Earlier this week, there was the bed bug bill in the U.S. Congress.

And yesterday, an article in the Maine Switch (a website for those in Greater Portland) about the city’s yearly trash pick-up of bulky trash items. Not surprisingly, the day is a yearly impromptu festival for bargain hunters and curb-crawling small-time entrepreneurs:

Just like spring flowers, the sprouting of ratty recliners and beat-up toys on the sidewalk is a sign of the changing seasons in Portland. These cast-off belongings cluttering the grassy strip between the pavement and the sidewalk represent the city’s annual bulky waste pick-up. And like a siren song, yard sale buffs, bargain-hunters and freegans can’t resist this annual opportunity to turn trash into treasure.

I’ve known people who’ve practically furnished their whole apartments with curbside finds. One of the best was the gorgeous sleigh bed a friend found a few years ago. One of the worst was a couch covered in cat hair (and god know what else), which, thankfully, only made a brief appearance in another friend’s apartment.

But the main point of the article, discussed at length, is the dangers of bed bugs lurking in used items.

Oh, but beware those mattresses. Should you haul one home (like one hapless Craigslist poster did recently), you may gain some unwelcome roommates.

“If you’re picking up a mattress or other pieces of furniture, you need to be conscious that they may have bed bugs,” says Doug Gardner, Portland’s director of health and human services. “There’s no way to tell with 100% accuracy.”

That is until you install your lovely find in your home and begin to wonder why you’re suddenly covered in little red bumps.

Unfortunately, unlike Doug Gardner, the author mostly fixates on “mattresses,” whereas any used items might potentially bring bed bugs to your home. Although to her credit, the author later notes wooden furninture is also a problem, I’d stress that other items are also potentially infested. Many, many people throw out everything they own, even though it’s almost never necessary (and they’re not usually acting on the advice of bed bug experts). Throwing everything out can cost you lots of money, won’t get rid of your bed bugs, and will spread them to neighbors and others.

The article has two other Bedbugger points of interest.

First, because of bed bugs, Portland started giving their refuse collectors Tyvek suits last year for the annual bulky trash pickup day. Unfortunately, the city isn’t itself attempting to warn trash pickers about bed bugs, for example here, or here on this PDF flyer. Even a brief one-line warning would help. I understand from this article that they don’t want to seem to be condoning the practice of trash picking during the bulky trash days, but warning against it would not do so and would be germane to avoiding further spread of the problem.

Second point of interest: if you have bed bugs and rent in Portland, the article notes that your landlord does need to get rid of them. If not, you can call the city inspections department:

If apartment renters find themselves assaulted by bed bugs and can’t get their landlord to respond, [city inspections director Jeanie] Bourke’s office fields the complaints. Her team of inspectors then makes sure the landlord hires a pesticide company to spray the place down and that the residents follow a tightly regimented routine requiring the washing of everything and the sealing of clothes and mattresses in plastic.

Thanks to the Maine Switch for focusing readers’ attention on the dangers of trash picking in 2008.

• Portland’s public housing and bed bugs
• Chinches de cama en Espanol
• bed bugs at Pace University; bed bug buzz in Portland, Oregon
• Manhattan Mattress Mystery

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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

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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.

• Bed bugs in homeless shelters, casinos, hotels, apartments: Waynesboro, Atlantic City, Greenpoint, Toronto
• Sunday, Buggy Sunday
• When I say the title of the blog, it makes me feel like Sean Connery
• Forget black mattress stains, bed bugs, shells, and eggs: NMPA press release tells consumers to look for “blood spots”

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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

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Yesterday, Joe Wessels of the Cincinnati Post reported that city officials were forming a commission to fight the problem:

The Bedbug Remediation Commission, a five-member panel of local health, social service and elected leaders, is in the process of forming and will try to find ways to better educate the public about how to combat and prevent bedbug infestations.

“It’s just crazy that we have that in our city in the 21st century,” said City Council Member Chris Monzel, who is working with West End state Rep. Dale Mallory to establish the panel. “We need to do whatever we (the city) can to eliminate this.”

That’s exactly what we think too–something must be done. Surely something can be done? And yet local, state, and federal governments have been so slow to take action.

