So it was with interest that I read Thursday’s press release today from the National Pest Management Association, one timed as to use Halloween as an opportunity to remind people about “ghoulish” pests they should watch out for, namely bats, rats, and bed bugs. And they give several suggestions to consumers:

While these pests can provide their fair share of scares, NPMA recommends tips for homeowners to limit their trick-or-treaters to neighborhood children, and not the local pests, this Halloween:

1. Keep an eye out for tiny blood spots left behind by bed bugs. They can be found throughout the house, and are not just limited to bedrooms.

2. To keep rodents out ensure that all holes larger than a pencil are sealed and inspect the perimeter of your house for possible pathways inside.

3. Put screens over laundry or attic vents to prevent rodents and bats from entering the home.

4. An active infestation should not be controlled with do-it-yourself measures; contact a licensed pest professional.

Numbers one and four are of particular interest.

Number one implies that the only sign one might easily find are “blood spots” around the house. I think what is meant are not what we Bedbuggers call blood spots–little red stains where humans were bitten and blood came out, which are generally found on sheets–these are not found as frequently as what we’ve been calling “fecal stains,” or “fecal spots,” which are dark stains (like the classic mattress stains), or “fecal specks”, dark specks which can be anywhere from red or rust colored to black, and may be poppy-seed sized, or larger, or smaller, and harder or slightly damp. Both fecal stains/spots and fecal specks are made up of your blood, but their consistency and appearance vary. We suspect this variance may relate to local climates, humidity, etc.

Obviously, the NPMA is not going to go into that level of pooh-detail in a general warning. My point is that the warning did not warn consumers to watch out for bites, or for bed bugs themselves, but (if I am indeed interpreting them correctly) fecal spots. That sign, is often the only sign, or one of two (if coupled with bite marks and itching), that people have, for a very, very long time.

The media has traditionally warned people to look for bites and bed bugs. This is, I think, the first time I have read industry professionals telling people to look for this more subtle sign. And only this sign.

Coupled with suggestion number four, “an active infestation should not be controlled with do-it-yourself measures; contact a licensed pest professional,” the question arises as to what happens when the licensed professional cannot easily find bed bugs, as is often the case.

We hear from Bedbuggers whose PCOs treat anyway, because they now know finding an actual bug, bed bug shells, or eggs, or even really obvious fecal stains, can be very tricky.

But I think we still hear from many more Bedbuggers whose PCOs will not treat, who tell customers they “don’t have” bed bugs, or who recommend that in the absence of clear signs, they use pesticides on their own (in direct conflict with NPMA’s fourth recommendation here). That suggestion is surprisingly common–and raises the question as to why a PCO would recommend a customer starts spraying Suspend or Bedlam, if they don’t actually have bed bugs.

The press release reminds us that the pest control industry is quickly adapting, as are we customers, to a “new (to us)” pest that can be surprisingly stealthy. I recognize this press release was just a general warning to consumers to be alert for bed bugs, and I truly hope the NPMA is discussing the difficulty of finding bed bug evidence, and the broader definition of what that might consist of, with its members. Bedbuggers will tell you that even thorough, careful searches by professionals may yield nothing in terms of obvious signs, or that many PCOs that search cannot recognize or don’t want to count fecal specks as “signs.”

• Bed bugs in French SNCF trains
• New Yorkers: what happens when you call 311 with a bed bug complaint?
• Bed bug news round-up: USA Today, Minnesota Star-Tribune, and the Astral in Greenpoint
• FAQ: What are bed bugs? Do I have them? What else could be causing this?

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Unfortunately, as Geralda Miller of the Reno Gazette Journal reports, the advice being given to tenants is not great:

“They’re an indoor critter,” [Jeff Knight, Nevada State Entomologist] said. “Get rid of the mattress. Get rid of the infested bed frame and thoroughly treat everything else. Bedding has to get a hot wash and dry.”

Those were the instructions [Building Manager Rhonda] Mathews said she gave her tenants.

“Get rid of them or they’re not living here,” she said.

Mathews said she has spent more than $100 to treat each infested unit and the 10 surrounding ones.

Knight said it is important that pest control companies do a thorough job to get rid of the bugs.

