Bedbug Hotel

Originally uploaded by Frank Synopsis

From the film “Nancy Drew: Reporter,” which was released in 1939, before DDT swept through such places.

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NY1’s Cindi Avila quoted Gale Brewer as to the reason New York is taking action:

Last year, the city’s 311 hotline got 7,000 bedbug related calls, almost four times more than just three years earlier. Now the city is taking action, educating the public about the painful problem.

“The bottom line is bed bugs must be dealt with. And they are a mental health issue if they are not a physical health issue,” said City Councilwoman Gale Brewer. “New Yorkers really need to know their government is behind them in trying to get rid of bedbugs.”

We look forward to knowing more about what’s happening in these educational events:

Wednesday the city announced plans to hold three seminars aimed at educating the public about the blood-sucking parasites.

“To ensure they know when they have bedbugs, to ensure they know how to exterminate the bedbugs, and to ensure that they identify if a neighbor may also have bedbugs that could spread into their homes,” said City Councilman Miguel Martinez of the purpose of the meetings.

These three goals are far more difficult than perhaps even Councilman Martinez understands. Bed bugs can be hard to locate. Perhaps the most important thing New Yorkers need to know is that entomologist Michael Potter estimates as many as 50% of people don’t react to bed bug bites. So you can have them and have no idea.

And tipping your mattress over often does not lead to enlightenment, as many bedbuggers have found–it’s not that easy to detect bed bugs.

Meanwhile, AP reporter Deepti Hajela wrote an article that was picked up all over, including Newsday.

Hajela spoke with officials about the reason for the campaign:

“It’s about quality of life,” Luiz Aragon, deputy commissioner in the Department of Housing and Preservation, said. “We know that people are sometimes attempting to deal with this problem but they don’t know how to.”

In my experience, knowledge is crucial, but only part of the battle.

For tenants, getting landlords to treat properly, using licensed Pest Control Operators and treating until a problem is fully gone, is the real struggle.

I am sure many landlords, PCOs, and bedbugged neighbors, would also complain about some tenants not cooperating with preparations, or not reporting the problem, or trying to self-treat.

Meanwhile, most people in co-ops have to figure out how to get their association on board with inspections and treatment.

Education helps with all that, but the city needs knowledge–of who’s infested, and muscle–to force action.

And the city will surely eventually have to help landlords and homeowners who can’t afford proper treatment, and tenants who may need help with preparations for treatment, not only to eliminate bed bugs but to keep the problem from spreading.

You can read Deepti Hajela’s AP story in Newsday here.

You can read Cindi Avila’s NY1 story here.

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The article conveys the scope of the problem and the speed at which it seems to be spreading:

To get a full sense of the bedbug boom, ask any pest control expert. [Carlo] Panacci, for one, used to have a 1-800 number for his company, Cain Pest Control, but cancelled it because he was getting overwhelmed by cries for help from people in B.C., Newfoundland and everywhere in between. He now averages about eight to 10 bedbug inquiries a day. “I got so busy with bedbugs I gave up on raccoons and squirrels,” he says. Doug Wadlow, who runs Orkin Pest Control in Edmonton, says bedbug calls are up 300 per cent from 2004. Meanwhile, John Mitten, branch manager of Poulin’s Pest Control in Vancouver, says bedbugs will total 25 per cent of his firm’s work this year. That’s up from 13 per cent in ‘06. Some U.S. companies are getting as many as 50 bedbug calls a day. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see which way this is headed,” says Michael Potter, an entomology professor at the University of Kentucky and one of the world’s top bedbug researchers. Potter describes the spread of bedbugs as “a bit like a communicable disease.”

Although he acknowledges that bed bugs “don’t transmit disease,” the author nevertheless seems to get that bed bugs do have an adverse effect on mental health. Anecdotes convey the strain of a bed bug infestation, as well as the anxiety people feel even after the bed bugs are apparently gone–the fear they might still be there, the nervousness.

One study of pest control professionals found that 60 per cent of clients are more upset by the discovery of bedbugs than ro­­dents, termites or roaches. It’s no wonder bedbug support groups and message boards have popped up on­­line.

Indeed.

Intini also conveys the anxiety of professionals who fear bringing their work home:

Even pest control ex­­­­perts suffer the occasional anxiety attack. “A couple of times, I’ve woken up in the middle of the night, felt some­­thing crawl on me, and just freaked out,” says Goldman. “It turned out to be my wife’s hair.”

Intini notes that “If anyone should be frightened of bedbugs, it’s those in the hotel business,” and describes some of the steps hotels are taking to avoid bed bugs, and to get rid of them.

A new statistic from Dr. Potter on bed bug-reactive people (ie those with itchy bite marks):

“I’ve been in places where the wife is getting slaughtered and the husband, who is sleeping in the same bed, doesn’t react at all,” says Potter. As much as half the population, he says, won’t show any signs.

We’ve seen statistics as high as 70% bandied about, but I’m willing to go with Potter’s 50%. (Of course, it’s hard to know: some who are non-reactive may not be bitten.)

And finally, somber words from Dr. Potter:

And, says Potter, “it doesn’t look like there is a silver-bullet bedbug eliminator coming down the pipe any time soon.”