What made Cincy’s politicians take note? According to Wessels,

Workers for the Council of Aging have refused to make home visits to some seniors’ residences because they are infested. The workers complained they were being bitten and unwittingly carrying the parasites back to their own homes.

Residents of a Race Street building plagued with bedbugs have taken to sleeping on the sidewalk in front of the structure to keep from being bitten while they rest. The pests are so thick in the building that Tuesday they were seen during the day, extremely rare for the nocturnal creatures.

“Bedbugs do not typically live outside,” said Erich Hardebeck, vice president of Covington-based Permakil Pest Control, who was called in by rehabbers of a neighboring building to see if the bugs had spread to it.

Cincinnati’s bed bug problem sounds bad, but the things that are happening there are happening everywhere that bed bugs are taking over.

What exactly are the city’s statistics on bed bugs?

Cincinnati Health Department officials said they had received 179 bedbug calls through July 20, including 28 from West Price Hill, 21 from East Price Hill, 21 from Westwood and 10 from South Fairmount. Calls have picked up recently from Over-the-Rhine and the West End.

There is plenty of evidence that NYC’s problem is every bit as bad, per capita, and possibly much, much worse. NYC says only around 1190 actual cases were identified by the housing department based on complaints to 311 in the period from Summer 2005-Summer 2006. It’s striking that no one has cited any statistics for the period from Summer 2006-2007; one can only imagine they are much worse. At the same time, as I’ve written many times before, Mara Altman, in her odious Village Voice story last December, cited the head of one local PCO who claimed to get 85 actual bed bug calls per day (at the end of 2006). Clearly, 311’s statistics are just the tip of the iceberg, as Cincinnati’s probably are too.

Cincinnati’s government officials are smart: they see things are bad, they see them getting progressively worse, and they’re going to get some folks together and work on it.

New York City’s City Council also has a “Bed Bug Task Force.” However, except for a hearing about the issue of reselling used mattresses, we have not seen any public discussion on this issue yet. Except for a fact sheet on the health department’s website, which tells people to clean and that they may need a PCO, NYC has not admitted that bed bugs are a problem, let alone a serious one. They certainly won’t admit it’s a public health problem.

Let’s compare with their counterparts in the Cincinnati-Hamilton County area:

“We believe strongly that the insect should not be allowed to crawl over children while they are sleeping,” said Chris Eddy, Hamilton County’s environmental health director. “We took the position two years ago that (bedbugs) are a public health crisis. We believe that we need to be able to use the nuisance complaint code to get rid of these.”

Bed bugs are a public health crisis? Darn right they are. But sadly, few other public health departments are making a statement like this. And they should be–talking about bed bugs, and taking action on bed bugs.

How did this happen in Cincinnati? Last month, there was a Town Hall Meeting. The Enquirer reports in another article that, in a very effective move, one woman apparently turned up carrying a bag of dead bed bugs from her apartment:

City Councilman Chris Monzel and State Rep. Dale Mallory, D-West End, are working on the issue after hearing at council’s Health Committee on Tuesday what Monzel called “heartbreaking” stories.

One woman, he said, brought a plastic bag of dead bugs to a town hall meeting last month about the problem.

After talking to an exterminator, representatives from area apartment associations and the Council on Aging of Southwest Ohio, Monzel said he decided to try to improve enforcement of city regulations or beef up ordinances to stress that the bugs have become a public health problem.

I am absolutely in love with Cincinnati City Council right now. They actually heard heartbreaking stories three weeks ago and they are doing something? Break out the vikane and the UHauls, kids, and let’s move over there: Cincinnati is a good town.

Hey, I love New York too, but it’s been a year since Caitlin Heller, Bugsinthehood, and several others spoke at a NYC City Council Hearing related to the bed bug issue (which was, sadly, officially only about the resale of mattresses issue). You bet your patootie they had some heartbreaking stories. Where’s my Bed Bug Remediation Commission? Where’s my admission that our city has a serious problem?

Could it be that NYC fears that to admit their problem publicly would mean a loss in tourism revenue? Is this really the only reason we aren’t seeing any action around here?

