Bed bug warning sign in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, June 2008.

• Winter scene in Williamsburg, with curbside mattresses
• Reader Angie’s bed bug photos
• Street scene: still life with bed bugs
• Bedbug Warning

ShareThis

But this is also a complicated story: George Bibik, owner of the 30-unit building, was advised to evict the woman by the health department.

He did evict the woman. He did so on the advice of the health department which, acting on a complaint from other tenants, found her one-bedroom apartment infested with bedbugs. Officials ordered the apartment sealed, the contents destroyed and the entire block fumigated.

The problem, Bibik said, is that the woman has a mental illness that causes her to “dumpster dive” — that is to scour trash bins for anything of interest — and to stockpile her findings in her home.

After she received her eviction notice, Bibik said, the woman removed scores of boxes from the apartment. It still took him 13 trips to the dump to clean out the 600-square-foot, one-bedroom suite.

“The health inspector said it was one of the worst things she’d ever seen,” Bibik said. “Bed bugs usually only come out at night. They were crawling all over everything during the day. It was awful.”

When the floor-to-ceiling boxes were removed from the bedroom, the building’s owner discovered the walls were coated with mould. “I had to wash everything down with Javex,” Bibik said. “Now I have to paint the entire suite.”

Every unit had to be treated, at $80 a pop. The article says “fumigated,” but the price tells me it was traditional spraying. I sincerely hope Bibik understands this must be repeated several more times at two-week intervals. Ideally, all adjacent units would be inspected–anyone with a known infestation has to do more than just get sprayed, they need to deal with clothing and possessions properly.

Despite all this, Bibik, rightly in my opinion, does not blame the tenant. As Reynolds says:

He’s angry too, but not with his former tenant.

He’s angry that the social services system does such a poor job of helping people with mental illness to find safe housing where they’ll be looked after.

He’s angry there was no one making sure the woman wasn’t in trouble.

“I can only go into an apartment so often,” he said, “and I can only go in if the tenant has a problem. Why isn’t there someone taking care of her? She’s ill. Her social worker knows she’s ill. We have to have housing in this city where people get proper care.”

This is the second time Bibik has had a tenant with a noticeable mental illness, one that led to compulsive behaviour. That time, he spent ages on the phone trying to find help for the woman.

I have no doubts that this is a common problem. While bed bugs do not develop simply because you have a cluttered home, activities like dumpster diving (and bringing in used furniture or other items from the curb) can introduce the problem. Hoarding behaviors in and of themselves may mask a bed bug problem, or may prevent the tenant from seeking help, if they are concerned about others seeing their posessions.

There are multiple victims here: the mentally-ill person whose behavior is introducing or harboring bed bugs, the neighbors who may become infested, the landlord who has to pay to deal with it. It is a complex situation, to be sure. The one thing we can be sure of is that if such conditions are allowed to continue, those bed bugs will spread throughout the building.

Simply evicting such a tenant is not enough–social service agencies must step in. Or those bed bugs are simply going to travel to a new location with this tenant, infesting another motel, homeless shelter, apartment building.

And I want to be really clear here–we’ve heard other cases of tenants being evicted by landlords simply because they were the first to notice or to report bed bugs in the building. That is a completely different situation. Landlords who engage in that kind of retaliation don’t understand the problem, and aren’t likely to eradicate it from their buildings until they do.

It’s also really important to note that you can have engaged in dumpster diving in the past, or be a hoarder, or have a clutter problem, and not be the source of your building’s bed bugs. There is no definite relationship there. We have to reserve a nugget of skepticism whenever someone declares one unit to be “the epicenter” of a building’s bed bugs. In this case, it does sound like the unit was particularly bad, however.

You can read the article here.

• Bedbug evictions: Edmonton tenants evicted because they did not prepare for spraying
• Bed bug notice: East Village, NYC, January 2008
• Nashua, NH Health Officers on prowl for bed bugs
• Disabled NJ man who reported bed bugs is evicted for not doing prep & (allegedly) not reporting bed bugs promptly

ShareThis

(These kinds of scenes just put me in a poetry kind of mood.)

