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Bed bugs and the elderly: a story from St. Paul

nobugsonme — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:00:32 +0000

This article from TwinCities.com tells the saga of Evie Kelly, of St. Paul, Minnesota.

She has bed bugs in her apartment in a building for senior citizens:

“It’s hard. I hate it,” a resigned and visibly worn-out Kelly said last week while she sat in her public senior citizen high-rise apartment on Ravoux Street. She is forced to sit and sometimes sleep on a lawn chair in her living room because the little buggers have taken over the bed, couch and recliner.

It would not be so bad, however, if her building management were more proactive about getting her help:

Adding salt to the bites Kelly has endured, her efforts as well as those of relatives and others the past two weeks to get someone to address the bedbug infestation have mostly fallen on deaf ears.

“The (building site manager) came up here, looked around, found nothing and told my aunt that if there were bedbugs here, he would eat his shirt,” said Louise Sebesta.

Actually, he will need to do that. The article’s author, Rubén Rosario, suggested Sebesta, Kelly’s niece, take some samples to be identified by bed bug researcher Stephen Kells, at the University of Minnesota, and she did.

Kells confirmed they were bed bugs. And he said,

“We are seeing more problems with people in assisted-living facilities and low-income areas, and it’s not because they are dirty, and it’s not because they are unclean,” Kells told us. “Bedbugs will feed on me. They will feed on anyone in this lab. The problem is that people who are in assisted living do not have the resources to adequately control them once they do get them. Money is a big reason.”

Kells explained that it could take $500 to upward of $3,000 to effectively treat one apartment and $50,000 to $80,000 to treat a whole building, as has been done in major urban areas.

Even though Kelly and Sebesta had found bed bugs, and a bed bug expert had identified them, it took weeks of phone calls from Sebesta as well as Kelly’s public health nurse, to get the problem addressed. Rosario writes:

Sebesta called public housing officials and a slew of city, state and federal agencies in the past two weeks to relay her aunt’s plight. She had received no return calls when I spoke with her last week.

Jeanette Buckley, Kelly’s county public health nurse, confirmed she has also called similar numbers since May 14 with similar nonresults.

She finally got a return call Tuesday from Cheryl Hawley, who works as a human services coordinator for the St. Paul Public Housing Agency. The federally funded organization owns and operates 16 senior public high-rises in the city.

According to Buckley, Hawley mentioned that the site manager had already gone to Kelly’s place and found nothing. She suggested that the manager might be sent back for another look.

To make the long story short, Kelly’s apartment has now been inspected (again): bed bugs were confirmed and the unit is receiving treatment.

But I can see some problems that this scenario highlights.

First, many people with bed bugs do not react to bed bug bites. Others will react but not see bed bugs. Fewer will react to bed bug bites, see bed bugs, and report them.

Those who do need careful and thorough responses, to be sure. And we can hope St. Paul Public Housing Agency officials will be reviewing their procedures to make sure things run more smoothly for the next Evie Kelly who reports bed bugs.

However, given the difficulties of recognizing the problem and of detecting bed bugs, I hope that city agencies will become more proactive — especially when it comes to housing for senior citizens.

Although bed bug dogs are not foolproof, they could be a very useful tool in helping detect bed bug infestations in apartment buildings before they get out of hand.

And seniors in buildings like Kelly’s need to be educated about the resurgence of bed bugs and the signs of bed bugs.

They need to know that they may not feel any bed bug bites or see any bed bugs (and their building managers need to know this too!)

Finally, they need to be reminded that bed bugs spread easily and don’t have anything to do with cleanliness, and that they should not be afraid to come forward when they suspect a problem.

More bed bug research: Stephen Kells at the University of Minnesota

nobugsonme — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 03:40:55 +0000

Richard Shin reports for The Pioneer Press on research being done by Stephen Kells on bed bugs at the University of Minnesota.

Kells is at least one of the entomologists working on making an effective bed bug trap.

Alas, “we’re quite a distance off” from a monitoring trap, Kells said.

Eventually, it will be a wonderful invention.

It was interesting to hear how Kells got into bed bug research:

Kells first encountered a bedbug in about 2000 while working in the pest-control industry in Canada.

He dipped it into insecticide. The beast lived for four days and laid eggs.

“At that point, I knew we were in trouble,” he said.

Kells decided to study the insects further in an academic setting. He came to the University of Minnesota 3 1/2 years ago and set up a lab devoted to bedbug research.

About 2,000 bedbugs live there, housed in jars, where they crawl around pieces of filter paper that vibrate and twitch with their constant motion.

They eat Red Cross-donated human blood that’s beyond the expiration date, heated to body temperature.

Kells built a special platform he calls a bedbug arena, where he can observe the behavior of individuals when exposed to stimuli like heat. Part of his research is funded by the Propane Education Research Council, which wants to know whether propane-heaters can be used to kill the insects.

Another set of experiments involves attaching bedbug antennae to tiny electrical probes to see what kind of chemical compounds the antennae are tuned to receive. This might help develop the lure — maybe the carbon dioxide that sleeping humans exhale or the fatty acids on our skin — for a bedbug monitoring trap.

