Englehart said in a statement.

The incentive program is part of what the Tropicana calls its “Five Star Awards” program, he said, and is intended simply to keep housekeepers on the lookout for potential problems.

“No hotel is immune from (bedbugs) and every hotel takes precautions to ensure that incidents are detected so that infestations are prevented,” Englehart said. “We are no different.”

It is true that bed bugs are a possibility in any hotel, anywhere.

So far, no Tropicana housekeepers have cashed in on a bed bug:

Despite the incentive program, no live bedbugs have been brought in for cash redemption, Englehart noted. (Nor, apparently, has anyone brought in bedbugs from outside sources to see whether they could game the system.)

Gregg Wears, supervisor for the Las Vegas Strip office of the Southern Nevada Health District, said the Tropicana gets an average number of bedbug complaints, but wouldn’t elaborate. The health agency receives two or three such complaints districtwide a week, and complaints are more frequent in residential properties, he said.

I am glad hotels are training housekeeping staff to look for bed bugs, and glad they are getting some kind of incentive to look.

However, staff need careful training and I hope they are getting it.  It needs to go beyond photos of bed bugs; they need to know how to look.

And they also need more time to do such inspections, and cannot be expected to get through as many rooms as they did in the past when they were only charged with cleaning tasks.

Finally, hotels should find ways to combine this incentive program with other detection methods: bed bug dog walk-throughs and careful PCO inspections should be considered.

Housekeepers eyeballing the bed can help but bed bugs are designed and programmed to hide by daylight, and so staff are unlikely to detect bed bugs with a cursory inspection unless cases are quite serious.

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The group was in town for a concert and had a music video to shoot that day. Several members had allergic reactions including swollen eyes. Some of the men caught several bed bug samples in a jar. Maybe they’ll call the health department?

The group says the hotel offered to refund them the cost of one room and give them a $100.

Comping a bed bug-infested room and paying out $100 when people happen to react to bed bug bites seems like it’s a lot cheaper than dealing with the problem.  Until someone sues.

I’m not the kind of gal that goes crazy for lawsuits, but you can see why some folks want to sue under such circumstances.  I really hope the band know about bed bugs and have taken steps to avoid taking them to their next destination.

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“Our inspectors are saying in recent months, even the last year, we’ve been seeing more complaints of bed bugs in our area,” said Dain Weister of the Orange County Health Department.

Even the most popular hotels are not immune.

WFTV channel 9 reports that one family was paid off to keep their bed bug story to themselves, after encountering the monsters in their Disney Resort.

One family said they were bitten by the bugs at the Disney All-Star Movie Resort. They backed out of an interview after they said Disney offered them $5,000 and a free trip to keep quiet.

The station also contacted Disney:

When asked about offering money to the family who found bed bugs in their room, Disney said they occasionally compensates guests who have a less than magical experience and the park does everything it can to makes guests comfortable [sic].

How is Disney dealing with bed bugs?

Disney said it has trained entomologists or “bug experts” on staff. Other hotels hire bug sniffing dogs. One of the animals is based in Tampa, but makes frequent trips to inspect hotels in the Orlando area.

I would indeed call bed bugs a “less than magical” experience. The spread of bed bugs can not be entirely contained and they will appear in hotels of every kind and quality. The best thing is to be proactive about doing a search for bed bugs in the room before settling in, and to take some basic precautions. (See our travel FAQs for more on how to avoid bed bugs while traveling.)

All hotels, meanwhile, need to educate employees about searching for and identifying bed bugs in the course of their normal work, and hotels need to employ professionals to help them develop a bed bug prevention and treatment protocol, and to identify and treat infestations as quickly as possible.

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Des Moines — “So what do bedbug bites look like?” OffTheBus asked Joe Biden’s Iowa political director, Danny O’Brien.

“They’re really big and round and itch like crazy,” said O’Brien, as we polished off a glass of red wine in downtown Des Moines late last night.

O’Brien and two other campaign staffers were stricken with bedbug bites while taking up residence in a cheap hotel outside Des Moines, in the northwestern suburb of Urbandale, during the final days before the Iowa caucuses.

“Actually, it’s more of a weekly or monthly sort of place rather than a real hotel,” explained O’Brien.

O’Brien and the other two other staffers, both women, bought some medication and are more comfortable. They also purchased their own sheets, pillows, and blankets.

It’s clear that O’Brien and co. do not understand how bed bugs work. They strike any hotel, any home, no matter how glamorous or humble.

And bringing your own sheets, pillows, and blankets has zero effect on keeping bed bugs at bay. It’s a great way to bring bed bugs away from the hotel with you, though.

They should have been getting their clothing, luggage and other possessions carefully searched, washed and dried on hot, and made sure the bed bugs were not moving with them to the bus. I know they aren’t taking time for that.