What is being done in Cincinnati? The Post makes it clear that public education is part of the plan. The Enquirer says the plans also include a hotline residents can call so that infested furniture is picked up quickly. The Bed Bug Remediation Commission also plans to “plan to work with second-hand stores to make sure they’re not reselling infested mattresses and furniture.” Above all else, improving enforcement of existing regulations, and “beefing up” ordinances where necessary, is exactly what is needed to help curb this problem. Bravo, Cincinnati!

Bed bugs are not going to go away overnight, but for goodness’ sake, do something.

• Urgent: if you’re in Cincinnati…
• New York vs. Bed Bugs: NYC is the underdog!
• Cincinnati: awareness spreading, funds needed to fight bed bugs
• Last week’s Town Hall Meeting in Cincinnati

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That means no mattresses, no sofas at the school in Quincy, Mass. The policy only applies to upholstered or soft furniture. As such, it does not mean students cannot bring in potentially-infested items, and the school recognizes that:

The insects spread by hitchhiking on things like luggage, clothing, beds and furniture. Locations with frequent turnover - like hotels, apartments, shelters and dorms - are vulnerable.

“It does not insulate us,” [Robert] Benjamin [Director of Residence Life] said about the ban on used furniture.  “We are trying to eliminate at least one variable.”

According to this article, most colleges that ban upholstered furniture do so because of fire hazards. ENC is banning them not because they have had any known bed bug outbreaks, but because a sister school in San Diego has had bed bug troubles. They are trying to learn from the other school’s experiences. (Good to hear!)

The policy is not unproblematic: besides the enormous cost to students this fall, if the policy continues, students would be buying new items every year for four years. This is a serious hardship and will probably mean many simply live in a much sparser way than prior generations of students.

• How to avoid bed bugs, according to Texas A&M’s student paper
• Boston University’s bed bugs: if we don’t talk about them, they’ll go away
• Bed bugs under discussion at university housing officers’ conference
• Stanford bed bugs: university fights back

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Here is my rant on NYC statistics, for those who have not read it before. (Everyone else, skip down past this block quoted section!)

The city says approx. 4600 called to complain about bed bugs and approx. 1190 had bed bug violations in the period from Summer 2005 to Summer 2006. These statistics are often cited in the media as evidence the bed bug problem is not that big.

As I’ve said many times before, we know the number of infestations must be much larger, since just after the time frame in which those 311 stats were added up, local PCO Pest Away claimed to be getting 100 calls a day, of which 85% were legit bed bug cases, in a Village Voice article last year.

As I speculated then, 85 cases, x 5 days a week x 52 weeks a year, and that’s one local PCO identifying 20,100 cases in a year. Though this is a particularly large PCO, there are hundreds and hundreds of other PCOs treating for bed bugs in this city. Clearly those 311 numbers are far from the size of the epidemic, and that’s even after we account for homeowners and those in public housing, neither of which would call 311 to report bed bugs.

There endeth today’s rant.

The most obvious evidence, for me, that the vast majority of people with bed bugs in NYC do not follow this route is based on our readers who email me or who comment here and in the forums. My generous estimate is that the percentage of tenants with bed bugs in NYC who call 311 and report it is under 5%. If I were a betting gal, I’d put money on that.

We hear from several new Bedbugged New Yorkers every day. Since October, when the site was born, only a handful of people have told us they called 311. (Several of those have said they called 311 and had been given the runaround, or had not been sent an inspector. One person reported the inspector came but would not enter the home. The other day someone said the 311 receptionist simply told him/her to wash their clothing and sheets carefully. Um, thanks Mayor Bloomberg.) We have a FAQ on what is supposed to happen when you call 311, based on research I did, but it would be great to hear from more people who did it.

A reader going by the moniker “realitybites” is a New Yorker who did call 311 recently. S/he only did so because his/her landlord was refusing to treat properly. I asked his/her permission to repost this from our forums, since it is such an interesting story. Six days ago, realitybites wrote:

I recently found bedbugs (caught one off the bottom of my mattress with a piece of scotch tape.) Called in a PCO immediately, very professional, friendly. I found out while waiting for him that my neighbors all have them, and that my super (!) has complained numerous times to the landlord who refuses to do anything. I called 311 to report building is infested. Got into a big argument with landlord about hiring a PCO for the whole building. He said absolutely not, never. I told him I called 311. That got him about as far as telling the other tenants to throw out their mattresses and get some bug spray. (He told them he would reimburse them for the bug spray, how generous!)