We have heard this before, but wait, there’s more:

Even if one did, he says, the liability of spraying beds and couches with it would restrict its use. “Bedbugs live in all the places that we’ve been training the pest control industry in the last 20 years not to spray,” says Potter. “Back in the days of DDT, it was recommended practice to spray the pillows, the entire mattress. Nothing wasn’t dripping when you walked out.” Before then, bedbugs were a whole lot more common. “I’ve read diaries from the ’30s where they wrote about springtime bedbug cleaning,” says Potter. “They’d throw boiling water on the walls, pour oil into the crevices of the wood floors, sleep for two weeks and then start the process again. It was part of life.”

I found this helpful in elucidating why it isn’t just about bringing back a banned pesticide or creating a new one; the whole culture on pesticides has changed since we last had to deal with bed bugs in North America (on a large scale, anyway).

All in all, nothing terribly new, but lots of good soundbites, and all in all, a good consciousness-raising piece.

Nice work John Intini and Maclean’s!

Read the article here.

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A documentary film is searching for subjects in Vancouver, Canada who are battling the bedbug epidemic as we speak!
If all works out, we may be able to get you a free extermination!

If you are interested in sharing your tales, send me an email:
docmaker@email.com

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• Pest Management Professional - Continued technological and educational advancement in pest detection, identification, treatment and control methods. | Web Exclusive | 10 Questions with Jerome GoddardTen Questions with Jerome Goddard (Pest Management Professional Podcast)–includes interesting discussion of whether bed bugs are potential transmitters of disease, or not. From 9/06, but new to me and maybe you too.

  (tags: interview audio bedbugs Dr.JeromeGoddard entomologist sept2006)

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  (tags: bedbugs disease health diseasevector Dr.JeromeGoddard PCTOnline)

• Pest Management Professional podcast | 10 Questions with Alvaro RomeroInterview with Univ. of Kentucky bed bug researcher / graduate student Alvaro Romero. From April 2007.

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• Pest Management Professional Podcast | 10 Questions with Rick CooperInterview with Rick Cooper of Cooper Pest, NJ–focusing on pesticide resistance. September 2007.

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• San Jose Mercury News - Bedbugs, electrical problems force evacuation of Ventura motel“A bedbug-infested low-rent Ventura motel was shut down by authorities, forcing poor families and disabled tenants to spend the Christmas season hunting for cheap lodging.” The 37-room Travelers Beach Inn hopes to reopen in a week.

  (tags: bedbugs hotelclosure ventura california travelersbeachinn motel code dec2007 2007 budgetmotel)

• Review of Judith McNeil’s The Girl with the Cardboard Port :: Sarah Chew, thestar.com.my“She recalled with humour the shock of discovering squat toilets, bed bugs, and corpse-eating rats…” From a review of an Australian woman’s memoir of life in 1950s/early 1960s Singapore.

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• Rats: Hawaii’s first invasive species - The Molokai Times“In cities, rats are one of Hawaii’s biggest pest problems after ants and bed bugs, said Tim Lyons, director of the Hawaii Pest Control Association.” Bed bugs are #2? Not for long, I suspect.

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He writes on our forums,

I have been asked by a TV company in London to offer a free bed bug treatment in exchange for being able to film the inspection and analysis work that we do. The location will be kept confidential and the work will be carried out by myself personally.

This will hopefully help in the education of others in regards to the bed bug problem so that we can get public awareness up.

(snip)

Regards,

David Cain
Managing Director
Bed Bugs Limited
London

If you’d like to be the lucky recipient of this service (London only), please click here to read his message in the forums. You can register/login there and click “PM this user” under his message in order to send him a private message. This is a great opportunity and I hope someone will benefit from it. If you have questions or concerns, or don’t want to register here, I can pass messages on to David. Email nobugs at bedbugger d ot c om–and be sure to make sure your email gives me explicit permission to forward it to David.

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Still, I was skeptical (you can’t believe everything you read, especially on the internets, etc.), but then Claudia followed up with the comment on my post, with:

That’s what my producer friend there says. I believe him.

And, Dear Reader, at that point I believed her.

But we heard no more news of bed bugs at Fox News (NYC) until today, when this came down the pipeline. Another “rumor” passed on by another person working in the media, this time Chris Ariens at The Huffington Post, who wrote yesterday:

TVNewser has learned that a small area of the Fox News Channel newsroom has evidence of insects believed to be bed bugs. What is not known is how the insects got into the basement-level newsroom of the News Corp. headquarters. Most likely, an employee or guest unknowingly transported the poppy seed-sized bugs on their clothing, which then made their way into the fabric or carpeting.

Or, possibly even more likely: since another part of what I assume is the same building was allegedly battling bed bugs a year ago, they were not entirely eradicated and have come back. They can spread from one part of a building to another, as may have happened at Cadwalader’s office building.

Since this kind of resurgence happens all the time with individuals in their homes, even when people go to extreme lengths to avoid it, I do not doubt it can happen in an office, where it’s less likely items will have been quarantined and searched as carefully as can be.

Or maybe the “source(s)” of the bed bugs keep coming back and reinfesting the place.

Hint to FoxNews: if “a small area” has evidence of bed bugs, a larger area may indeed be affected. I’d keep looking.

Update 11/19:

This is the original TVNewser post. It says an exterminator was brought in late last week and “those who sit near there have been alerted to take precautionary measures including sending their clothes to the dry cleaner.” Hmmmm.

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(The following is not really bed bug news, but a reminder of a time not long ago when encountering a bed bug in a place of business was a bit like finding a hair in your salad, but maybe more common.)

(These last two are not really bed bug stories, but they tell us something about how widely known bed bugs are becoming: they’re starting to mean something in popular parlance once again.)

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