“If there is a classic example of why you don’t eliminate entire classes of pesticides,” Potter said, “bed bugs are it. We’re in a heap of trouble in terms of the products we have available to fight this pest,” citing several classes of chemistry that are no longer available (e.g., organophosphates, carbamates, etc.) and the growing threat of pyrethroid resistance. As a result, he said, “I don’t see how this problem is going to get better. I think it’s going to get chaotic. This is the most challenging pest I’ve encountered in my career. We’re in big trouble.”

Also of note, Potter’s discussion of pesticides used for bed bugs, historically, and now. A lot of this we know, but probably not in this detailed way:

Potter kicked off his 90-minute presentation with a brief history of bed bug control, pointing out that 30 to 50 percent of structures in much of pre-World War II Europe were infested with bed bugs, so it’s not a new problem. In those days, public health officials in both the United States and Europe used a range of chemicals to control the ubiquitous pest, including cyanide, mercury, benzene and kerosene, even going as far as to soak beds with “high test gasoline” as recommended in a 1926 U.S. Department of Agriculture Bulletin.

Fortunately, today’s treatment techniques are much more targeted, not to mention environmentally sensitive, involving a range of options including heat treatments, vacuuming, steam treatments, fumigation, and cold, as well as the use of insect growth regulators, dusts and pesticide sprays. In addition, inspection dogs are being used to identify bed bug infestations in structures and mattress covers are growing in popularity among PCOs and the hospitality industry. In fact, a number of the aforementioned technologies were on display at the seminar, including representatives of McGlaughlin Gormley King, Residex, Steri-Fab, Hi-Tech Cleaning Systems, Zoecon Professional Products/Wellmark International, Whitmire Micro-Gen Research Laboratories, Mattres Safe, ThermaPure Heat, Protect-A-Bed, Temp-Air and Florida Canine Academy (BedBugDog).

It wouldn’t be a bed bug seminar without some marketing, eh?
Check it out!

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Journalist Sarah Ferguson dropped me an email to let me know that her Village Voice article on the seminar was up, here.

As expected, the bed bug news is not good:

“We have to be in an absolute bed bug state of mind,” warned Dr.
Michael Potter, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky and leading expert in the now global bed bug war, with no apologies to Billy Joel. “This problem is not going to go away. I don’t see how the problem is going to get better. It’s going to get chaotic.”

Potter came equipped with a PowerPoint presentation and tales of bed bugs “oozing their way” through hospitals, nursing homes, movie theaters, drycleaners, Laundromats, schools, and all manner of dwelling spaces.

“Probably every major university in the U.S. has bed bugs in its dormitories,” he said. He flashed a particularly disheartening slide of an infested mattress in the “heart transplant wing of a major urban hospital.”

There were also entomologists and PCOs talking about pesticide-resistance, and rental property owners trying to cover their backsides:

One property owner wanted to know whether tenants could be sued for bringing the evil critters into a building—a notion that, given the rates of infestation in parts of NYC—struck us a little like suing for getting the flu.

The ‘flu analogy is an apt one we’ve often made ourselves.

“You’d have to be pretty confident that tenant was the cause,” responded Denise McCurry, an attorney for MGM Mirage resorts and casinos in Las Vegas, who was flown in to address the mounting liability issues faced by property owners and their exterminators. “And remember,” McCurry added, “the tenant is not likely to have a lot of money.”

As we keep saying, the blame game just does not work with bed bugs. (Click here for previous articles discussing the limits of the bed bug blame game.) Everyone is not allergic to the bites, and those who are allergic to bites generally notice bed bugs first, regardless of whose infestation actually started first. Those not allergic to bed bugs are the last they know they have them, and so very likely to spread them, as appears to have happened in Amanda’s case, covered on apartmenttherapy.com. But even in that case, as far as AT readers know, at least, there is no proof the bed bug infestation started with the “cute neighbor.” Who knows how many others in the building are infested. We’ve even heard of bed bugs being transmitted from one building to another via a shared wall.

Sarah welcomes you, and I encourage you, to leave a comment on the article.