Yesterday (five days later), realitybites gave an update:

An update on this story. After the landlord received the official acknowledgment of complaint from the city, he went through several reactions. He was angry, tried to make me feel guilty for reporting the infestation, tried to tell me it wasn’t his problem because it wasn’t his fault. He told me I had “no right” to report on him.

This isn’t going to sound like a true story after this, but it is. After several angry confrontations, he came to my apartment the other day. He said he wanted to see “evidence.” I showed him the bugs I had caught and taped to a piece of paper. Then he told me he would pay for the exterminator I called, and also retain him to treat the entire building. Then he started asking me questions like, “so what does it feel like when you get bitten?” and “how did you find them?” and so on.

Then he confessed he was afraid HE MIGHT HAVE THEM TOO. (He lives in a different borough.) I am glad he came around, not sure if it was because of the city’s pressure or his own worries (did he carry the infestation to his home because he didn’t treat our building?–something for landlords to think about.)

While few landlords are likely to “see the light” to this degree, and this swiftly, it is important to remember that landlords, too, are caught off guard by bed bugs. They, too, are victims of this epidemic, and in many cases, they stand to lose a lot financially because of them, just as tenants do.

The first response of many people to the idea of spending lots of money to treat a problem you never heard of before, or which many people assume is not a big deal, is to be evasive. Another is to panic. (We know many tenants panic, and so why not landlords who have to treat entire buildings?)

Once landlords understand what a big deal this is, they may well come around. As awful as it can be to go through treatment, a smart businessperson will realize they have to be aggressive in treating bed bugs. Treating all infested units, and inspecting, and preferably treating all units adjoining infested units (top, bottom, sides), is the best way to get this problem out of your building. And yes, they can come back.

Therefore, smart landlords will want to provide educational materials to tenants about the signs of bed bugs. It is a great idea for landlords to get a local community organization (maybe a local city council member, or community agency) to host a meeting where a PCO who knows bed bugs can speak to tenants about behavior which may lead to repeat infestations: shopping in secondhand stores and flea markets, picking up furniture or other items from the curb, and traveling without taking certain precautions, all make this easier.

Most of all, tenants need to know the signs. Those who never saw a bed bug, a bed bug bite, a fecal speck or fecal stain, egg, or cast off shell, need to learn the signs, as well as the basic facts about bed bugs (the main one being that you may have bed bugs even if you never see or feel any bites).

Until the City of New York wises up about the real size of this problem, and starts providing more public education of its own, it is up to the rest of us–tenants and landlords too–to (in the words of Bugalina) “Spread the word, not the bug.”

• Bedbugs called “a new kind of roach”; building managment lies
• New York City: Who’s responsible for paying for bed bug treatment? Complicated, in some cases.
• Escaping tenants leaving crumbs, marking the bed bug trail
• Lexington, KY vs. New York, NY: a tale of two bedbugged cities

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I previously blogged the same bed bug-infested curbside furniture from another angle, and another photographer.

But I loved this shot. As if someone was trying to warn the aliens not to land on McKibben Street, in Brooklyn.

Please, everyone: label your bed bug furniture. Better yet, slash it up. People are really, truly clueless about this problem and will march right back into your building with your infested stuff, their new “finds”.

Still other people are ruthless and will sell your refuse to someone who hasn’t a clue. Mattresses with warnings painted on can be recovered. When bed bugs go around, they come around again.

• If this couch could talk…
• Dayton and Middletown, Ohio: avoiding bed bugs is difficult
• Manhattan Mattress Mystery
• Bed bug unfriendly mattress re-sellers: recommendations?

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But I am glad to see Maxwell at Apartmenttherapy.com covering this question as a poll. I think it’s great AT is taking bed bugs seriously. After all, it’s a home and design blog. Nothing, nothing screws up a home (or design scheme) like bed bugs.

Check it out.