Two Williamsburg mattress photos courtesy of Miss Heather, our Brooklyn native informant.

What’s the opposite of eye candy?

Miss Heather directs our attention to the luxury condos in the background. For itchy young urban professionals.

Or there’s this one, on North 11th Street, Williamsburg:

Okay, the futon on the far right looks like something peed on it. But the mattress second from right, in the bag, looks new.

Bucolic with the snow, no?
I thought so.

Mattress photos above courtesy of Miss Heather of newyorkshitty.com, who does not run a bed bug blog, though, being in Greenpoint (also next door to Williamsburg), the topic does come up again and again.

• HPD seminar will be coming to Greenpoint– thanks to community lobbyists!
• Bed bugs in NYC: if we could just get Bill Murray on the case
• When I say the title of the blog, it makes me feel like Sean Connery
• Greenpoint HPD Bed Bug Seminar

ShareThis

It contains lots of solid advice about not picking up curbside furniture, being wary of Craigslist finds, and searching for fecal spots and blood stains. But it also contains some advice we don’t normally see. Especially pertinent, this comment from our friend Lou Sorkin, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History. (Hear him talk about bed bugs and other pests today–Tuesday–at 10:40 on 99.5 WBAI in NYC, or listen to the streaming live audio here.)

The telltale signs of their presence are itchy welts on your body, frequently in clusters of three or more. You might see tiny red or brown marks on your sheets where you’ve crushed bugs in the night. If you suspect infestation, check under carpets and in moldings, and survey mattresses, box springs, and bed frames. Look for feces and shed skins. And look for nymphs: “Ninety-nine percent of papers written on bedbugs neglect to mention that a bedbug starts as a tiny egg and hatches from it to become a [1- to 1.6-mm.] nymph that’s translucent white,” says Louis Sorkin, entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History. “If people knew to look for nymphs, they could head off the problem much sooner.” The bugs pass through six stages of development and feed at least once during each, which means you can get bites before there are full-grown adults visible. If you think you have a problem but can’t find anything, press packing tape or a lint roller underneath carpet and in the corners of beds. Nymphs and eggs will stick to it.

Lou is bringing up a really important point here: many people first see a bed bug that is a fed or unfed nymph. And neither bed bug will look much like the image of an adult bed bug typically pictured in a media story. The first five photos in our page with photos of bed bugs and signs of bed bugs convey the enormous visual difference between fed vs. unfed first instar nymphs, and between nymphs vs. adults. Since people who have not yet had bed bugs often hear of them via the two-minute segment on Fox, or an article in their local paper, it would be best if more news outlets would feature a visual comparison giving people some awareness of this range when and if they do encounter a bed bug.

The article warns people against self-treating with Raid or foggers / bombs, and talks about the importance of dealing with clothing properly, notifying neighbors, and getting a professional in.

What I found most interesting was the final paragraph, which was centered around the need for action on the part of the city:

SEE SOMETHING (DISGUSTING), SAY SOMETHING

Last week, bedbugged tenants mounted a Craigslist-based attack on their Greenpoint building, and protesters in front of the Department of Health demanded action on asthma-exacerbating roaches and rats. They’re not the only ones who think the city could do more to crush creeping menaces. “Bedbugs are a major mental-health issue. I get tired of the Department of Health saying, ‘It’s not a physical issue, so we’re not going to focus on it,’” says Upper West Side council member Gale Brewer. She (and many exterminators) advocate a campaign along the lines of the subway-safety ads to spread word about bug-suppressing preventive steps. Other strategies: certification of bedbug-specialist exterminators and bans on mattress resales. To fight other pests, exterminators would like the DOH to enforce pre-demolition extermination laws more aggressively and hire more pest-control experts to manage parks and public spaces. For its part, the DOH says it has retrained staff after the KFC/Taco Bell rat debacle and is working on plans to combat residential bedbug and rodent problems.

I am really glad that Gale Brewer, who originally proposed the ban on reselling used mattresses in NYC, is still speaking out against bed bugs and their very real negative effects on health. I hope we will get an update on the NY City Council Bed Bug Task Force that was begun over a year ago, but is yet to take action (to our knowledge).