This was mine:

I sorely wish that the NYC government would heed Dr. Michael Potter’s warnings about how bad bed bugs are and how much worse they’re going to get.

Most people in NYC with bed bugs, once they realize or suspect the problem, call their landlord, or a pest control operator.

Unfortunately, the city of NYC bases its statistics of how many new yorkers have bed bugs on how many people call 311, the city’s question and complaint hotline, to report bed bugs.

Since no homeowners, and few renters actually call 311 to report an infestation, the city’s statistics are very skewed.

When NYC undertakes a real study of how many homes pest control operators treat for bed bugs, as Toronto did in 2003, they will be very surprised to find out how widespread the problem is.

Unfortunately, Bloomberg prefers to pretend they are a minor problem, like cockroaches. When they finally spread to almost every building and almost every workplace, it will be too late to enact changes to halt their spread. Not only do we need a public education campaign, and a required-by-law service for picking up bed bug-infested refuse (as per the article), we need systems for tracking bed bug infestations, and better systems for dealing with renter’s complaints. Most people won’t call 311, I am told everyday, because they don’t want a bad reference from their landlord.

Until reporting bed bugs to the city is divorced from reporting a housing violation, we are not going to know how many people are infested.

I’d love to hear from anyone who was at the Bed BUg Control Seminar–what did you find interesting or new, that we should know about?

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There was much content and these few paragraphs I write here can cover only some things that struck me. This post unfortunately cannot serve as a comprehensive overview of the many topics that were raised or speakers who addressed us, not all of which I could comment on below. It was an excellent program and I’m sorry it wasn’t pod-casted for everyone here to participate and benefit.

The conference gave out a one-page resource guide and our blog was listed 4 times. Not only bedbugger.com, but also three specific URLs for FAQ’s. (think-you-have-bed-bugs, advice-on-getting treatment, how-do-I-protect my bed).

The overall tone was set by the first speaker, a Senior Health Inspector/toxicologist, with the first slides “Got bedbugs? Act immediately. No time for blame.” There were leaders from the Allston Brighton Community Development group that is so pro-active about bedbugs, and someone from Somerville who was also a great community activist. These were caring, sharp people who are out in the municipal trenches!

One presentation at the conference was a live demonstration of a home inspection. They had a mattress and box spring right there on the stage and inspected it. They felt an inspection should take a minimum of an hour and that the inspector should look at the underside of your box spring. Though they felt that with current practices, mattresses could be bagged and furniture treated, but they said that box springs frequently had to be discarded.

There was a lively one-hour question period with a panel of savvy inspectors and local PCOs (which I learned can also be called PMPs now). They knew their stuff. They were very much into people not moving when they had bedbugs. They said they had a case where a unit was so infested the two tenants were moved into a hotel. The tenants moved with only their medications and the clothes they had on. In three days there was evidence these tenants had taken bedbugs with them to the hotel! So they said unless you shower, put new clothes on, and take absolutely **nothing** with you, there is a chance you can take bedbugs with you. (My note: I wonder if bedbugs were transported in shoes or a wallet or the cuff of a pant leg or something?)

The PCOs were fan of using hair dryers when one inspects. Not to kill bedbugs, though they did agree you might be able to kill a bedbug if you a hair dryer up close to it on very high for 5 minutes or more — they used hair dryers as “an inspectional tool” to test to see where bedbugs were when they went into an apartment. They said bedbugs were frequently in clock radios by the bed, and you could aim a hot hair dryer at something like a clock radio and the heat would make the bedbugs come out of the unit.

Though they showed various pesticides, including SteriFab, which they said was 90% alcohol and a contact killer. They said pretty much anything could kill bedbugs on contact, but the problem was you rarely saw bedbugs and you wanted something that would kill the ones you didn’t see.

They were against preventive spraying and said it did nothing. They said preventive inspections were what you should do, and stressed education of everyone, e.g., how hotels had trained housekeeping to look for bedbugs.