The Washoe County Health Department gets “one or two” valid complaints of bed bugs a month. PCO treatment for bed bugs cost the building manager $100 per unit. I know the cost of living in Reno is lower than in NYC, Boston, or San Francisco, but this seems very low. I hope the PCO is trained to treat bed bugs specifically, which may not be the case in a place with very few cases.

If the state entomologist is really telling folks to simply throw away mattresses and frames, and wash bedding (what about all the other clothing and linens in the home?) then they may be seeing a lot more cases soon. Because others will pick up those discarded items. And because clothing and other items can harbor bed bugs, allowing them to continue breeding and spread further.

Across the country, in New Haven, Channel 3 reports that residents of 15 Housing Authority apartments have been relocated to a hotel while their apartments are “fumigated” and “decontaminated.” The terminology there may well relate more to common ideas about pest control practices (killing bugs = “fumigation”) rather than the actual techniques used.

I was very excited to read the following words:

[Channel 3 Eyewitness News Reporter Erika] Arias reported that the Housing Authority is taking the outbreak seriously. [Resident Alberta] Silverspoon said that as soon as she alerted the authority, immediate action was taken.

Quick and drastic action on the HA’s part seems good. But they need to be cautious now: there’s significant danger residents will have moved the bed bugs to the hotel, and they can certainly reinfest their homes when they move back in, so I hope the Housing Authority knows what it’s doing and takes some time to educate and provide necessary supplies (XL ziplocs, mattress and pillow covers, even laundry services for evacuated items) to make sure this doesn’t happen.

It makes me wonder, are hotels going to start asking if prospective customers are bed bug refugees?

The New Haven Register also covered this story. Here, we learn the building is called Crawford Manor, is on Park Avenue, and has 109 units (only 15 identified as infested).

However, this second article was more disturbing. It suggested housing officials were rushing to blame the infestation on one tenant:

Housing Authority Executive Director Jimmy Miller said Wednesday the problem began in a unit of a female tenant who is known to carry her belongings around in bags and owns a few cats. He did not identify the tenant. The city’s anti-blight Livable City Initiative Bureau is being asked to condemn the unit, he said.

“It’s a very serious thing and it’s quite an undertaking,” Miller said.

Miller, who has been running the agency for about 18 months, said this is the first occurrence during his tenure. He did not know of any others in recent history.

“It’s not something that would go unnoticed. You do get bites from them,” he said.

Actually, some claim that most people are not allergic and so do not react (in other words, they neither see bite marks nor experience any itching). Even if “most” is inaccurate, it’s certainly true of “many.” There’s a wide range of reactions from serious allergic reactions that land people in hospital, to dime-sized welts and severe itching, to what looks like mosquito bites, to tiny red dots, to nothing.

So if HA officials are basing their ideas of how bed bugs spread from one unit to another, or which units are infested, on whether people experience bites, their data is liable to be inaccurate. There will doubtless be bed bugs in other units, not reported, maybe not even noticed.

The housing authority was alerted when tenants from another unit detected the bugs and reported the problem.

Miller said the authority has not identified the cause of the outbreak, but officials believe the infestation spread as the female tenant moved bags around common areas or as visitors entered and left.

“They don’t usually travel person-to-person and they don’t normally travel more than 100 feet,” he said.

The housing authority first had to have the female tenant’s unit cleaned and her furniture will be destroyed.

Thirteen other tenants were housed temporarily in area hotels Tuesday night and about half were able to return to Crawford Manor Wednesday. Authority staff gave them meals and made sure everyone on medication stayed on their regimens.

Crawford Manor is a mixed-population development. Miller said it is going to cost the authority approximately $80 per unit to decontaminate the entire building. It was unclear Wednesday how much alternate lodging, meals and staff overtime would cost.

The tenant in the unit that set off the infestation was relocated from Brookside, one of several housing complexes on West Rock targeted for revitalization.

Miller said the authority will be implementing a policy for sterilizing tenant belongings before relocations occur.

“We’re on top of it,” he said.

Good to know they’re on top of it. (I’m impressed by the $80 per unit cost. But the city probably has a contract of some kind.)

I hope they also educate themselves and tenants about how bed bugs are picked up and spread. Because although bed bugs may not walk more than 100 feet, they will hitchhike on anyone: any tenant, visitor, or employee could have brought them in.

I am troubled by the way in which New Haven housing authorities want to pin the blame on an easy target: a woman who has cats and carries her stuff around in bags.

