The first seminar is scheduled to take place on Monday, January 28 from 6PM to 8PM at the Russ Berrie Medical Science Pavilion, 1^st floor conference room, Columbia University Medical Center, 1150 St. Nicholas Avenue (at 168^th Street) in Manhattan.

The second seminar is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, February 5 from 8PM to 9PM at Ricardo’s Catering Hall, 21-01 24^th Avenue in Astoria, Queens.

The final seminar is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, March 12 from 6PM to 8PM at the Hope Gardens Senior Center, 195 Linden Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Anyone interested in attending any of these seminars is encouraged to call (212) 863-8830 to reserve a space. Translation services will be provided for Spanish-speaking members of the public.

New York Times blogger Jennifer 8. Lee also reported on the seminars. She also gave a helpful insight into what happens after you call 311:

Bedbug complaints are listed as an “emergency,” which means they go to the top of the priority list. The department sends out inspectors at night, when bedbugs tend to be more active. Typically, bedbugs are listed as a Class B violation, which gives the owner 30 days to correct the problem. The least severe violations, Class A, have to be fixed within 90 days. Class C violations, for emergency conditions like no electricity or hot water, must be corrected within 24 hours and completely dwarf the bedbug complaints.

Although we knew something about what happens when bedbuggers call 311, we had not previously heard that inspections were made at night. (I’m not sure how big a help this is, since I assume inspectors aren’t coming to call at 2 am, but still, it can’t hurt.) Lee also provided an interesting quotation from a City Councilperson who had had bed bugs:

Robert Jackson, a city councilman who represents parts of northern Manhattan, said at a news conference that his family had been plagued by bedbugs when he was young.

“They used to bite us all,” he said.”We used to wake up trying to kill them at night.”

Incidentally, Jackson was born and raised in Manhattan, according to the City Council’s biography, linked from his name above. I suspect someone in the New York City Council will soon have a contemporary story of bed bugs. I hope that when they do, they will speak out.

Lee continued,

Awareness has made people paranoid of bedbugs, which is why calls to 311 have skyrocketed, though only a part of those have ended up with violation notices.

“I think a lot of people are convinced they have bedbugs when they don’t,” Mr. Aragon said.

That is another reason they are holding the seminars, he said, so that people with skin rashes know when not to call 311.

This is certainly important– people should not panic, and should rule out other causes of itching. Knowing what different stages of bed bugs look like is key.

However, I have to admit that– having heard some 311 stories myself, and knowing how difficult it can be to find bed bug samples– I would suspect at least some of the 5000 people who called 311 last year and who were told they did not have bed bugs, did have them. Although some of the 7000 calls were doubtless panic reactions, I would not be surprised if more than 2000 were actual bed bug cases. I would like to know what constitutes evidence of bed bugs for the inspectors, and how they are trained to detect infestations. We’re told some PCOs do not visually inspect for bed bugs, finding this too difficult, time-consuming, or pointless.

Hopefully anyone who did have bed bugs, but whose HPD inspection turned up nothing, eventually found evidence and called again. However, we know that when people call for help and don’t get it, they often try other means the next time–like paying for their own treatment, or self-treating. (If neighbors are infested, both methods can fail miserably.)

The Times Ledger community newspapers also reported this week on the planned seminars.

The meetings, one of which will take place on Feb. 5 in Astoria, are a response to the rise in complaints that city residents have filed against the insects, according to City Council Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria).

“It’s a problem that until recently even I wasn’t aware of. You expect something like this in a third world country but not in the capital of the world,” he said.

They cited incorrect statistics on the number of complaints citywide:

In 2005, there were only 62 bedbug complaints, which soared to 366 last year, according to the city. Astoria had the third highest number of complaints, Vallone said. Although bedbugs do not transmit any diseases, they are still pose a health crisis for city residents according to the councilman.

“Other cities don’t consider bed bugs a crisis but when people aren’t sleeping they can develop physical and mental problems,” he said.

Perhaps the paper meant to cite statistics for Astoria? The city reported much higher numbers of complaints in 2007 city-wide. The press release about the seminars says,

In Fiscal Year 2007 alone, the City’s 311 hotline received nearly 7,000 bedbug related complaints and HPD housing inspectors issued over 2,000 violations to building owners all across the City. By comparison, Fiscal Year 2004 saw only 1,800 complaints and less than 400 violations issued.