The recommendations here–enforcement of pre-demolition extermination laws, the mattress re-sale ban, and the certification of bed bug specialist PCOs are all good ones. We’ve been talking about the need for a public education campaign (subway ads, TV ads, and so on) since Bedbugger.com started.

Finally, Kirsch said, when describing what to do when you determine you do have bed bugs,

Don’t terrify yourself with horror stories on the Internet; check informative sites like Bedbugger.com.

Informative is good: thanks, Melissa Kirsch! We’re doing our best to get information out there and help people with bed bugs stay as calm as possible, so they can fight bed bugs in an effective way.

I hope we can also have something to do with getting people involved–maybe not so calmly–in fighting for change in public policies, like the ones suggested in this article. It’s always a good time to call your city council representative, or to write to the mayor, about bed bugs. Wherever you live, whether it’s New York, Halifax, Melbourne, or Lexington, Kentucky, take a moment to tell a local politician that bed bugs had a serious impact on your life–whether it was on your family, your finances, your job, and your health.

New Yorkers:
Click here to email Mayor Bloomberg.
Click here to look up and email your city council representative.
Click here to email Gale Brewer about the Bed Bug Task Force even if you’re not in her district.

And here’s a few words from the Rolling Stones–way back in 1978–that still ring true:

Don’t you know the crime rate is going up, up, up, up, up
To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!
You got rats on the west side,
Bed bugs uptown!
What a mess– this town’s in tatters
I’ve been shattered
My brain’s been battered, splattered all over Manhattan

Pop this mp3 on your iPod and muse on how little things have changed. And don’t forget: email your city council representative and remind them there are, once more, “bed bugs uptown.”

• New bed bug legislation: House Bill 565 from Ohio on bed bug treatment
• NYC Bed Bug Task Force / City Council Update
• Update on New York State bed bug legislation (parental notification re: bed bugs in school)
• Finally, somebody does something: Cincinnati’s new Bed Bug Remediation Commission

ShareThis

Her interviewee, Chip Giller of Grist.org, suggested going to Craigslist or freecycle.org to offer your mattress to others.

Grist says in the related article their website,

In most areas of the U.S., you can’t recycle your mattresses, and they’re even hard to give away — charities like Goodwill often refuse to take them. Old TVs can be tough to unload too. But if your items are still in functional condition, consider that other R, “reuse,” instead of just “recycle.”

One of the best ways to give new life to your old belongings is through the Freecycle Network, an online community with chapters all over the U.S. and around the world, through which people offer up items they no longer want and other people happily snap them up. (Read an article about Freecycle’s founding.) The online bulletin board Craigslist, which also has hundreds of local versions, has a section where you can offer things up for free too. You can get rid of just about any usable item (and some items you didn’t even think were usable) via Freecycle and Craigslist, and you can find great free stuff too.

While this may seem like a good idea, these days mattresses you see curbside (and there is one pictured in the Grist article linked to above) are often there because people had bed bugs and threw them out. While tossing out mattresses and furniture is not usually necessary (or even a good idea), it is a really common reaction to discovering bed bugs.

While Giller and Viera might assume that people would not offer their bed bug-infested mattresses on these online communities, the sad fact is that you can easily have bed bugs without knowing it–a significant percentage of people do not react to their bites. (I’ve heard estimates from 30% to 70%, but I don’t think there is good data on this yet.) Mattresses and furniture items do not always look infested. And bed bugs are spreading at an alarming rate, all over the US, from New York to Cincinnati, San Francisco to Boston, as well as in other countries.

This is probably why Goodwill does not accept used mattresses. (It’s likely they have enough trouble keeping bed bugs out of their shops and warehouses due to donations of furniture, clothing, and other items they do accept.)

While I strive to be as Green as I am able to be, I can tell you that getting bed bugs can do some serious damage to the environment, in the form of tossed out, destroyed, and replaced items, the use of plastic bags to isolate infested materials, the unusual amount of laundry, not to mention the spraying of pesticides.

