A new article from Baltimore’s City Paper is troubling.

Landlords in Baltimore who rent out single-family homes are not responsible for treating for bed bugs in those homes, even if the “single-family home” is a kind of unofficial rooming-house with fifteen or more residents. As you may guess, the residents may also lack the funds to treat their homes for bed bugs. (Owners of multi-family units are responsible for treatment for bed bugs, though many are finding this extremely challenging, both financially, as well as because bed bugs are just really hard to get rid of.)

Many people in Baltimore, including Mark Adams, who is profiled in this article, attribute the “cause” of bed bugs to their neighbors’ Latino/a ethnicity. And this is where it starts to get ugly.

The bottom line is that if your neighbors have bed bugs and do not get proper treatment, you will probably get bed bugs, and you will not be able to get rid of them.
This is true whatever your neighbors’ ethnicity, country of origin, religion, or economic class.

The real problem here is that no one is required to treat these single-family homes for bed bugs.

Edward Ericson, Jr. writes for City Paper, that

in the southeastern Baltimore City neighborhoods of Butchers Hill, Upper Fells Point, Fells Prospect, and Highlandtown, the [bed bug] trouble has often attached itself to and spread out from de facto rooming houses filled with extended families and working men.

And

The Baltimore City Health Department itself acknowledges the correlation, though not the causation, in a “Bed Bug Response Plan” it quietly released on April 20. “Pest control companies and the Hispanic Apostolate noted the pronounced bed bug problem in the Latino community, perhaps due to travel and frequent relocations,” the plan notes.

Asked during a June 8 phone conversation to expand on that observation, three Baltimore Health Department officials say nothing for several seconds. “I think that’s where we’ve seen a fair amount of our complaints coming in,” Interim Commissioner Olivia Farrow finally says, speaking of the Latino community. But she and others stress, bed bugs are not confined to the Hispanic population.

“Bed bugs don’t discriminate,” says Sarah Norman, chief of the city Lead, Asthma and Injury Prevention bureau. “All they care about is whether you’re alive.”

Anyone who doubts this should spend some time on our Bedbugger Forums. Although most posters are anonymous, you do get a sense of the diversity of ethnic, national, and socio-economic backgrounds represented.

However, let’s leave aside habits of “travel and frequent relocations,” for a moment and consider the fact that the residents of this single-family row-house are likely unable to pay for their own bed bug treatment. They may lack information about bed bugs and how difficult they are to treat. They may not know where to get help (if, indeed, there is anywhere to get help.)

The city rightly acknowledges that the bed bug blame game does not work:

In a four-way telephone conversation on June 8, city health officials explain that fixing blame for a given infestation is effectively beyond the ken of local government. “We do get a lot of bedbugs going from place to place,” Sarah Norman says. “The difficulty is verifying. Do they have some evidence?”

“You have to get into both properties,” Olivia Farrow adds. “It’s a lengthy investigation.”

Add to that gaps in the city’s laws that make the owners of multi-family dwellings responsible for pest eradication, but don’t obligate the owners of single-family houses to fumigate, no matter how many people are living there, and code-enforcement appears to be a non-starter–at least where the Health Department is concerned.

“So the real thing is education,” Norman says. “What we do is we knock on the door and we really try to create a relationship with the neighbors.”

The Health Department is currently trying to snare federal grants that might, if they come through, help at least some of the city’s low-income families shoulder the cost of eradicating bed-bug infestations. “We are hoping to make a national model about how this kind of thing can be done,” Kasameyer says at the June 16 community meeting.

(Emphasis mine.)

That’s good news. Please make it happen quickly.

The bottom line is that — since the cost of bed bug treatment in Baltimore lies with them — single-family home tenants and small-scale multi-unit landlords may need help in paying for treatment. They also need to educate residents and enforce treatment of those single-family homes.

Baltimore clearly needs affordable, effective pest control to be available to everyone.

And when bed bugs are spreading from row-house to row-house, it really could soon be everyone who has them.

Be sure to check out the article, and the interesting link to a map of bed bug infestations reported to Baltimore’s 311 since 2006.

Update (7/2):

Compare this story from ABC: “Southeast Baltimore Infested with Bed Bugs”

What a difference it makes when the focus is on neighborhoods.

Similar Posts:

• Bed bugs in Washington, D.C.? Yes! And growing in number daily.
• Toronto Bed Bug Project Update coming Monday, forecast looking good
• How to spread bed bugs, in three easy steps!
• Take a Seat project: a really bad idea where bed bugs are concerned
• Ohio fighting to get Propoxur for residential bed bug applications

The bed bug blame game never ceases. Yesterday we heard about the Thai Isan trains infested with bed bugs.

Now the Thai railway company is blaming backpackers for bringing bed bugs to the trains, as the Bangkok Post reports in an article entitled, “Foreign Backpackers deny they’re bed bug spreaders.”