We should remember these are only the people who called 311 to complain about bed bugs, which it appears most tenants and no coop or condo owners do. The numbers also leave out the NYC housing authority residents who had bed bugs last year. Douglas Feiden’s December report in The Daily News reported that there were

… 1,708 verified bedbug cases in 277 public housing projects this year [2007], the city Housing Authority says.

The city and the media leave us to do the math: New York City knows of approximately 3700 tenants who had bed bugs last year. They have no data on non-NYCHA tenants who reported bed bugs to their landlords directly, nor those who called pest control operators themselves, nor on co-op, condo or other homeowners.

From where I sit, hearing the stories of New York bedbuggers daily–and knowing only a small percentage call 311 about their bed bug problem–this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Vallone is also wrong that other cities don’t consider bed bugs a crisis. Lexington, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio, and San Francisco, California, are all US cities that are taking bed bugs seriously. Though responses have been limited so far, some of these cities have expended more money and energy per capita on bed bugs than New York has, by far.

And outside the US, Vancouver is also taking bed bugs seriously with a number of responses. Toronto is currently figuring out what to do.

Also this week, the New York Press blogged about the bed bug “education campaign”, and used one of Bedbugger mangy_cur’s excellent bed bug photos. Congratulations, mangy_cur!

They also linked to a thread in our forums, which we do appreciate (thanks, Emily Meredith of nypress.com!) though it’s always a little embarrassing when people arrive first via a forums thread, like a new guest coming to visit for the first time off the fire escape and through the kitchen window. But we welcome them nonetheless.

Update 1/21: CBS on the bed bug seminars; includes interview with Lou Sorkin who stresses that people need to look for the tiny, translucent nymphs which will be more common than rust-colored adults.

• Lexington, KY vs. New York, NY: a tale of two bedbugged cities
• Tomorrow’s bed bug seminar in New York (Tuesday 2/5/2008)
• Roger Smith Hotel on Lexington in NYC: latest bed bug lawsuit
• Columbia Spectator on bed bugs, again with the HPD statistic soup

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It’s not a particularly helpful story, however.

For starters, there are inaccuracies. Let’s start with this caption below a photo of an adult bed bug:

Unfed bugs are 1/4 to 3/4 inch long. They are brown or red-brown in color…

No!

They are never 3/4 inches long. Bed bugs, fed or unfed, range from 1/32 to 1/6 inch long. After hatching from the egg, they have 5 nymphal stages and one adult stage. Unfed bed bug nymphs (first instars that have never eaten) are clear in color. Fed bed bugs can be anywhere from red to rust to brown in color.

(Editor’s note, the error was made less egregious: by late Sunday night, it said “Unfed bugs are 1/4 to 3/8 inch long.” This is still inaccurate, however.)

This matters because people considering whether they might have bed bugs need to know the correct size, and that unfed nymphs are translucent, not red or brown.

Also, the “do’s and don’ts” suggests people “bag books, papers, most loose objects, and contents of closets so exterminators have access to all cracks and crevices in the home.”

This is not good advice in and of itself. If you bag up everything in your home, or discard it (for that matter), before a Pest Control Operator (PCO) has inspected and verified the presence of bed bugs, then it may be very difficult for them to diagnose your problem. You may end up with all your stuff in bags and PCOs telling you you don’t have bed bugs. And they may be wrong.

What’s more, simply bagging stuff that contains bed bugs or their eggs means you have bags full of bed bugs. What are you going to do with that, now?

Your PCO may advice you to carefully inspect and clean and bag items, for a time during treatment. Make sure you do so only after the problem has been identified by the PCO, and after the PCO has told you when you will be removing stuff from those bags. The answers on that seem to vary. Reading this FAQ might help you be prepared to discuss the issue with your PCO.

One interesting tidbit was an update of the previous data from HPD on bed bug complaints and violations.

The numbers are off the charts: In 2004, New Yorkers placed 537 calls to 311 about bedbugs in their homes; the city slapped 82 landlords with bedbug violations, data show.

In the fiscal year that ended in June, 6,889 infestation complaints were logged and 2,008 building owners were hit with summonses.

They must get rid of the pests within 30 days or face possible action in Housing Court, the city Department of Housing, Preservation & Development says.

This would be for fiscal year July 2006-June 2007. You’ll recall that approximately 1/3 fewer complaints were logged by 311 the prior fiscal year, and less than half as many were declared actual bed bug cases.

