You might see evidence of bed bugs which looks like this, when searching a hotel room.

Bed bug fecal traces on a headboard and mattress:

Photo credit for all three photos goes to David James of Packtite.
Thanks, David, for sharing them! (Copyright All Rights Reserved by David James.)Similar Posts:

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This article was not primarily about bed bugs; it was mainly about college students, and how it’s harder than ever to furnish a student apartment from things you find on the curb.

The reasons given: more competition, including not just students, but from people who buy and sell used items, and also young professionals who are into the environmentally positive effects of used furniture.

Bed bugs were also mentioned, and rightly so. Boston has a serious bed bug problem. The Boston Globe reports,

Competition isn’t the only challenge facing students seeking freebies. There’s also the bedbug threat, particularly in the transient Allston and Brighton neighborhoods. This year the city has received 210 requests to inspect for bedbug infestations, 46 of them in “student-heavy” neighborhoods, said Dion Irish, assistant commissioner of Boston’s Inspectional Services Department.

Because bedbugs have an affinity for mattresses, the city is dispatching inspectors to the area over Labor Day weekend to slap orange warning stickers on mattresses and other cast-off items and to spray-paint wooden furniture where the bedbugs could be hidden.

The bedbug problem has had a chilling effect on students like Darius Wilsey, a Northeastern University junior. Last year his roommate brought home two mattresses from the street only to discover, too late, there was a reason they were there in the first place. “They were infested with bedbugs,” Wilsey said. “Our place became uninhabitable. We had no place to live. I had to live on people’s couches for three weeks.”

Bed bugs not only have serious negative economic, emotional, and social effects on the people who bring the used furniture or mattress home. They also easily spread to neighbors, friends, and relatives, costing them a lot in terms of money, time, and sleep.

Bed bugs also, it must be stressed, have a negative effect on the environment. The amount of plastic bags and pesticides involved in one bed bug infestation may well offset the environmental (and economic) benefits to those young professionals mentioned above, and other budding freegans.

Nevertheless, the Globe reports,

. . . none of this has put an end to Boston’s thriving underground free furniture industry.

Well, that’s kind of a shame.

Maybe, instead of “First come, first served,” the article should have been called, “First come, first bitten by bed bugs.”

Just a reminder to everyone in Boston: just because the item you find on the street does not have an orange bed bug warning sticker, does not mean it isn’t infested with bed bugs.

You can read the full article by Linda Matchan here.Similar Posts:

• Bed bugs continue to plague Boston, but the news is not all bad
• More students at college finding bed bugs in their dorm rooms
• KRDO in Colorado Springs: some misleading advice regarding bed bugs
• bedbugs and our interdependence
• Jersey City Fire Dept. sets up “decontamination tent” outside building with bed bugs

It’s a dangerous time for taking in secondhand goods. These days, you don’t need to crawl the curbside looking for secondhand furniture that may contain bed bugs. Craigslist, Freecycle, and similar websites offer forums where people with stuff can connect with people who can buy it or take it for free.

Inevitably, some of that stuff is going to be from the homes of people who have bed bugs (whether they know it or not) and it’s easy to introduce bed bugs into your home in this way.

Some folks have even taken it into their own hands to post warnings about bed bugs on Craigslist, since the company is apparently unwilling to do so itself.

And so I offer you: the second bed bug story from Craigslist in one week.

Last week, we got a lesson in “how to spread bed bugs in three easy steps” via the post of a Craigslister offering nearly the entire contents of a home, while warning that the home had bed bugs, and nevertheless reassuring people it wasn’t hard to decontaminate bedbug-infested items including a futon, an upholstered office chair, a crib and — (potentially the bed bug motherlode) a captain’s bed.

This time, we see an ad for a “FREE antique couch” in “beautiful condition,” offered by a Toronto Craigslister at 3:21 pm on Sunday 8/17.

We simply can’t take it with us.

Yours if you can pick it up. Worth hundreds. Upholstery in great condition.

xxx xxxxxx Avenue.

Will be on the curb today.

Readers might have wondered why an “antique couch” in “beautiful condition” was being left curbside in Leslieville, and not moved along with other belongings? Well, it’s possible they did not have the means to move it. It happens, right?

Then we see a separate post in response by another Craigslister in the Toronto “Free Stuff” section the following day 8/18 at 1:16 pm. The title of this post is the exact address given in the first post as the place to pick up the sofa:

hi guys… we picked up that couch yesterday and by midnight — while watching tv — we discovered some bedbugs crawling along it… we have since thrown out all our furniture that was near it, doing the big clean of all our fabric… and are hoping that this will do the trick….we are in talks with our super about getting the apt. sprayed…

in 10 yrs. of being in toronto, my partner and i have never had to experience bedbugs…

Although I suppose there are other possible explanations (such as the sofa recipients having bed bugs already and just happening to notice them for the first time on their newly introduced Craigslist sofa, the day they pick it up), it really does look like the recipient got bed bugs along with the sofa.