A typical bedbugger’s XL ziplocs used during an infestation would probably make for a nice little landfill mountain. Bed bugs are not easy to get rid of, and spread easily to neighbors and others. One bed bug-infested mattress can lead to many people getting bed bugs and tossing out lots of otherwise-good stuff. So encouraging people to reuse and share mattresses, when this can spread bed bugs further, just does not make sense. The best thing for the environment would be for fewer people to get bed bugs in the first place.

Avoiding someone else’s Craigslist or Freecycle mattress is a good idea, because you cannot be certain it came from a bed bug free home, and neither can the person who donated it.

Caveat dumpster, and Caveat Craigslist.*

If you’d like to drop Today a note about this concern, as I did, you can email them: today@msnbc.com

*Yes, I know my Latin is not grammatical. It should be Caveat Dumpster-Diver. And Caveat Cragislist-user. But it’s catchy don’t you think? ,

Thanks to poorBugger for mentioning this segment in the Forums.

• bed bugs in the media: the Today Show, Tuesday morning
• Craigslist bed bug warnings
• Dayton and Middletown, Ohio: avoiding bed bugs is difficult
• More bed bug stories from Cincinnati; also, pig spotted in sky over New York City

ShareThis

First, the journalist Judith Woods says of some bed bug victims:

The lawyer got rid of her bed, both mattress and frame, which ideally anyone with an infestation should do.

Wrong! Tossing such items out is unnecessary, since a Pest Control Operator (PCO) can treat them. Moreover, throwing them away (even labeled and sealed) makes it very likely someone else will pick them up and use them. You’d be surprised how eager others are to bring them home, or sell them secondhand (beware the Car Boot Sales, my British friends). In so many cases, you cannot tell from looking at the items that they are infested. If you’re in a multi-unit building or an attached house, your neighbors may even take them, meaning they can later come back to you.

Similarly, Woods suggests,

Bed linen can be washed at the highest possible temperature – but [PCO Ben Knorton of Rentokil] advises throwing it out.
“I’ve seen sheets literally moving with the sheer number of bedbugs under them,” he says. “In that situation you really need to take drastic action.”

Well, if the bed is moving under the weight of bed bugs, perhaps that’s right. But washing on hot and drying on hot are a better idea in most cases. The above statement implies otherwise. I would only throw out sheets, or a bed and frame, if the PCO advised it. And then I would get them to help (with the mattress and frame) to ensure it was carefully done.

We’re also told of the same afflicted lawyer’s case,

Her room was then sealed and sprayed with insecticide three times over as many weeks.

Does this mean the room was sealed and left for three weeks, meaning no one was sleeping there? If so, the insecticide is not likely to work. Bed bugs need to be lured out to cross the poison and die.

Thanks to reader Fedupandparanoid, in the UK, who wrote me an email to alert me to this article and the issues mentioned above.

She also had this to say:

The article was nearly a full page on the Health on Monday page, and headlined ‘Don’t let the bedbugs bite,’ but I was very dissapointed at the tone of the article and take issue with some of the information contained in it. For some reason the journalist writing had called in Rentokil to check her house because she was so worried about the general rise in bedbugs. She didn’t appear to have any reason for suspecting bedbugs other than that there is a 500-fold increase in cases in London. Rentokil, who she called in, are at the very expensive end of the pest control market and they will be rubbing their hands in glee if they can charge good money to go in and inspect middle class people’s homes for no reason other than there is a general increase.

In fairness, the article did mention signs you can look for, like blood spots and fecal stains, bites in a row and did mention what a bedbug looks like, also the problems with hotels, but they seemed to miss an opportunity of really educating people. The journalist to her ‘great relief received a clean bill of health’ for her beds and although I wouldn’t wish bedbugs on anyone it would have carried more weight if she had actually had them or knew someone who had. There was nothing really about the terrible trauma and life disruption that people go through just a few jokey comments about what the neighbours would think.

Fedupandparanoid also said,

I just feel so annoyed that a paper like the Daily Telegraph - respected for it’s journalism - can make such a hash of a good opportunity. I realise journalists have to write articles that people want to read but there seemed no research and no substance to the article at all.

Yes. I agree with Fedup that we have come to expect more. At least the British press are covering the issue–getting people to talk about bed bugs is the first step.

