Interestingly,

The bed bug infestation came to light last week after the Pinellas County Health Department received an anonymous call about the problem.

So do call those health departments to report bed bugs in public spaces, or your workplace, people.

Even more interestingly,

Unlike roaches, which can be spotted easily, bed bugs hide, so “we don’t even bother looking for them,” said Charles Minor, a supervisor with the health department’s environmental division. “If we get a complaint, we assume that they’re there. We focus on getting rid of them.”

We’ve heard some pest control operators treat bed bugs the same way, even though in many places, it’s illegal to treat without evidence. Yes, bites are a form of evidence, but they can come from other sources, and so don’t definitively indicate bed bugs.

Still, I appreciate the Pinellas County Health Department’s enthusiasm for treating bed bugs.

PEMHS stopped taking new patients, moved those in the facility elsewhere and tented the building for fumigation, said Erin Gillespie, a spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Families, which oversees PEMHS. The building remained closed until Monday when employees and residents began moving back in.

It sounds like the building was treated with vikane gas fumigation. The facility may wish to educate employees and clients about bed bugs, since we can assume the bed bugs may have both been brought into the center from someone’s home, and may have been taken home by others, infesting their homes.

If employees or clients have bed bugs at home and do not get proper treatment, the facility can easily become reinfested.

• bed bugs clear Port Jervis, NY Hospital’s mental health unit
• Bed bugs in hotels: how to report (and check up on) bed bug infestations
• Freehold, NJ Social Service agency asks county for money to treat bed bugs
• Rockford, IL: half of Red Roof Inn shut down due to bed bugs

ShareThis

According to a corrections officer, the problem is so bad in staff controlled areas, there was even talk of closing down one of the modules at the facility.The officer, who wanted to remain anonymous, said this is a safety and health issue. [His] employees have filed complaints but little has been done. “I observed one of the staff chairs being taken down to be disposed of in the industrial area — which was infested with mites or bed bugs,” he said.The long-time corrections officer said employees alerted prison officials when the bugs first surfaced last fall. “They came in and had people spray the staff area and obviously it hadn’t worked,” he said.      

Sounds like a “spray and pray.” For pesticides to work, you must first remove bed bugs and thoroughly clean bed bug-infested items, identifying harborages for treatment.

You can’t just spray one area where bed bugs were seen and hope for the best. Adjacent rooms on the same and other floors must be carefully inspected, at the very least.

The spokeswoman from the Department of Public Safety says officials have received four reports of bed bugs in staff controlled areas since last September, and each time the administration immediately contacted a professional exterminating company to address the problem area.      

Well, that does not sound so good. You can’t simply respond to individual bed bug complaints with targeted spraying in the “problem area”. If bed bugs have been found four separate times in the last six months, then pest control operators are going to need to carefully search and probably treat a much larger area, if not the whole facility. For every bed bug you see, many more are likely present. And they are biting, whether or not anyone notices.

Furthermore, you can’t just treat once.  Treatments need to be repeated at approximately 2-week intervals until bed bugs and their signs are all gone (and this typically takes three or more careful, thorough treatments of the entire infested area–often an entire home or workplace).  

Employees and inmates need to be alerted about the problem so that those noticing insects or skin problems will come forward. Of the administration’s response so far, in treating each time someone complains, 

The officer says that’s not enough. “If it affected inmates the state would be looking at legal issues. A few officers from what I was told have filed for worker’s comp.”      

I found this interesting, since we haven’t heard of anyone filing for worker’s compensation based on bed bugs in the workplace.

I also would not be at all surprised if inmates also had bed bugs in their cells or other areas.

The officer says employees fear they have become carriers of the bugs.”Concerns are raised from employees that are afraid to taking them home to their families — their homes.” he said. “It’s kind of like being swept under the rug and not taken seriously.”      

While you can’t be a “carrier” of bed bugs per se, you can certainly transport them from work to home and vice versa, in clothing or in your bag. Anyone who suspects bed bugs at work should talk to their employers, who should then take serious action and get good, professional help.

• Covington, Kentucky IRS building infested with bed bugs
• Bed Bugs in Hampton Roads, Virginia hotels
• NYC office of Very Important International Law Firm has bed bugs
• Tracing the path of the epidemic

ShareThis

“All we wanted was someone to tell whether the holding cells in the Central Judicial Processing Court are infested with bed bugs,” said Meyers, a Hudson County Maintenance Department employee. “But instead of giving me an answer, my supervisor screamed ‘I hate you! I hate you!’ and refused to tell us anything about the situation.”

The cells were indeed treated for bed bugs back in December (prior to this conversation of 12/28), so perhaps it is a sensitive area for the management?

The women claim they were split up and given more work after asking about bed bugs.

• Warning to Bracken County, KY: don’t get caught in the bed bug blame game
• Disney guests paid off to keep quiet about bed bugs
• Tampa Bay mental health facility closed for bed bug treatment
• Blip.tv: Bed Bugs are not dust mites, or cute little kiddies

ShareThis

The article implies that treatments have occurred at four-week intervals:

Gateway Center officials said that after the first bug was found on the third floor in October, all floors were chemically treated.

Those treatments are scheduled on a monthly basis, officials said.

On the one hand, employees were said to have been educated on what bed bugs look like, and as many as five bugs have been found in the last few weeks (despite several PCO treatments):

The IRS building employs 5,000 workers at its Covington offices, and it told employees for what to look when they find a bug.

An IRS representative said that employees have found as many as five bugs in the past couple weeks, but the representative said that the company has been working with OSHA and an exterminator to keep things in check for the past two months.

“In check” is not enough. And monthly treatments may not be–many PCOs tell us they treat at about 2-week intervals. We know bed bug eggs can hatch within that timeframe, and leaving things longer can mean more hatch, feed, and begin growing to where they can breed.

And apparently, other employees claim they don’t know what to look for:

“I don’t even really know what they look like,” Gateway Center employee Joy Fox said.

Maybe the memo was not enough.

It sounds like the building needs to employ the most knowledgeable PCO firm they can, enlist their help in educating all employees not just on what bed bugs look like, but how they travel from here to there. Every single employee should (in my opinion) have their home inspected for bed bugs. People could be bringing them from home repeatedly. However, since it sounds like the sightings are not isolated to one person or department, it is “people,” rather than one person.

And wherever the bed bugs came from, they can now be going home with just about anyone.

Those employees need to know how to identify bed bugs, and they also need to know that Dr. Michael Potter estimates as many as 50% of people may be bitten and have no itchy bites (source linked here). Everyone should realize that seeing five bed bugs in broad daylight means there will probably be many more present.

One also wonders what’s being done besides spraying and (some kind of) an education campaign? If people getting treatment in their homes and dorms have to have posessions carefully inspected, possibly bagged for some part of treatment, and carefully exposed, then surely a place of business would have some kind of “prep” on its hands as well?

You can read the rest of the article from WLWT online here.

Update 1/12/2008:  Although WLWT says the Gateway Center is in Covington, Ohio, a reader pointed out that it appears to be in Covington, KY.

• Tampa Bay mental health facility closed for bed bug treatment
• Fox NY claims it became infested with bed bugs “a few weeks ago”; tipster tells Gawker they fired employee who brought them in
• Bed bugs at Hawai’i’s Halawa Correctional Facility
• Another top NYC lawfirm gets bed bugs

ShareThis