We’ve previously mentioned the upcoming EPA bed bug summit on April 14-15 and the upcoming Washington DC bed bug summit on March 27.

We now refer you to New York vs. Bed Bugs, where Renee has compiled all the details and links on the EPA National Bed Bug Summit (4/14-4/15) and Stop Bed Bugs DC (3/27); RSVP is strongly recommended for the April event and required for the March event, so please do follow those links for more information on that.

I encourage you to participate in person or virtually (in the case of the EPA Bed Bugs Summit, where teleconferencing / webinar options are said to be in the offing).

Also, on Friday, I received a message from Gale Brewer about the signing of Intro. 57a, the Bed Bug Advisory Board bill, which will take place tomorrow (3/18) and is open to the public:

Dear New Yorker:

Thank you for your advocacy on the creation of a bed bug task force.

Because I share that goal, I introduced Intro 57-2006 which prohibits
the sale of reconditioned mattresses and calls for the formation of a
bed bug task force. On Wednesday, March 11, 2009, the Council
unanimously approved the Int 57-2006 at the full Stated Council meeting.

The bill will be signed into law by the Mayor on Wednesday, March 18,
2009 at 3:30pm in the Blue Room, in City Hall. All bill signings are
public hearings and all members of the public are invited to attend.

There will also be the opportunity to offer short comments.

Sincerely,

Gale A. Brewer

City Council, District 6:
Manhattan

Many of you may wish to attend and show your appreciation; we will all be there in spirit, I am sure.

Two other recent links of note from New York vs. Bed Bugs:

First, Renee examines the fact that the New York City Housing Authority is drastically under-responding to bed bug complaints in public housing in NYC. They just can’t keep up. And you know what that means, right? More bed bugs for everyone.

Also, Renee shares a notable letter from August 2008, in which Department of Veterans Affairs Under Secretary for Health, Dr. Michael J. Kussman outlines the best practices for dealing with bed bugs in VA facilities.

Prompted by this, Renee asks whether some centralized agency might collect and disseminate such resources, rather than every single agency and institution, large or small — in every city, county, state or nation — having to reinvent the wheel.

Excellent question.

Reinventing the wheel is the name of the game when it comes to disseminating bed bug information, isn’t it? How many universities have their own bed bug fact sheet — some of them quite outdated, making recommendations no longer commonly offered by experts?

What would the humble bed bug fact sheet look like at its very best, compiled by a committee of the most reputable bed bug specialists, with access to the latest research and a keen awareness of how bed bugs act in the field? There are some like this, but in their presence, why do the others still exist?

Why do we so rarely get that information at its best?Similar Posts:

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It’s a pretty unlucky scenario when patients who checked into the Edmonton General Hospital sleep disorder clinic in order to find the cause of their sleep disturbances are woken in the middle of the night and sent home due to bed bugs.  This article from the Edmonton Journal describes just such a situation.

Sleep disorder clinic patient Dawn Blue was sent home in the middle of the night after another clinic patient saw bed bugs climbing up the wall of the next room.

The clinic had been closed after bed bugs were first discovered on December 17th:

When staff members first noticed bedbugs Dec. 17, they immediately closed the clinic, contacting both a public health inspector and a pest extermination company.

The mattresses and furniture were sprayed and the rooms were fumigated.

The clinic remained closed for its annual Christmas hiatus, from Dec. 19 to Jan. 5, during which time it was sprayed again.

The public health inspector and the exterminator returned before it reopened, and, following a thorough examination, gave the clinic a clean bill of health.

It resumed normal operations, until Monday, that is, when Blue was sent home and the clinic closed once more to allow for more fumigation.

The article states that Dawn Blue discovered the itchy effects of bed bug bites on various parts of her body the next morning.

The time-line is this: bed bugs were spotted 12/17, there were two spray treatments in less than three weeks, and the public health inspector and exterminator then declared the facility bed bug-free on 1/5.  The next bed bugs were found two weeks later on 1/19.

It is not surprising that the clinic would become infested with bed bugs in the first place, since guests were allowed to bring their own pyjamas, pillows, and other items (on order to simulate a comfortable, home-like environment).

What is surprising, however, is that according to the article, the Alberta Health Services spokesperson Rob Stevenson appears to believe that the reappearance of bed bugs in January was “a terrible coincidence.”

He says,

“In the most unfortunate of coincidences and, despite the fact that every day all of the material in the clinic goes through a specific laundering process, between Jan. 5 and Jan. 19, one of the participants brought bedbugs in with their belongings,” Stevenson said.