In the afternoon there was a panel of three lawyers. The lawyers stressed cooperation and not having an adversarial relationship with the landlord. They said bedbug cases the victims were usually awarded punitive damages of 3 to 7 times the cost incurred, plus legal fees which can be high. They talked of a case where the punitive damages were $26,000 and the legal fees were $25,000, so the landlord had to pay a lot.

In Massachusetts, a landlord who has more than a certain number of tenants (not a small landlord who is living in a 3-family house with the tenants) is considered as running a business and you can go against the landlord as a business using the Consumer Protection Act. They refer to it as 93A, and you have to start with a “93A demand letter.” There were many grey areas, such as who paid if tenants needed to have furniture replaced or if they had to have alternative housing. The panel of lawyers thought the landlord should not only pay for the extermination, repeated ones, but also for the cleaning of the clothes. They said a landlord could not refuse to rent to you if you had bedbugs because it would be discriminatory.

All in all, I really enjoyed the day. There was a lot of other information conveyed that I already knew so I didn’t refer to it here. I realized how I had learned so much from this blog already, but, even so, it was amazing to go to a day-long bedbug conference and learn even more. I particularly liked being surrounded by people who clearly know how serious the bedbug problem is and are educated and committed to addressing it. Great job.

Any errors in my interpretation of what was said at the conference are my own. They were the experts. I was just gratefully taking notes as I learned more at a day at “The College of Bedbug Knowledge.”

PS: There was some discussion of how pets can have bedbugs. They even showed a slide with a parakeet. I know my parakeets were bitten by bedbugs, and it brought a tear to my eye and I was touched, not just because of my screen name here.

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This article in the Quad-Cities Online reported yesterday on bed bug infestations in a public housing complex in East Moline, Illinois. The reporter quotes one resident who has been battling bed bugs since fall.

“I work too. My tax dollars are going to support places like this (government run low-income housing). If people knew how disgusting this is, I’m sure they’d be upset,” said a resident of the Joseph Fulton Homes. The woman asked to remain anonymous.

Interestingly, a number of comments to the article also note that low-income folks should not have to live like that. At least one commenter (going by the name “some anonymous person”) mentions that “only the poor have to live like this.”

Well, not exactly. While it’s true that in this case, it’s a low-income residence, sadly, people of every social class and walk of life are having to deal with bed bugs. Many, many people we hear from at bedbugger.com — low-income, moderate-income and middle-class– have a problem getting their landlords to treat the problem promptly and effectively. The rich are perhaps in the best situation, since they have more possibility of moving, but this problem is not easy for anyone, and everyone who suffers from bed bugs suffers and takes a hit. And it can afflict anyone at any time.

We need better government support for fighting bed bugs, because nobody should have to suffer this problem for long (and a week is too long).

A second local public housing complex, a senior apartment building called Warren Towers, also has units with bed bug infestations, a story which was covered by the Quad-Cities Online on May 30th.

In other news, even though I have a google alert which tells me when people mention bed bugs in the news or in their blogs, I don’t usually mention non-bed-bug-blogs in our news round-ups. There are just too many people blogging their infestations on a daily basis to keep up.

But today, one caught my eye: this professional blog at LibraryJournal.com, suggests that folks are starting to talk about their bed bug infestations not just amongst their nearest and dearest, or in the workplace, but amongst colleagues they may not know well. That’s good news: talking about bed bugs means more people learn about the problem, how to spot it, and its likelihood of appearing in their lives, too.

Bravo to Heather McCormack at Library Journal, and Heather–we hope your Brooklyn bed bugs are on their way out!

Meanwhile, Lisa Hoffman’s Scripps News article on bed bugs (the one also published in the Knoxville News) continues to make the rounds of syndication, now in the Albuquerque Tribune.

Next, for anyone in Boston who does not have to work next Wednesday, the Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation is having a Bed Bug Conference.

2nd Greater Boston Bed Bug Conference: Extermination and Legislation
Wednesday, June 13, 2007, 8:30AM - 3:00PM

There is still time to register! Registraton is $25.00 and includes lunch and refreshments. (Click the link above to get to the ABCDC site and download the registration form.)