But these numbers are misleading because they only represent cases where those with bed bugs were tenants in city apartments and called 311 to report their bed bugs. As I have been saying for more than a year, most people do not do this. Out of a hundred tenants in NYC with bed bugs, I’d be surprised if more than one or two called 311. Most people don’t even realize this is an option–they know from past experience that pest complaints are directed at landlords. Moreover, those who do know, more often than not, choose not to call, because they’d rather work through the landlord if possible, rather than file a housing complaint and risk alientating the landlord. (This is often the last resort.)

The numbers are also misleading because they don’t include public housing, which logged, “1,708 verified bedbug cases in 277 public housing projects this year, the city Housing Authority says.”

The numbers also do not include statistics for those who own co-operative apartments, condos, or other housing.

The statistics offered on bed bugs in the schools (50 schools suffered a total of 74 bed bug “cases”) don’t line up with data the same newspaper shared back in February 2007, when the same newspaper reported that 43 schools had identified a total of 95 live bed bugs. (The story is gone, so you will have to read about it here.) Though it’s interesting to know that only an additional 7 schools have discovered bed bugs in the last ten months, it seems they must be defining “bed bug case” differently now than then, to have gone from 95 “bugs” to 74 “cases”.

Any statistics from the schools are skewered, however, since teachers have to see, catch, and mail away a bed bug for verification before the presence of a bed bug in the classroom will be registered. And while this may seem reasonable, anyone here will tell you you can be bitten badly and for a very long time before you ever see one. A lone teacher in a busy NYC classroom has slim chance of finding a bed bug on a student. Shall we assume, then, there are more?

Perhaps the most intriguing story in the article was that of Bernard Spitzer’s apartment building. We’re told,

[Bed bugs] even contaminated five or six apartments in the swanky rental tower at 220 E. 72nd St. owned by Bernard Spitzer, the governor’s 83-year-old father.

Several tenants described a persistent, if intermittent, infestation on the 15th, 16th and 17th floors.

A few infested floors, midway up a high-rise: nothing unusual there. But wait:

Spitzer’s 28-story building sits atop the six-story home of Marymount Manhattan College, which discovered seven infestations in two residence halls. The problem was under control by October, a spokeswoman said.

Marymount Manhattan has three residences for students, none of which are in this building. It does cause one to wonder whether there is any connection between the incidents on the 15th-17th floors and in the homes of some of those who spend part of their time in the first six floors.

We also get an update on the city’s “response” to bed bugs:

City officials say HPD inspectors are increasing enforcement as complaints mushroom and the Health Department is handling education and prevention efforts. It’s not more actively involved because its focus is on disease-spreading pests, officials said.

“That’s not good enough,” said City Councilman Gale Brewer (D-upper West Side.) “It’s great that we’re not smoking as much, and great that we’re not eating trans fats, but we need to focus on bedbugs in the same aggressive manner.”

Brewer wants to create a Bedbug Task Force and bar the sale of reconditioned mattresses, which the Bloomberg administration opposes because it “would adversely impact lower-income New Yorkers,” a mayoral spokesman said.

I love Brewer’s comments about smoking and trans fats, both of which are banned from local restaurants. Bed bugs are not.

Brewer first went down this Bed Bug Task Force/resales of mattresses road in the fall of 2006, but we haven’t really seen any results yet from these initiatives.

All in all, the city’s response is very ostrich-like. Let’s compare with other cities in the US: San Francisco has guidelines for dealing with bed bugs in apartment buildings, hotels, and other locations, as does the state of California. Lexington, KY and Cincinnati, Ohio health departments (yes, health departments, Mr. Bloomberg) have both declared war on bed bugs.

Lexington tells residents to call the health department if they think they have bed bugs.

Cincinnati has a hotline just for bed bug information. They also have dedicated bed bug trash pickup for discarded furniture. We think encouraging residents to throw furniture away, rather than helping them pay for treatment, is misguided. But Cincinnati is trying. They think education is key. Hear that, Mr. Bloomberg?

San Francisco City Supervisor Chris Daly got $63,000 in this year’s budget to help low-income residents pay for laundry and freezing of possessions. San Francisco politicians listened to SRO activists who told them this money was needed. Because poor people seriously can’t afford to do the necessary tenant’s part of bed bug treatment.

And let me be clear: not one of these localities is doing enough to combat bed bugs. None of them, not by a long shot. Much more help is needed, especially laws about disclosure of infestations, tracking of infestations by government agencies (so someone is actually paying attention to where bed bugs are spreading), and financial assistance to landlords, homeowners, and tenants who are having trouble paying for preparations and effective treatment. Bringing back some of the recently outlawed, more effective pesticides for targeted bed bug use would go a long way (and no, I do not mean DDT).