He appears to be claiming that this is a new infestation, not the re-surfacing of an existing problem that was not 100% eliminated as they had thought.  I am really not sure how someone can make this claim with any certainty, given the circumstances.

In my mind, the appearance of bed bugs one month after their first discovery, and after two spray treatments, does not necessarily mean the facility was “coincidentally” infested a second time by a new patient, as Stevenson seems to think, even if inspectors were able to find no signs of bed bugs in a visual inspection.

Many cases of bed bugs take more than two treatments.  There is no way of being sure the facility did not harbor some bed bugs after being pronounced “clear.”  We’re told even very experienced professionals cannot be 100% sure a space is bed bug-free. Human visual inspections are imperfect, and even well-trained bed bug sniffing dogs — which have a much better success record — are not 100% effective in detecting bed bugs.

Although a new patient can certainly bring in bed bugs at any time (and many Edmonton residents are, sadly, well-acquainted with Mr. Cimex Lectularius), it seems like the odds are also good that some bed bugs and/or eggs remained after the second treatment and simply were not spotted by the inspectors.

Anyway, the good news is that patients will no longer be able to bring items from home into their beds.

Other hospitals take note: we’ve heard complaints from people who believed they brought bed bugs home from maternity wards and sleep disorder clinics.

Steps need to be taken to reduce the spread of bed bugs, and as much as people need to be comforted while in the hospital, it is of the utmost importance that they do not suffer from bed bug bites there; it’s even more important they don’t bring bed bugs home.

You can read the full article here.Similar Posts:

• Bed bugs bite Edmonton
• Ohio County, WV Health Dept. official: bed bugs “public health nuisance” and “psychological disaster”
• Woman says she suffered bed bug bites at Bally’s in Atlantic City
• Bed Bugs and Public Health
• More on bed bugs in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: again with the HAZMAT showers?!?

The Fermanagh Herald reports that Erne Hospital in Enniskillen had 28 call-outs from pest control in 2008, including those for bed bugs; facilities in the Western Health and Social Care Trust had 128 pest control call-outs in total.  (A small percentage of these were routine visits.)

A Western Trust spokesperson said,

“Visits are often to deal with one-off sightings of pests.”

I hope “one-off sightings” of bed bugs are not treated as “one-off sightings,” since it is so rare to see even one bed bug, and it may represent the presence of many more.

The spokesperson continued,

The most common types of pests dealt with were mice, rats, fleas, silverfish and bedbugs. Pest control specialists carry out treatments following each visit as appropriate. They also provide specialist advice to the Trust following the contract visits, for example, in relation to minor repairs to the building, reviewing housekeeping/cleaning arrangements and monitoring.

Contractors also had to treat bedbugs at staff accommodation at Altnagelvin Hospital as well as in areas of the Erne Hospital and Tyrone and Fermanagh Hospital.

Emphasis mine.

This is not the first report from Northern Ireland hospitals and medical residences. Or from Northern Ireland, where lorry drivers identified the problem as something they were bringing in via ferries from Scotland and the Continent. Similar Posts:

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The Belfast Telegraph reports that bed bugs have been found in hospitals around Northern Ireland:

Cockroaches were spotted outside a kitchen in Belfast City Hospital, while bedbugs were found in Erne, Tyrone and Fermanagh hospitals. At a day-centre in Coleraine, rats chewed their way through a fibre optic cable.

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We just heard of a hospital in Portland, Oregon which is infested with bed bugs in the main lobby and surrounding offices. Now news comes from Kerry’s Eye Online that the 63-bed Listowel Community Hospital in Listowel, County Kerry, Ireland is infested. The infestation was discovered after staff and patients complained about bed bug bites:

According to the HSE, 36 patients remain in the 63-bed hospital but a “small number” of patients were discharged earlier this week, and some were sent to surrounding nursing homes.

Extra home support services have been rolled out for the coming weeks while the hospital is being fumigated, a spokesman said.

Staff and patients had complained of unexplained insect bites a number of weeks ago, and following further investigations by an Incident Control Team with Microbiology and Dermatology services, an influx of bed bugs (Cimex Lectularius) was reported to the HSE on Monday.

The hospital is being treated.

I hope precautions were taken at the hospital so that those sent home do not infest their homes with bed bugs as well.

Read the full story in Kerry’s Eye.
And another from the Irish Times.Similar Posts:

• Bed bugs bite in Edmonton sleep disorder clinic
• Apartment Therapy on bed bugs, bed bug sniffing dogs
• Westchester Realtor hears client’s concern over bed bugs
• Man on #2 train with bed bugs: bed bug hysteria? Or fact?
• Results of University of Florida tests on bed bug dog effectiveness are out

Bed bugs have infested the main lobby and nearby offices in the Oregon Health and Science University Hospital in Portland. Staff saw bed bugs crawling from a patient’s fanny pack:

Hoping to squash a bedbug incursion, Oregon Health & Science University Hospital has sealed off part of its main lobby for decontamination after discovering the insects escaping from a patient’s belongings Saturday.