Sponsored by the Greater Boston Bedbug Task Force, this event will provide updated information about the bed bug outbreak to more than 200 exterminators, inspectors, health providers, property managers/landlords, tenants and housing advocates, as well as members of the general public.

There’s also information at the same link for local residents to apply for a grant from the ABCDC to fight bed bugs in your home. Allston Brighton residents take note! We’re big fans of the ABCDC’s bed bug-fighting attempts (some of which are mentioned here), and we’d be glad to hear about other community organizations that are trying to help people with bed bugs, or help people avoid getting bed bugs in the first place.

And finally, today some tenants in a Jamaica, Queens apartment set off a roach bomb which exploded, harming them and damaging their apartment and belongings.

Authorities say the explosion shattered the windows of Apartment 4E at 164-30 Hillside Avenue just after 12:30 p.m. Thursday.

Some residents inside the apartment were overcome, and at least two were taken to the hospital.

The force of the explosion reportedly blew pieces of the fourth-floor window onto a construction shed and the street.

Fire officials said the roach bomb explosion may have been sparked by a pilot light or a refrigerator compressor.

In case the fact that bug bombs do not work to rid your apartment of bed bugs did not dissuade you from using one, they’re also apparently potentially dangerous.
ABC 7’s photo shows what looks to be much of the apartment’s contents pushed up against the (blown-out) window.

I realize the news reports this as a roach bomb, but since there are (for good reason) no over-the-counter bed bug bombs, since we know people attempt to use bombs made for other pests to eradicate bed bugs, and since Queens is experiencing a lot of bed bug infestations, I do have to wonder if that might have been the case here.

Don’t try that at home, kids!

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Entomologists including Michael Potter of the University of Kentucky helped those in attendance understand how those with bed bugs feel most violated in the part of their homes they go to to get away from life’s stresses. The lectures also included information on treatment, and what it entails (not just spraying, but also including integrated pest management):

BASF’s Hickman spoke more in-depth about products used to control bed bugs. Hickman noted that bed bug treatments require a combination of non-chemical solutions (including exclusion, vacuuming, steaming and thermal eradication) as well as chemical solutions. Hickman said that today’s pesticides are not a “silver bullet,” and that each has advantages and disadvantages, which is why he recommended using a variety of pesticides.

Most interesting to me, however, was the talk by lawyer Kevin Brewer, and entomologist Susan Jones, who answered the question for landlords of whether tenants are at fault:

One of the interesting discussions that occurred during his presentation revolved around whether the tenant (to whom the source of the infestation was traced) is really at fault. After all, unlike pests such as cockroaches and ants, bed bugs spread because they are hitchhikers — not because of sanitation issues.

“The previous talks stressed that these pests are hitchhikers — they can occur in busses, in movie theaters and even in this room,” said Susan Jones, Ohio State University Entomology Professor. “All this emphasis on finding the source and this accusatory tone that this person is responsible for the infestation, I take issue with.”

Brewer responded that, “As a landlord you have a piece of property that was not infested and somehow bed bugs were brought there. Why would the landlord have to pay the expenses for eradicating those bed bugs when they did nothing wrong?”

To which Jones responded, “And the person that brought them in did something wrong?”

The inappropriateness blaming an afflicted tenant is probably the most important thing landlords and apartment managers need to learn about bed bugs. We Bedbuggers know that many people do not appear to react to bed bugs (or perhaps are not bitten even when they have them), and this fact alone means it’s usually impossible to be sure of the source of a bed bug infestation. The person complaining may think they brought them in, and the landlord might think so too. But it often turns out that someone else had them and did not notice or did not say.

But the bottom line, when it comes to the Blame Game, is that if you blame people who report bed bugs, they might not report them–putting up with them, or self-treating–until someone else is afflicted and comes forward, the apparent “cause.” This is a dangerous situation, because in the meantime, bed bugs have spread throughout your building, causing you infinitely more money and taking more time and effort to eradicate. Not smart business, from a landlord’s perspective.

With bed bugs, it’s clear that education is a big part of the battle. Check out the article from PCTOnline.

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• Another suit at Presidential Towers: this one focuses on landlord’s non-disclosure of neighbor’s bed bugs

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