• Homage to Catalonia, Props to Apartmenttherapy.com
• How did you deal with your bed bugs?
• ApartmentTherapy.com still does not quite get the bed bug thing
• Amanda at Apartmenttherapy.com, part 5

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So imagine my surprise to find that yesterday, Steven Kuritz published an article in the NY Times entitled “Not Buying It,” which celebrates the free-cycling frenzy out of the NYU dumpsters at the end of the semester. The article focuses both on this specific dumpster diving party, as well as a movement called “freeganism,” where people turn their backs on our consumerist society, recycle, and get things for free.

ON a Friday evening last month, the day after New York University’s class of 2007 graduated, about 15 men and women assembled in front of Third Avenue North, an N.Y.U. dormitory on Third Avenue and 12th Street. They had come to take advantage of the university’s end-of-the-year move-out, when students’ discarded items are loaded into big green trash bins by the curb.

New York has several colleges and universities, of course, but according to Janet Kalish, a Queens resident who was there that night, N.Y.U.’s affluent student body makes for unusually profitable Dumpster diving. So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that the gathering at the Third Avenue North trash bin quickly took on a giddy shopping-spree air, as members of the group came up with one first-class find after another.

Ben Ibershoff, a dapper man in his 20s wearing two bowler hats, dug deep and unearthed a Sharp television. Autumn Brewster, 29, found a painting of a Mediterranean harbor, which she studied and handed down to another member of the crowd.

Darcie Elia, a 17-year-old high school student with a half-shaved head, was clearly pleased with a modest haul of what she called “random housing stuff” a desk lamp, a dish rack, Swiffer dusters — which she spread on the sidewalk, drawing quizzical stares from passers-by.

Ms. Elia was not alone in appreciating the little things. “The small thrills are when you see the contents of someone’s desk and find a book of stamps,” said Ms. Kalish, 44, as she stood knee deep in the trash bin examining a plastic toiletries holder.

A few of those present had stumbled onto the scene by chance (including a janitor from a nearby homeless center, who made off with a working iPod and a tube of body cream), but most were there by design, in response to a posting on the Web site freegan.info.

This would all be great except for the bed bug factor.

I see a need for public education here. If anyone should already have been given some information about bed bugs, it’s the janitor from a homeless center. Or perhaps he does know about bed bugs, but thinks the relatively well-heeled NYU dorm inhabitants would not be afflicted. (But then, he doesn’t know much about bed bugs.)

According to the article,

The site (freegan.info), which provides information and listings for the small but growing subculture of anticonsumerists who call themselves “freegans” — the term derives from vegans, the vegetarians who forsake all animal products, as many freegans also do — is the closest thing their movement has to an official voice. And for those like Ms. Elia and Ms. Kalish, it serves as a guide to negotiating life, and making a home, in a world they see as hostile to their values.

Freegans are scavengers of the developed world, living off consumer waste in an effort to minimize their support of corporations and their impact on the planet, and to distance themselves from what they see as out-of-control consumerism. They forage through supermarket trash and eat the slightly bruised produce or just-expired canned goods that are routinely thrown out, and negotiate gifts of surplus food from sympathetic stores and restaurants.

They dress in castoff clothes and furnish their homes with items found on the street; at freecycle.org, where users post unwanted items; and at so-called freemeets, flea markets where no money is exchanged. Some claim to hold themselves to rigorous standards. “If a person chooses to live an ethical lifestyle it’s not enough to be vegan, they need to absent themselves from capitalism,” said Adam Weissman, 29, who started freegan.info four years ago and is the movement’s de facto spokesman.

There are freegans all over the world, in countries as far afield as Sweden, Brazil, South Korea, Estonia and England (where much has been made of what The Sun recently called the “wacky new food craze” of trash-bin eating), and across the United States as well .

In Southern California, for example, “you can find just about anything in the trash, and on a consistent basis, too,” said Marko Manriquez, 28, who has just graduated from the University of California at San Diego with a bachelor’s degree in media studies and is the creator of “Freegan Kitchen,” a video blog that shows gourmet meals being made from trash-bin ingredients. “This is how I got my futon, chair, table, shelves. And I’m not talking about beat-up stuff. I mean it’s not Design Within Reach, but it’s nice”

But New York City in particular — the financial capital of the world’s richest country — has emerged as a hub of freegan activity, thanks largely to Mr. Weissman’s zeal for the cause and the considerable free time he has to devote to it. (He doesn’t work and lives at home in Teaneck, N.J., with his father and elderly grandparents.)