Hospital staff spotted the unwelcome visitors crawling from a fanny pack that had been stored for safekeeping with other patients’ belongings for two weeks, according to a hospital spokeswoman. A search revealed more bugs in the offices surrounding the patient admitting area.

I hope all the other patients’ belongings were inspected and treated.

The good news is the hospital seems to be taking bed bugs seriously:

“We talked to our outside experts who deal with bugs, and they said you need to treat it aggressively and quickly,” Liana Haywood, a spokeswoman, said.

They’re taking all office furniture offsite for “decontamination,” though it isn’t stated how the lobby and offices are being treated.

Haywood also said,

“We don’t have any estimates exactly on the costs,” she said. “We decided it’s more important to protect patients and employees rather than let it become a lingering problem.”

You can read the full article from the Oregonian here.

Update (9/26):

Watch the fascinating video from WNCT in Oregon, here.

It looks like the footage someone forgot to edit. There’s no voiceover, just video of the hospital lobby and bed bugs in a jar, and soundbites from several unnamed sources: a hospital administrator (saying bed bugs “really do not pose any type of health threat”) juxtaposed with those of a PCO or entomologist Philipp Kirsch, who says, “there are many people that have very strong dermal reactions to the bites”.

The latter also states, “we treat them as if they’re anthrax, or some exotic virus… It really is a tsunami that is coming. They’re going to be everywhere.”

And here’s a properly edited video from KOIN Local 6.
Thanks to Phillipp Kirsch for pointing us to it!

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Welsh Bedbuggers would do well not to put too much stock in this article from Wales on Sunday via icWales.com, since it repeatedly refers to bed bugs as “mites” (hint: bed bugs are insects; mites belong to the class Arachnida (as do spiders). Not bad for a humanities major, eh folks?

The article suggests hospitals as a source of some recent bed bug infestations in Swansea, South Wales:

Marc Everitt, the owner of Swansea-based pest control firm Pest-Ex, said: “No-one is safe – bedbugs don’t go by postcode and they can affect anyone. We have seen a massive increase recently.”

Mr Everitt said he had also dealt with a number of infestations that had broken out after people had stayed in hospitals.

“We’ve had cases where elderly people have returned from hospital and have suddenly found that they’ve got an infestation,” he revealed.

“It’s difficult to prove a direct link. But the evidence suggests that that’s the place the bugs are being brought back from.”

He added: “The problem is that even if you don’t have them, you can catch them off your neighbours and so they spread very quickly and very easily.”

Watch the horror as bed bugs cross the UK and Ireland via our Clustrmap of readers’ locations.

Anyone planning a return from the hospital might do well to follow some of the recommendations in our travel FAQs for not bringing bed bugs home: here, and if you are pretty sure you were in a place that had bed bugs, then also read this.

Yes, people staying in hospitals often have much more serious things to worry about than bringing bed bugs home, and it’ a shame they have to think about this as well as staph infections, and whatever they went to the hospital for in the first place. I can only imagine having to deal with bed bugs after a serious illness, injury, or surgery: prepping for treatment, exposure to pesticides, the cost — what a nightmare.

We have sometimes heard people on the Bedbugger Forums consider whether they got their bed bugs during a hospital visit. In related news, this article details a bed bug infestation in a Canadian pediatric unit, and this article mentions how Cincinnati’s Pamela Mackey came home from a hospital, opened an envelope they’d given her, and found a bed bug inside.Similar Posts:

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Monday’s Daily Telegraph featured a long article on bed bugs in the UK. Overall it was a typical story of the spread of bed bugs in Britain, and coming as it does from a well-respected source, it is a good thing. I was, however, disappointed in some of the information provided.

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.Similar Posts:

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According to Channel 12 WKRC in Cincinnati (doesn’t Howard Hesseman work there?), residents at the Hillrise Apartment building, which is owned by Cincinnati Business & Professional Women’s Retirement Living Incorporated, are suffering from various issues including bed bugs.

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.Similar Posts:

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Local News 12 in Cincinnati had a new segment on bed bugs on Monday. That city has declared their bed bug epidemic to be a huge problem, and started throwing energy, time, and resources into solving it as best they can. They appear to fully understand what a difficult task that is. But they’re starting with public education.

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? Similar Posts:

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