I realize the campaign is more important than anything, but statements like the following imply that bed bug bites in a hotel are only a temporary nuisance:

Bedbug bites, overflowing toilets, relying too heavily on volunteers, and worrying about every dollar could all add up to a promising candidate getting culled from the field on caucus night because he didn’t start raising money early enough in this highly competitive race.

Bed bug bites can be just a temporary nuisance, like overflowing toilets, but if transported in one’s possessions or (God forbid) one’s vehicle, one or many people can end up taking them home and to the workplace.

We might see bed bugs taken a bit more seriously if they ended up in the Senate, House of Representatives, or Oval Office. But I still wouldn’t wish it on anyone, not even my political enemies.

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But this article in Friday’s Toronto Sun has some interesting statistics. On the one hand,

According to Reg Ayre, the city’s Healthy Environments manager, Toronto Public Health received 194 calls for bed bug inquiries in 2004, 147 calls in 2005 and 160 in the first nine months of 2006.

That’s just calls to the public health department, though.

The little insects are spreading their non-existent wings and once again showing up in beds, and homes, across Canada, making them a significant issue of public concern.

“We started receiving anecdotal reports that bed bugs were on the rise,” Ayre said. “Prior to 2003-04 it was a non-issue for us.”

Four years later, Ayre says they are constantly sending investigators out to bed bug calls around the city.

From surveys of pest control companies, Ayre said it’s clear all communities are seeing an increase in bed bugs this year.

Disturbingly, individual Toronto PCOs record much higher figures, with one PCO seeing as many as four times TPH’s yearly figure per month.

One company said it performs 1,200 bed bug treatments per year while another said it’s spraying 400-500 homes per month.

Readers will recall a similar discrepancy between official complaints and PCOs’ reports in New York City: six months after the HPD tallied around 4600 calls and 1190 actual bed bug cases reported to 311 in twelve months (summer 2005-summer 2006), one well-known PCO claimed to be getting 85 actual bed bug calls a day (and presumably another 15 false alarms). That’s 22,100 cases per year for one PCO alone, if numbers held steady. (And that was a year ago.)

Clearly someone needs to get data on the full number of homes–public and private rentals, owned homes, as well as institutions– treated every year. Data on bed bugs in hotels and other businesses needs to be collected too. Even if bed bugs have not been proven to transmit disease, they definitely cause stress and much loss of property and income. They hurt individuals and business owners.

I’ve long said we need actual data on bed bug cases in New York City, where the only official data on bed bug cases comes from renters’ calls to 311 (the city’s information line). How people are supposed to know to call 311 with a pest complaint, which everyone knows is something you call your landlord about, is a mystery.

However, why most people don’t call 311 in such circumstances is not a mystery: want to stay in your apartment and not piss off the landlord? Give him/her a chance to solve your pest problem before reporting the building to the housing department.

And that, my friends, means most cases are under the government’s radar, and NYC does not have any reliable data about how many people here have bed bugs. We need a bed bug study done in New York, and so does Toronto.

Read about the 2003 Toronto data here on the CDC website.

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To stretch their funds, Cheney said, candidates and staff stay in pretty bad hotels when they’re on the road.

“There are some incredibly beautiful hotels in this country,” she said, “and if you are working on a political campaign, you will be staying in none of them.”

During one trip, she found herself sleeping on a rollaway bed. The problem, though, was when she woke up.

“I realized something wasn’t quite right … from the neck down I was covered in huge itchy welts - bedbug bites,” Cheney said.

From “Cheney: Politics has always been part of the family” in yesterday’s Michigan City, Indiana News-Dispatch (caught by hopelessnomo).

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One woman is interviewed who used to work as a motel housekeeper; she started getting bitten at work, and she quit her job because of it.

“If I’m getting bit up like this, making me sick, I’m sure other people are too,” said Laquita Grimes.

I just hope she did not take them home from work with her. It’s tragic that she had to quit her job because of this. I wonder how many more people take bed bugs home from work, and are faced with the expense of eradication.

The motel where Grimes works tells 13News they have sprayed and that the problem is now under control, but the management admits bed bugs are a problem reputable hotels and motels across the country are dealing with now more than ever.

While I am glad the motel has treated for bed bugs, I am not reassured by being told “they have sprayed.” “Under control” might be enough for pests like cockroaches, but bed bugs need to be eliminated. While this is not permanently possible in a hotel or motel, where new bed bugs could arrive any day, managers of lodging establishments need to do more, on an ongoing basis.

I hope that they realize that regular treatment is necessary for bed bugs. The motel needs to clean extensively to remove bed bugs and their eggs, and treat aggressively, including follow-ups every 10-14 days by a PCO who knows bed bugs (not simply by motel staff). They also, in my opinion, need a bed bug protocol, which should include training staff to recognize signs of bed bugs, and maybe some kind of preventive treatment, since bed bugs will be brought in again and again.

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