Foreign backpackers say they are disgusted by bed bugs, but even more disgusted by the suggestion they are the ones carrying the insects onto trains. Many foreign backpackers waiting for trains at Hua Lampong station yesterday conceded they knew little about bed bug infestations on trains.

They said the thought of bed bugs crawling on the velvety seats of long-haul trains and biting passengers while they dozed off was truly off-putting.

But to be accused of carrying the blood-sucking bugs on to trains was even more disgusting, said many foreign backpackers interviewed yesterday by the Bangkok Post at the train terminal.

Bed bugs can travel in any direction. Anyone could have brought the initial bed bug(s) onto the train: employees, local travelers, foreign backpackers, even train inspectors.

But the comments being made by officials in Thailand imply they haven’t got a clue how bed bugs behave:

Transport Minister Santi Prompat said yesterday the bugs may have jumped onto travellers’ backpacks during forest treks and then found new homes in the cosy seats of the trains. He said the velvet-covered seats and cool temperatures contributed to make the trains a fertile breeding ground for the insects.

Bed bugs would enjoy a nice velvet-covered seat, but they can also live in the train structure itself. And while bat or bird bugs are similar to bed bugs and might be found in the forest, they don’t leap onto people as they walk by.

Backpackers could certainly have brought bed bugs from a hotel or other lodging, as this traveler concedes:

American Sean Vaughan-Housman, 23, said he had not heard the news about the train beg bugs, but added he had come across the insects at a guesthouse.

But it may be unfair to point the finger at backpackers for the infestation of bugs on the trains, he said.

It most certainly is: you can’t prove foreign backpackers brought bed bugs onto the trains, or were the only people to do so.

More important, however, is the fact that travelers who rode on the infested trains are likely to have caused other infestations when they left it.   Maybe a few people brought bed bugs on to the trains, and yet how many more surely took them away from it?  The train infestation likely caused other infestations of passenger homes, guest houses, restaurants, even other trains, buses or planes.

If anyone sat on the train and picked up a hitchhiking bed bug in their clothing or bags, they could have infested subsequent locations. So the train company should be focused on that scenario. They’re to blame for infesting others as well.

This is why the bed bug blame game does not work: when people jump to blame others, they often forget there’s usually many more who can rush to blame them.

Sawittee Malaipan, an entomologist at Kasetsart University, said some foreigners, including refugees and tourists, did not like to take baths and so they attracted the insects.

It’s not surprising to see this sort of rhetoric levied against western young people. Here in the US, many want to blame immigrants for spreading bed bugs. But this entomologist’s line of thinking is incorrect: bed bugs are not attracted to people who do not take baths.

My assessment of this piece is that bed bugs are as much of a surprise to locals in Thailand as those in Paris or New York City. Once one realizes, “they’re back,” there’s a rush to place blame.

Well, sorry: they’re just back. Everywhere. Trying to blame others when bed bugs appear is pointless and distracting. It’s also usually based on faulty logic and scant or no evidence.

Instead, look to yourself. Do your best to keep your home, business, bed-and-breakfast lodging or public transport system bed bug-free, and you will keep from spreading bed bugs to others. And when you do get bed bugs, catch them quickly, apologize to anyone affected, and for goodness’ sake, get rid of them ASAP.

Thanks to hopelessnomo for pointing this article out. Similar Posts:

None Found

• TheStar.com | Battling bedbugs is not easy: Joe Fiorito talks to Steve Floros of Toronto Community Housing:
  This is a public housing official: “We have a program of unit refurbishment. We’re spending $75 million over three years to upgrade kitchens and bathrooms; we want to seal every crack so there isn’t free ability of the pests to move. And our new buildings have similar specs…” Seems pretty progressive to me.
  (tags: torontocommunityhousing toronto publichousing affordablehousing low-incomehousing tenants bedbugs ontario canada thestar spread caulking sealants prevention JoeFiorito treatment)
• GoErie.com: Don’t let the bedbugs bite
  “Many infestations can be traced to people coming to the United States from third-world countries or Eastern Europe.” (I’m not sure anyone has actually traced the paths of these infestations. Yes, bed bugs travel, but they do so in every direction. I don’t doubt that bed bugs do come with immigrants, but they also go out with travelers and business people. They know no boundaries of class, national origin, or nationality, and whenever people throw down the “immigrant” card, I get my hackles up.)
  (tags: misinformation immigration immigrantsandbedbugs pennsylvania erie bedbugs spread travel)
• The Columbus Dispatch : Fighting the biters
  On recent bed bug pyrethroid resistance studies: “The Cincinnati and Lexington bugs were immune at levels 200 to 300 times the recommended dosage and also unaffected when directly sprayed with two commercial pyrethroid insecticides.” Lots more of interest here on the relative immunity to pyrethroids of bed bugs in various cities.
  (tags: bedbug pyrethroids treatment nov2007 2007 cincinnati lexington columbus spread bedbugs epidemic)

Similar Posts:

None Found