In other news, in one of the few places that has gone beyond talking about bed bugs, Cincinnati emergency personnel are concerned about catching bed bugs when they go to help the city’s residents, ABC9 (WCPO.com) reports.

Firefighters, police, and health workers are encountering bed bugs in their work. And in the circumstances, where people are in danger, personnel don’t generally have time to worry about whether a place is infested before they go in.

Cincinnati Fire District Chief Ronald J. Texter says they’re working on a plan so crews won’t bring them back to the firehouse.

“The difficulty for us is that we can’t go into a house, survey it first, find out whether or not there’s bedbugs and then take precautions by putting on a Tyvex suit or something like that, like an exterminator would do.”

Texter said the department is concerned about the growing bedbug problem. The bugs are so small, sometimes you can’t see them.

“We’ve also had hospitals call and tell us that the patient, when they started treating them, they found bedbugs and they call us and let us know as a precaution that the patient had bedbugs,” Texter said.

This is good news: hospital staff are tuned in to the problem and the dangers of personnel exposed to it. The bad news is if patients are carrying bed bugs on their person, they must be suffering from very bad infestations.

If a firefighter walks into a home with bedbugs, they’re being encouraged to clean their equipment as soon as they return to the station.

Chief Texter admits that’s easier said than done.

“When you make 15 to 20 runs a day and you can’t stop everytime and take everything out, clean it, and put it all back and make sure there’s no bedbugs.”

The Cincinnati Fraternal Order of Police says officers have similar concerns.

Both departments are working on a plan to deal with the problem.

The fire department is educating personnel in addition to hiring an exterminator.

“If we do have a problem with bedbugs, we already have a pest control operator under contract to treat the infestation.”

Cincinnati emergency personnel, like the Cincinnati health department, are being very proactive about bed bugs. That the police and fire departments are talking to pest control operators in advance of detecting an infestation, is a very good thing. Lots can be done–not only in terms of educating personnel about signs of bed bugs and what to do if one is exposed, but also in terms of developing a protocol for searching the firehouse, for example, or where to store clothing that may be exposed.

And make no mistake: bed bugs are spreading via the same routes everywhere else. The difference is, people in Cincinnati are not afraid to talk about it. It’s the first step to making things better.

Click to read or watch the ABC9 video from Cincinnati.

Click here to read the Daily Telegraph article.

• Cincinnati: awareness spreading, funds needed to fight bed bugs
• Urgent: if you’re in Cincinnati…
• Cincinnati Establishes Bed Bug Furniture Pick-Up Procedures and Hotline
• Cincinnati: “best weapon against bed bugs is … education”

ShareThis

Calvin Merritt’s problems at Hillrise Apartments are pretty simple.

“Mostly bugs, roaches and all that…”

The “all that” is bed bugs. Dead ones were easy to find under Calvin’s mattress, and piles of them behind the bed. When exterminators come in to spray here, their work’s easy to see, pesticide stains run down Calvin’s walls. Calvin pays 313 dollars a month for this one bedroom…what little furniture he had was mostly pitched, because it was infested.

Calvin Merritt, Resident: “I done lost everything got here, my couch, my other chairs, all the stuff I had was new, I had to get rid of all of that.”

At the other end of the hall, Jeanette Jessie doesn’t have any bedbugs, but she worries about them just the same.

Jeanette Jessie, Resident: “They just spread them from one end of the building to the other, this is crazy, get this place cleaned up, spray it at one time and get rid of this mess.”

It sounds a bit like the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA in Washington DC, Halcyon House in Denver, and Warren Towers in East Moline, Illinois. Elderly people, disabled people, and anyone in low-income housing is being dealt a raw deal when it comes to getting rid of bed bugs. Let’s face it, bed bugs are expensive to treat. They’re also a rather sudden problem no one was expecting and no one has budgeted for.

Bed bugs are difficult to treat, too. Traditional treatments require multiple pest control visits at short intervals. Residents must prepare for treatment, which can be a lengthy process and costly too (especially for those on a fixed income).