Meanwhile, NYC is doing none of this. The NYC Department of Education has deployed “bed bug kits” to schools. Their website claims:

Schools are not an ideal location for bed bugs to reproduce, because they are nocturnal insects that require feeding prior to reproduction; but in the event that bedbugs do show up in our schools, the DOE’s Pest Management Unit is providing a Bed Bug Kit to deal with specimens.

This is erroneous information. Bed bugs are nocturnal if food is available at night, pure and simple. Transplanted to schools, they will bite, reproduce, and thrive. This is an example of wishful thinking, which seems to be the backbone of NYC’s bed bug policy.

NYC does not even tell tenants to call 311 about bed bugs, unless they wade through the HPD website looking for this directive.

And yet bases its assessment of the severity of the problem on those calls.

Discuss.

If you have trouble with the article link at top, try this one.

• Lexington, KY vs. New York, NY: a tale of two bedbugged cities
• Excerpt from article re NYC Department of Ed policy
• The UFT (NYC teachers’ union): how do we get the city to be proactive about bed bugs?
• Bed bugs bite in White Plains, NY public housing

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Public Health Commissioner William Hacker, M.D., recommends that people who think they may have a problem with bed bugs seek advice from their local health department or health care provider.

Accurate identification of the insect followed by treatment by a licensed pest control company is the most effective means for addressing bed bugs. DPH has developed information to help citizens understand more about these insects.

Additional information can be obtained from the local health department, area pest control specialists or the DPH Web site.

You may also call DPH staff members, Erica Brakefield, technical consultant in the environmental management branch, at (502) 564-4856 Ext. 3732; or Vonia Grabeel, program administrator in the environmental management branch, at (502) 564-4856 Ext. 3724.

The Kentucky Public Health Department website’s bed bug page also has links to a PDF bed bug fact sheet (which we’ve linked to for some time) and a flyer of consumer information related to bed bugs.

It is new as of November 2, 2007, and includes such suggestions as:

Do’s and Don’ts (where have I heard this phrase before?)

• Do not pick up any used furniture or mattresses/box springs from the roadside or your garbage containers.
• If you have gotten furniture from a rental service, always check the seams and any creased areas for bed bugs.
• When traveling, check all motel rooms thoroughly before setting your luggage on the floor or bed.

Bed bugs prefer to hide close to where they feed. However, if necessary, they will crawl several feet to obtain a blood meal. Initial infestations tend to be around beds, but the bugs eventually may become scattered throughout a room, occupying any crevice or protected location. They also can spread to adjacent rooms or apartments.

Well, some good, and some not so good advice here. I’ve heard bed bugs can crawl 20 feet, or 100 feet (depending who you ask). I am not sure about 100, but “a few feet” seems like an understatement.

And while I am at it, can I just ask people not to rent furniture? Please don’t. Like curbside furniture or freecycle/Craigslist booty, it just is not worth it. If you think life without a TV or sofa bites, imagine not being able to sit in any of your chairs or lie in your bed or lounge around watching that TV without being bitten. It is not worth it. I speak as a woman who sat for many months in a metal folding chair after my sofa started biting me in the arse (almost literally). I did not pick up a secondhand sofa, but I know what it is like to not have one, and believe me: a sofa with bed bugs is a lot worse than no sofa at all.

Still, I applaud Kentucky’s attempts to notify the public, and I especially appreciate their invitation to Kentucky residents to call the Public Health Dept. with questions or complaints or concerns about bed bugs. You can call them, and they have given the names and phone numbers of appropriate contacts.

Bed bugs, a health issue? Who woulda thunk it?!?

• Kentucky: pro-active against the epidemic
• Urgent: if you’re in Cincinnati…
• Bed bugs in hotels: how to report (and check up on) bed bug infestations
• Educating the public about bed bugs: Toronto to host bed bug forum for residents April 2nd

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• bed bug news for 2007-11-11: Lexington, KY and Toronto, ON
• bed bugs in Toronto; Vancouver; Billings, MT,
• bed bug news for 2007-11-16
• Bed bugs in homeless shelters, casinos, hotels, apartments: Waynesboro, Atlantic City, Greenpoint, Toronto

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• bed bugs in Toronto; Vancouver; Billings, MT,
• bed bug news for 2007-11-09
• Bed bugs in homeless shelters, casinos, hotels, apartments: Waynesboro, Atlantic City, Greenpoint, Toronto
• bed bug news for 2007-11-16

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An exterminator for All-Rite says it is ok for her to return to her home.