First, the fact the woman has “a few cats” is irrelevant: we can get bed bugs from the abandoned nests of bats, birds, and even rats, but they do not come from cats. If a human is present, they don’t even want to bite the cats. So I am not sure why people are obsessed with the woman’s cats, as if they were a factor. Presumably the cats living in a high-rise do not go out, so they did not pick up hitchhiking bed bugs and bring them in.

Second, it is clear that if someone did have bed bugs and carried their stuff around in bags, they’d have more chance of carrying bed bugs to more locations than a person who, for example, traveled light. But it really does not matter whether the “bags” are laptop cases, Prada bags, messenger bags, or shopping bags.

It is true that clutter allows bed bugs to easily hide and breed. But it does not cause them to appear.

This sounds to me like a witch hunt: “15 units are infested, one is the home of a woman who has a few cats and carries stuff around, therefore, let’s blame her.” It’s easy, but it’s not necessarily scientific. Even if her unit now has more bugs than any other unit, I am not sure it could be proven she brought bed bugs in, or that she was “bed bug ground zero.”

She may be the source in this building, she may not. But the real problem with pinning the blame on someone is that it makes others feel they’re off the hook. The truth is, whoever brought them into the building, caught them somewhere. It’s an epidemic. Maybe they caught them in New Haven, maybe they brought them in from a vacation, school, workplace, or hospital. The person who brings them into the building is not the cause. Moving them out does not prevent reinfestation. And they also implied that “tenant zero” was relocated there from another (presumably infested) HA building.

More to the point, did 15 people from this building just infest a local hotel? I’d like to know what precautions were taken to avoid that situation. This is the problem with the blame game: everyone who has bed bugs got them from someone else (unless they got them from a bat, a bird, or a rat). Who are you gonna blame?

We need public education, assistance for people in low-income housing (with supplies and treatment costs–besides the PCO), and prompt PCO treatment.
We need government awareness, better policies, funding, and willingness to act (New Haven got a lot of that right).
We need bed bug aggregate pheromone traps, more and better pesticides and other treatment methods (thermal, cryonite, etc.).
But we don’t need the pointless and inaccurate blame game.

• more on bed bugs in New Haven: they’re only using steam cleaning?!?
• New Haven housing officials confused: why can’t they get rid of these bed bugs?
• Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Housing Authority vs. Bed Bugs
• Bed bugs bite in White Plains, NY public housing

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When ceritifed PCOs publish mediocre advice about bed bugs in the newspaper, it makes me a bit worried. Anyone who writes for a newspaper probably has internet access and can do some research.

Readers of the Marcos Island (Florida) Sun Times were given some poor advice today in the Ask the Bug Guy column, by columnist and PCO Peter Masi, of West Coast Pest Control. A reader asked about the resurgence of bed bugs and how to deal with them. Masi said,

. . . for the first time in many years and I’m talking 30 or 40 years, bedbugs are back! Why?

No one seems to know.

They were the scourge of the hotel/motel industry for years and back then, DDT was the cure. Of course, you can’t use that now!
First, make sure they are, in fact, bedbugs and not lice. They do leave the same type of marks when they decide to eat someone’s blood.

This all sounds rather awful, doesn’t it? I would try using the same powdered insecticide they use for lice. We know that will be safe as long as you follow the directions to the letter.

I’m not a certified PCO, but I have a few problems with this.

First, there will be other evidence (besides bites–which I don’t agree will look the same as lice bites) if you’re infested with lice: lice and nits, for example. On your person. Whereas people can go months without seeing a bed bug. Signs like little black specks and cast shells may come before a bed bug sighting.

Also, people primarily need to treat their heads with insecticides, for lice (using something like this), or their bodies, in the case of body lice. You might also need to use powder in the home, and this is what Masi seems to be referring to. But he should know that bed bugs don’t simply infest mattresses anymore (though this was more common back in the day.) Instead, they infest baseboards, ceiling and electrical fixtures, floorboards, bed frames, and the insides and bottoms of bedroom furniture, among other things.

What’s more, they spread quickly. It would be much better advice for people to have a PCO come out and inspect, to see if it really is a light problem. If you’ve been bitten for more than one day running, you probably have multiple bed bugs, and who knows how many. Very small infestations may clear up with cursory treatments (such as Masi suggests) and thorough vacuuming and laundering. But most people who think they have a small infestation because they’ve “only seen a few bugs” have a real infestation that needs prompt and careful treatment.