However, make no mistake: non-aggressive treatment (treating only some of the infested units, treating at too-long intervals, or not coming as many times as needed), waiting for tenants who might be unaware they have bed bugs to report them, and not providing assistance with preparation costs and physical labor–all of these reactions from landlords and housing managers mean that bed bugs will be around longer, spread into more units, and cost much more to get rid of.

It just does not make sense on any practical level to not be aggressive, thorough, and quick to treat bed bugs in a building you are responsible for. It is simply a display of ignorance about the nature of this beast.

We can’t entirely blame landlords for this ignorance; none of us were expecting bed bugs. But we need to educate the public about the signs of bed bugs, and we need to educate professionals in all walks of life (from those who provide housing, to hospitality services, to health care, education, and on and on) about the need for a bed bug protocol which includes both proactive searching for signs of bed bugs, and swift reactions to any bed bug signs or sightings.

Too many people seem to be hoping they’ll just go away. Good luck with that. In the meantime:

Channel 12 reports,

Officials from the Cincinnati Health Department tell us they’ll soon be taking a closer look at conditions in the apartments.

I love the Cincinnati Health Department. But you knew that.

• Cincinnati Establishes Bed Bug Furniture Pick-Up Procedures and Hotline
• Cincinnati fights bed bugs, declares some success
• Cincinnati: “best weapon against bed bugs is … education”
• Cincinnati government discovers bed bugs are not easily treated, news at 11

ShareThis

They’ve started a bed bug hotline for “tips and information,” and people are asked to completely encase infested items in plastic before disposing of them. Residents can call to have infested items picked up curbside by a dedicated sanitation crew that knows what they’re picking up.

Dale Grigsby, Cincinnati Health Department: “Get the stuff as clean as you can, cracks and crevices of the mattresses and box springs, the best thing you can do is wrap them, completely encase them in some sort of a plastic, zippered liner, bed bugs can’t feed if they can’t get out, and that’s where they harbor.”

I note that even though Cincinnati officials remind us that bed bugs do not spread disease, the Cincinnati Health Department is a key player in this campaign.

Residents are also being warned about the dangers of used and rented furniture.

And one woman’s story reminds us how easily bed bugs may travel home with us. Pamela Mackey believes she got them from a hospital where she spent two days at her husband’s bedside; apparently, it came home in a sealed envelope:

After staying by her husbands bedside for a few days at University Hospital recently, Pamela Mackey says she returned home, and opened the admissions packet to find something she didn’t want to see.

Pamela Mackey, Bond Hill: “Took out a letter and unbeknownst to me there was a little critter…and my dismay I crushed this little critter and blood everywhere.”

Mackey says the critter was a bedbug, and while she contacted the hospital to tell them she’s still…

“Angry because I had brought something into my home that previously had not occupied my space.”

Click to view the video. For anyone in Cincinnati who’s reading this, you probably know more than we do! But just in case, the bed bug hotline for Cincinnati residents only is (513) 591-6000. (If you’re not in Cincinnati, please don’t use that number. Seek the services of a qualified PCO, read our FAQs, and come to the forum if you have questions!)

I am very impressed with the way the government in Cincinnati is trying to work on this. I seriously hope that the news reports will focus on treatment options, as well as furniture disposal, which seems to be a major focus. It is essential to get a hold on bed bug refuse in order to halt the spread. However, good bed bug treatment, from experienced PCOs who know bed bugs, is also essential. It’s important that people know how to find a good PCO, and also know about the dangers of self-treating this difficult pest situation. Other tips might also help Cincinnati residents solve their bed bug issues more swiftly.

Cincinnati is still the only city in the US that is taking action on such a large scale. And there is still so much more that can be done. Mayor Bloomberg, are you listening? I’ll bet you a bucket of diatomaceous earth that New York City’s got more bed bugs per capita than Cincinnati. It’s a bet I hate to win, but I think my odds are good. Why are we waiting, New Yorkers?

• Bed bugs taking over Wales too; hospitals and bed bugs
• Cincinnati Establishes Bed Bug Furniture Pick-Up Procedures and Hotline
• Cincinnati: awareness spreading, funds needed to fight bed bugs
• More from Cincinnati: senior housing complex

ShareThis

Pros:

They have a hotline.