I am trying to envision the little tiny electrodes on the little tiny antennae. I also was fascinated by the bed bugs eating expired Red Cross blood, since all the other times we’ve read about researchers feeding their own bed bug colonies (as Lou Sorkin does) or having their grad students do it. I suppose it would be difficult to support 2,000 bed bugs.

The article also talks about the differences between captive bed bug colonies, and “wild” bed bugs, and it cites Harold Harlan, former Army entomologist (and author of the Armed Forces bed bug guide), as the source of Kells’ colony:

Bedbugs are a lot more resistant to poisons than they used to be. It takes 1,200 times the amount of insecticide to kill recently captured bedbugs than it takes to kill individuals from bedbug colonies that have been in captivity for more than 30 years, Kells said.

That captive colony was maintained by Harlan, who collected about 600 individuals from a barracks at Fort Dix, N.J., in the early 1970s. They were a novelty at the time, Harlan said. Over the years, he kept the colony alive in jars, letting it grow into the thousands, by allowing the bugs to feed on his legs.

“I’ve had them escape a few times in my house,” he said.

He had to leave the colony untended for a year when he was deployed in Vietnam and couldn’t find anyone willing to be a food source. When he came home, enough had survived to rebuild the population. Now his pets have become a resource for researchers.

I have a hunch this is where we got the information that bed bugs could survive, unfed, for a year. (We still aren’t sure where the “18 months” rule came from.)

Thanks to all the bed bug researchers, and universities, foundations and private companies that fund their work.

And thanks to the Pioneer Press for an informative article!

Bed bug news round-up: USA Today, Minnesota Star-Tribune, and the Astral in Greenpoint

nobugsonme — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 04:51:31 +0000

There is so much bed bug news now, that blogging even half of the major articles that come across my web browser is too much. I offer a selection, as well as an interesting tidbit from a NYC blogger. More news forthcoming, including an update on Cincinnati, and some exciting developments in San Francisco.

First, Donna Freydkin published twin articles in USA Today on Tuesday: one about her personal experiences with bed bugs, and one about others’ experiences. There was also a sidebar alerting people to the dangers of curbside mattresses, the problems of foggers, and other important stuff. Especially interesting, since USA Today is distributed free in hotels around the USA, is this warning to travelers:

Be careful where you put your suitcase when you travel. “These guys are fantastic hitchhikers,” says the University of Maryland’s Michael Raupp. “If you have a luggage rack with metal racks, put your suitcase on that.”

Check behind a hotel headboard. That’s one of their favorite spots, Raupp says. Pull back the comforter and sheets and look for the fecal stains on the mattress seams and ticking. Shine a penlight behind the headboard and look for dark fecal stains.

There are some points in the article that are not fully explained and might mislead people (for example, drying for ten minutes on hot will not be enough if the item being dried is wet, an important bit of information if anyone is actually going to treat their clothing based on such a recommendation). Also, many pros recommend not getting rid of your mattress or box springs. Doing so when unnecessary is a good way to give your neighbors bed bugs; a good mattress encasement will usually be enough. However, despite these details, Ms. Freydkin did speak with Dr. Michael Potter, whose unofficial fan club is right here. And bed bug news in such a popular paper is always good.

Meanwhile, in other news, the Minnesota Star Tribune asks, “How safe are your kids at college?” and among the many other concerns addressed, bed bugs:

Look for evidence of bedbugs — fecal staining that resembles an accumulation or a scattering of pepper — around baseboards, along cracks and crevices and furniture in rooms where people rest, such as bedrooms or TV rooms.

Prevent infestation: Resist the temptation to scavenge mattresses, sofas or other furniture set out by curbs or behind stores, said [University of Minnesota Assistant Professor of Entomology Stephen Kells]. They can harbor bedbugs. Don’t encourage cockroaches. Keep counters clean and remove garbage regularly. Wipe surfaces and sweep floors frequently. Pick up papers, boxes and other clutter that gives cockroaches places to hide.

Ask about infestation: Ask the landlord the last time the place was evaluated for infestations and if the building is on a regular control and prevention program, said Kells. Remember, treating just one apartment for infestation is ineffective. The whole building needs treatment, combined with prevention tactics.

Good advice.

Finally, from the good-blog capital of Brooklyn, Greenpointers has posted an image of an ad that appeared on Craigslist Monday, in which current or former tenants of the Astral put up a bed bug warning to potential tenants.

The ad (NYC ad #469469878) reads:

This is a warning: two former tenants of the astral (the large beautiful building in greenpoint on the corner of java and franklin) have moved out due to a BEDBUG infestation, and it is rumored that the entire floor is moving out because of the same problem.

Make sure that you discuss this with your realtor/potential roomate before moving in!

This is a serious posting, not a prank–I thought it was something people should know before moving in, to protect themselves! I would want to know.

You can go to Greenpointers to see an image of the actual ad. (Clever bloggers: Craigslist usually removes these kinds of ads tout de suite.)

We’re not breaking the news on the Astral-bed bugs allegation. But Curbed, NewYorkShitty, and the BedBugBlog commenters have that covered. The building also has two entries on the Bed Bug Registry. Rumor has it Mae West once lived in the Astral.