Freegan.info sponsors organize Trash Tours that typically attract a dozen or more people, as well as feasts at which groups of about 20 people gather in apartments around the city to share food and talk politics.

Arrrggghhhhh! Trash tours!!! I wonder how many people have picked up bed bugs this way.

At the N.Y.U. Dorm Dive, as the event was billed, the consensus was that this year’s spoils weren’t as impressive as those in years past. Still, almost anything needed to decorate and run a household — a TV cart, a pillow, a file cabinet, a half-finished bottle of Jägermeister — was there for the taking, even if those who took them were risking health, safety and a $100 fine from the Sanitation Department.

Ms. Brewster and her mother, who had come from New Jersey, loaded two area rugs into their cart. Her mother, who declined to give her name, seemed to be on a search for laundry detergent, and was overjoyed to discover a couple of half-empty bottles of Trader Joe’s organic brand. (Free and organic is a double bonus). Nearby, a woman munched on a found bag of Nature’s Promise veggie fries.

As people stuffed their backpacks, Ms. Kalish, who organized the event (Mr. Weissman arrived later), demonstrated the cooperative spirit of freeganism, asking the divers to pass items down to people on the sidewalk and announcing her finds for anyone in need of, say, a Hoover Shop-Vac.

The food stuff really is not freaking me out. People have been doing that forever. But the act of standing in the dumpster is a dodgy one, and also much of this stuff — pillows, clothes, TVs, furniture — has got to be infested with bed bugs.

I am not hating on the freegans. I have a friend, a smart grad student, whose entire apartment was furnished with curb-found furniture. It was nice, too, seriously. And when I was a kid, my mom’s favorite bookcase came from the curb. (But both of those things happened before 1998.)

A year and a half ago, I would have been cheering too. Recycling, or free-cycling, if you will, is so green!

But lots of people in New York have bed bugs. Way more than you hear about. And I hear about a lot of them, every week. I’ve even heard of some in the vicinity of NYU. And why would that surprise you, since college dorms and residences around the country (and beyond) are becoming infested. Would it be possible that NYU had lots of bed bugs, since it is not only a college, but located in a very infested region? Quite possibly.

Dumpster diving, anywhere, is not such a hot idea. And if you find good stuff, I mean stuff that looks great–TVs! iPods! Really clean-looking mattresses! Be wary.

Sure, NYU students may have a lot of disposable income. But who throws away a working iPod?!? Who doesn’t have the space to carry an iPod? Think about it.

What’s greener than dumpster diving? Let me tell you: not getting bed bugs. Because getting bed bugs is the least “green” thing you can do. You’ll rue the plastic garbage bags and XL ziplocs and gallon ziplocs and pest control operators with sprays containing who-knows-what.

And the repeat visits from the PCO, and the extra laundry, and the extra laundry, and the extra laundry.

And if something should be too infested to treat: the destruction, the replacement, and so on.

Getting bed bugs is the one of the least green things you could do this year, and it’s probably one of the most expensive surprises you can have, save losing your job.

Insurance does not cover you.

So say it with me, anti-consumerists, “freegans,” thrifty free-cyclers, craigs-listers, salvation army thrift store shoppers, treehuggers, Al Gore-lovers:

Dumpster diving in bed bug city is not thrifty nor green. Things ain’t always what they seem.

I’d love to see people in hazmat gear carefully combing through the dumpster contents, isolating possible “good finds”. Inspecting them carefully, really carefully, taking them off somewhere, maybe even for treatment, and re-selling the stuff to people who care about the environment and have money to burn. It could even be done for charity–maybe to help others who need furniture and can’t afford it.

Whether your motivation is saving money, or saving the planet, or both, spreading bed bugs is going to sabotage your plans.

If you want to love the environment, as I do, and say no to capitalism, then do your best to educate yourself and others about bed bugs.
And avoid them like the plague that they are.

• Dumpster-diving tenant evicted after Winnipeg apartment seriously infested with bed bugs
• The bed bug times are a’ changin’, ever so slowly
• Today show recommends sharing used mattresses on Craigslist, Freecycle
• How to avoid bed bugs, according to Texas A&M’s student paper

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