Perhaps the unlucky sofa recipients thought it safe to accept this furniture because they figured if something had bed bugs living in it, the donor would know it was infested, and would not give it away.

As the song goes, ‘t ain’t necessarily so.

Never assume anything is bed bug-free. A good percentage of the population does not react to bed bug bites. Some estimates put this number as high as 50%.

The person donating your secondhand stuff, whether they’re a friend, neighbor, or someone on Craigslist may have no idea they have bed bugs. Maybe the sofa’s former owner was one of them.

On the other hand, I’m not so sure that’s the case here. If the recipients of the sofa saw multiple bed bugs, isn’t there a good chance the former owner did too?

Perhaps they did not know what they were.

Or perhaps they knew there were bed bugs in the home and were moving out to get rid of them, but did not understand that all of their furniture and possessions were at risk of harboring bed bugs.

In either case, ignorance is not bliss. As I said earlier in the week, these Craigslist bed bug cases emphasize the need for education: the government needs to educate the public about how easily bed bugs spread, and about how to inspect one’s home for them, and how to avoid getting them or passing them to others.

People should not be wondering, as this metafilter poster did back in 2006, whether there’s a “foolproof way” to be sure furniture items are not infested before you take them home, or to remove bed bugs from the item once you get home.

Picking up secondhand goods on the street needs to be seen as a really stupid idea, in every instance.

And Craigslist and Freecycle and similar services need to warn people, point blank, that any item offered via their service may be infested with bed bugs. Period.

There’s one good way to ensure no one gets bed bugs from an item that is tossed out or given away, and that’s to destroy it.

Remember the story David Cain told in the Bedbugger forums, about once having treated “the same Italianesque bed in 3 different properties on the same street”?

One tenant tossed out a bed bug-infested bed, the second saw it curbside and thought it looked nice, but later realized his/her error and tossed it out again. The third tenant made the same mistake as the second.

At this point, David ended the cycle with a baseball bat:

As I did general pest control in those days, I was able to rely upon my trusty rat bat to make sure that it did not find its way into a fourth [home].

Many thanks to the anonymous Toronto Bedbugger who tipped me off to these Craigslist posts.


Note: unlike the last Craigslist post, I decided not to do a screenshot of this one, since it has an address included, albeit the poster’s former address. I don’t mind linking to that on Craigslist, but I don’t want to be the one responsible for sharing someone’s address online. (So please don’t mention the address if you see it!)Similar Posts:

• Caveat dumpster! Do not take those Brooklyn sofas, Craigslist readers
• The Bed Bug Registry adds new features
• Bed bugs infest multiple areas of New York’s John Jay College (CUNY)
• Bed bugs infest New Rochelle cell block and three police cars
• Bed bugs on the rise in Detroit

Blogger Roy Edroso did a nice rundown of recent bed bug situation in NYC in the Voice’s Runnin’ Scared news blog Monday.

Edroso is right on the money in suggesting that bed bugs are not just one of those things the alarmist media wants us to think are “on the rise;” this is a real problem which shows every sign of getting worse, and no sign of going away.

And like most New Yorkers, Edroso has his own vicarious bed bug stories:

A friend of ours a few blocks up got bedbugs in 2006. She set all her bedding out in the street with large, clear signage explaining the situation; within an hour, someone had taken her mattress anyway.

Thinking back on that — a guy or a couple of guys ripping the BEDBUGS sign off a mattress and hauling it away — it strikes us that the role of illiteracy, or just plain ignorant disregard, in the spread of this plague is not to be underestimated.

Indeed.

However, there are a few inaccuracies or misleading ideas here:

The City urges affected citizens to “contact your Management Office immediately so that a work ticket for a visit by a NYCHA exterminator can be filled out.” Those of us with absent or unapproachable landlords might try 311. Or maybe DDT.

NYCHA exterminators are only available to those in New York City Housing Authority buildings (i.e. public housing). DDT is not really a good option (though many people think it’s just a matter of finding some).

Calling 311, however, is an option for most NYC tenants (not in NYCHA buildings) whose landlords are not dealing with the problem. It’s a messed-up system, though. Hard to get an inspector in and even harder to get them to cite a violation. (Those who’ve had NYCHPD inspections report being asked to show the inspector where the bed bugs were. This is not always easy. Previously caught samples are not necessarily counted.)

Concerned Voice readers would do well to get behind New York vs. Bed Bugs’ campaign to get the city to do something. Similar Posts:

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