Today’s Room for Debate, entitled Bedbugs (Itch, Itch, Scratch, Scratch)! (hosted by the New York Times) has an excellent virtual roundtable, including posts by fabulous entomologists Lou Sorkin, Michael Potter, and Susan C. Jones.

Although Bonnie Friedman’s contribution waxes nostalgically for DDT (which isn’t going to happen, for all kinds of good reasons), we did also appreciate the presence of a former bed bug sufferer among the respondents.

As Renee said on New York vs. Bed Bugs today, the posts by Sorkin, Potter and Jones in particular would be a great resource for people anywhere trying to educate others about bed bugs.

Bookmark and share them with your skeptical, under-responsive or unresponsive landlord, health department, or legislator!Similar Posts:

• Bed bugs in the media: David Cain on British radio, Dr. Susan Jones in the Plain Dealer
• Towels under the door: when cities abandon tenants with bed bugs
• Baltimore’s new Bed Bug Response Plan
• Bed Bug Lessons from the Past
• RainCity Housing’s “bed bug sauna” now active in new Vancouver building

The Bonnie Friedman article is here. And here’s an excerpt:

The exterminator, when he arrived, had just come from East 81st Street.  “From East 57th Street and up it’s plagued by bedbugs,” he said.  “And they’re all over the Upper West Side, too. People expect them in another neighborhood. But it’s not about hygiene. It’s about who has the money to travel.”

Jeff Eisenberg, the president of Pest Away Exterminating, said:  “Most calls come from Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue from people of means. I get tons of calls from Park Slope and Cobble Hill.”

Many of us know that bedbugs are a problem in the city, but we’re in denial. It just seems too horrible, too outlandish to think we could actually have them. I live on a pretty street in a well-maintained brownstone. My husband is a senior manager in a corporation; I teach at a university. I really believed that my neighborhood was somehow exempt.

Bonnie Friedman demonstrates that when well-known people, like writers, get bed bugs, they have a chance to share the story more widely. Nice work, Bonnie! I have not seen Maya Rudolph talking about this, nor many other people. (When you have a court case, you can’t really talk about it, I know.) But I hope they’ll start to, because we need that. It does wonders for getting people to take this seriously.

I am tagging this article as a “Tipping Point”, because I think Bonnie Friedman’s Od Ed may set off a torrent of people talking about their bed bugs. Bonnie isn’t a celebrity, but she is a writer and professor. And writing this article in the Times reaches a lot of people. I hope they will follow her lead. And I hope that when celebrities get bed bugs, assuming they’re not on a lawyer-imposed gag order, they will speak publicly. Bonnie knows bed bugs are not a sign of shame, or evidence you’re dirty. That director in Malibu cited in last week’s LA Times article isn’t talking. Why not?

Oddly enough, the lamp I had put out on the curb, wrapped and marked “Do not take — infested with bedbugs,” vanished in minutes, probably to be sold at a flea market. Black garbage bags filled with clothes and stuffed animals were slashed, their contents removed.

And after all my work, I couldn’t discount tales of apartments being treated four, five, six times.  “This is a much different bedbug than even 10 years ago,” Mr. Eisenberg explained, noting that bedbugs have become resistant to the pesticides that are normally used to eradicate them.  “Ten years ago, it was easier for me to get rid of them.”

It really is worth the extra work of destroying stuff on the street so others can’t use it. But sometimes this is impractical. We need education campaigns so that people will know not to pick things up when marked. And we need those darned orange bed bug warning stickers.

It’s clear to me that the city needs to educate people about this plague and make prevention a priority. This problem isn’t confined to homeless shelters; it’s everywhere. Travelers need to be told how to prevent bringing bedbugs into their homes. New York should follow Boston’s example in issuing stickers to place on discarded pieces of infested furniture to discourage others from picking them up.

As we’ve been saying for ages…
Similar Posts:

• Penelope Trunk: bed bugs as a lesson in “taming materialism”
• Bed bug registries
• Bed bug public art project: your participation requested!
• Bed bugs in Danbury, Connecticut senior housing
• Amazing news: New York City Council to hold hearings on three bed bug bills, 2/24/09 at 1 pm