Garbage collectors know what they’re dealing with.

Residents are being told to seal items in plastic, to protect workers (but an added benefit is that it helps protect passers-by and helps warn them not to take the contents, since we can assume consciousness is being raised.

Concerns:
(I originally thought “Cons”; then I said to myself, “Nobugs, there are no cons.”)

Collections are made on same day as garbage pick-up. (That means stuff is sitting around, and some people will doubtless take it anyway.)

Workers are being given bug repellent. I think they need more. Tyvek suits for those doing bed bug pickups would not be overkill. I hope they’re also getting educated about how to treat clothing and stuff either back at the depot or at home. Those trucks may easily become infested and should be treated preventively (but this is probably true of other refuse trucks as well.)

All in all, this is wonderful news, and I am very impressed with Cincinnati’s efforts in fighting bed bugs.

I do think they will have to tackle the problem of people not being able to pay for treatment.

As the Q and A in the article states,

Q: Who do I call if I think my home or apartment has bedbugs?

A: You may choose to contact a licensed pest control to determine if you have an infestation and to provide bug control services. The Cincinnati Health Department does not conduct inspections for bed bugs, but can provide information.

The expense of treatment affects homeowners and tenants alike (even if landlords have to pay, this can really mess up tenants’ lives since landlords may be pressed for cash and reluctant to treat properly). You can throw away all the mattresses and sofas you like, but in the vast majority of cases, bed bugs are not just in your furniture, and so you will not get rid of bed bugs without treatment.

I also hope that Cincinnati will consider imposing some kind of fine for people just dumping infested stuff on the sidewalk, without wrapping it. (Again, though, same-day pickups would do the most good.)

Finally, I hope Cincinnati is soon to provide the public education on bed bugs that residents need. People need to know that throwing things out is not always the best idea, and they need to learn the dos and donts of bed bugs.

I sound ungrateful, don’t I? It’s like, I really liked Cincinnati. I really wanted Cincinnati to start the Bed Bug Remediation Commission. But once they did, it took more and more to impress me. First I just wanted a date, then I wanted flowers, then it had to be Gerbera Daisies. Look, Cincinnati, you’re #1 in the Bed Bug Heroes category. But now you have to keep impressing us.

• Cincinnati: “best weapon against bed bugs is … education”
• More from Cincinnati: senior housing complex
• Bedbug evictions: Edmonton tenants evicted because they did not prepare for spraying
• California fights bed bugs: good news from the golden state

ShareThis

The Bedbugger known as iphone interloper* has sent me a batch of interesting photos taken on 1st Ave. in the East Village on Saturday at 2 pm. First the photos, then the commentary:

This sequence shows some guys, wearing gloves, removing a box spring to a truck. They also took some other furniture.

What’s interesting here is that the truck is small (a pick-up) and the workers are, according to our eye witness, apparently building employees, and employees of a company that offers cleaning and maintenance services to building owners and managers (the company’s name is on the pick-up truck). In other words, it does not appear to be a routine trash pick-up, nor a move. A young man sits on a chair watching the process. Is he the owner of the items? A bystander?

Can you think of any reasons why building and contracted staff might be carefully removing a small amount of furniture from a building? It doesn’t appear to be a move, nor could it be an eviction. Might they be removing hazardous items? Keeping them away from the curb (where they might be re-cycled into another apartment, with disastrous effect)?

Just speculating. We have no idea what is going on. Maybe someone just moved out and left their stuff and the building had to get it out. But in my building, if the manager had to dispose of abandoned stuff, he’s dump it on the curb, not have it carted off.

In any case, we do note, the neighborhood is seriously infested with bed bugs.

*Ever since Bed Bug Helloise came along, folks have assumed that all new pseudonyms point to yours truly. iPhone interloper is an anonymous reader of this blog. iPhone interloper is not nobugsonme. nobugsonme, sadly, only encounters iPhones from a great distance and in the Apple Store, where they remain attached to a long security cable.

• Moon Over Manhattan Madness
• Sending reinforcements? Mattresses at 5th and Broadway, NYC
• Untitled, 2007
• 48th Street between 3rd and Lex, last night

ShareThis