“Really and truly there is not a lot of reason to move out to tell you the truth,” Charlie Asberry of All-Rite Pest Control explained.

“You run the risk of moving a problem from here to another unit,” Asberry said.

Demus has thrown out two couches and a mattress and plans to get rid of their clothes as a result of the infestation.

“Yes, he said I could come back in here, but honestly would you want to come back?” Demus said.

While the PCO is correct, it is hard not to empathize with the tenant. Who wouldn’t want to escape? In fact, if she leaves, without a human acting as “bait” to draw them across the poison to their deaths, the bed bugs are likely to hide out waiting for another source of food to move in, or to flee to neighboring units in search of food (or both).

Interestingly, these articles rarely mention the need for follow-up treatments spaced around two weeks apart–and necessary until no bed bug bites, bed bugs, or signs of bed bugs are found. They also almost never mention that all adjoining units (above, below, and all sides) must be carefully inspected by the PCO.

This article is no exception, leading one to hope All-Rite did inspect all the neighbors, and that they will be back in two weeks for more. Perhaps that part of the story does not make for interesting journalism, but it is important that the public become aware of these concerns, should they one day find themselves on the other end of a bed bug’s proboscis.

But the most interesting part of this article was that the local health department is asking people to call to report bed bugs:

If you live in an apartment complex and suspect there are bed bugs. You are urged to call the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department at (859) 231-9791

That, my bedbugged friends, is very good news, but not particularly new news. Lest we forget, Lexington-Fayette County Health Department was one of the first in the US, if not the first, to declare bed bugs a problem, over a year ago. There is probably more that the health department could do, however. For example, their brochure (available here) recommends washing bedding and clothing or throwing it away. Why suggest throwing away washable clothes and sheets? It also does not state clearly enough that mattresses and other furniture can usually be treated, and usually do not need to be thrown out. Or that throwing them out may lead to further spread in your building. (Perhaps we should say, here at Bedbugger.com,“Caveat dumpster”?)

• Bed bugs and the disabled
• bed bugs clear Port Jervis, NY Hospital’s mental health unit
• Bed bugs usually plague a city for a few weeks before being eradicated. Really, Waterbury Health Department?
• Bed bugs at Maryland’s Hashawha Environmental Center

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According to the Lexington Herald-Leader of 10/14/2006, Lexington, KY had a huge increase in reported cases of bed bugs in the last few years:

Complaints about bedbugs in Lexington have almost tripled since 2005, the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department said yesterday, and it warned residents to take precautions against a problem that is growing here and nationwide.

Public health officials said they’ve investigated 19 complaints about bedbugs in various areas of Lexington so far this year, compared to seven complaints in all of 2005. In response, the health department has formed a task force, in cooperation with the Urban County Government, to start distributing educational pamphlets, spokeswoman Jessica Cobb said.

Meanwhile, much larger New York, NY also had a huge increase in reported cases of bed bugs in the last few years:

In the last fiscal year, the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development received 4,638 complaints about bedbugs in rental housing – nearly five times as many in the previous year.

Lexington: 19 complaints last year; NYC: 4,638 complaints last year. In New York, it is notable that these 4,638 cases only represent tenants who reported cases to the city. Homeowners with infestations would not call 311 to report bed bugs. And most tenants wouldn’t either; the normal course of action when a tenant has a pest, is for the tenant to call the landlord or superintendent. I would never think of calling 311 unless my landlord did not respond to a complaint. In short, 4,638 is the tip of the iceberg. I’d be surprised if there were not 10 times as many tenants with infestations who did not call 311. And many more homeowners, who would never have call to report their home’s infestation to a city agency.

Lexington 2000 (human) population: 260512; NYC 2000 (human) population: 8008278.

There are almost 31 times as many people in NYC as in Lexington.

There were 244 times as many reports of bed bug infestations in the last year in NYC compared to Lexington.

New York’s reported infestations are up five times in one year.

Lexington’s are up three times in one year.

And yet the New York City government, after 4,638 reported cases, is not doing anything; our short-sighted city officials recently claimed poor people should have the right to save money by purchasing used mattresses, a known cause of the spread of bed bugs.

And the government in Lexington, after 19 reported cases, is spearheading a leafleting campaign, to educate the populace.

Discuss.

• Portsmouth NH’s Health Officer proactive about bed bugs
• Nashua, NH Health Officers on prowl for bed bugs
• Roger Smith Hotel on Lexington in NYC: latest bed bug lawsuit
• How bad are bed bugs in Toronto? Nobody knows for sure.

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