But what really annoyed me was this:

I’ll bet most folks on Marco Island will opt to just buy a new mattress. They’ll deliver the new one and take away the old one. We are an affluent community and I just can’t visualize most of you taking the time and painstaking effort to exterminate bedbugs.

The problem with the Bug Guy’s advice here is that while the author clearly understands bed bugs take time and painstaking effort to get rid of, nevertheless just finished giving poor advice as to how and do that.

And on top of that, Masi encouraged people with bed bugs to buy a new mattress from a company that delivers new mattresses in the same trucks in which they cart away the old ones, and he encouraged them to send their mattress away in the truck with the delivery guy. With these words, Masi provided a solution that is not guaranteed to get rid of bed bugs (since homes, as well as mattresses, are usually infested). It is likely that people will purchase new mattresses and these will become infested too, if bed bugs are still in the home.

More importantly, Masi also just gave lots of Marcos Islanders a nice recipe for spreading bed bugs to others. Since we know that one common method by which people get bed bugs is from new mattresses delivered in trucks carrying infested used mattresses, I would not encourage anyone to purchase a mattress from a company that does this, if they can avoid it.

I absolutely would not encourage anyone who suspected or knew they had bed bugs to send their mattress away in a delivery truck. If you have bed bugs, you can protect your mattress and keep it. Or, if you decide you want to get rid of it (preferably at the end of treatment, when a new mattress is less likely to be exposed), for Pete’s sake, destroy the mattress by slashing it up and leaving it on the curb (being careful to wrap it tightly in plastic so as not to spread bugs on the way out the door). Please do not expose other people to your problem. It’s as irresponsible as exposing them to a contagious disease: and I don’t mean the flu. Think mono. Or worse.

If keeping others from suffering does not motivate you, then give a thought to the fact that if bed bugs keep spreading due in part to carelessness. If you’re not careful to keep bed bugs to yourself, then once they’re gone, bed bug karma says you will get them again in time.

Unfortunately, so will lots of other people who were more careful than you were. Most people, I should add, get bed bugs through no fault of their own. But we all should take steps to avoid causing others to suffer needlessly.

So called “bug experts” should be more careful to give good advice; PCOs who know bed bugs and have been exposed to them are very cautious.

• Bed bugs in Sweden: Ikea, used mattresses, and the spread of vägglus
• Bed bug unfriendly mattress re-sellers: recommendations?
• Making mattress companies part of the no-bedbug solution
• So many bad bedbug-fighting practices, so little time

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I’m Edgie in San Francisco.

I moved to this apartment last June and learned from a
neighbor that there were bed bug problems. I didn’t know
what a bedbug was, but quickly learned. I also started
getting small bites pretty regularly, not big welty
ones though.

I have been reading most of the FAQs and
understand bites can be different on different people.
I too went to the MD and was (mis)diagnosed with scabies.
While the medication was on me, I was bitten on my
stomach. Meanwhile, I called in a request the the
property mgmt. co. requesting treatment. No response.

I was getting concerned that my little bites could be
baby bed bug bites and insisted that the unit be treated.

Then, I started looking to public agencies for help.

The building inspector ended up calling the property
mgr. and Terminix arrived on the scene. They treated
the unit 3 times, and I still got bites.

During this time, I too was washing and washing, my clothes are
all bagged. I was still getting bites, and learned
that the building was sold.

I decided to hire another PCO to come and treat and the biting has been reduced,
I have many days with no bites. They have treated 4
times. Since the building has been sold, I learned
that the new owners, a giant property company-will let
me out of my lease, and give me a relocation package
too. I need to tell you that the first PCO, while
treating, never saw evidence of BBs. The second guy
didn’t find bugs, casings or fecal stuff either.

I have asked a few bug specialists for advice (The
Bugman and Sean from the bedbugresource.com) Both said I need
to have a competent PCO or entomologist come here and
inspect, to make sure of what is in here, as this
person would find evidence of BBs. So I have a list
of PCOs that I will call to see if any of them will
do a bed bug inspection, they inspect for termites, I
think they should do it for BBs too. But will they?

My idea about moving would be to take as little as
possible, wait a few more months, maybe the bites will
stop altogether, AND someone can do a thorough
inspection here to help me know what the culprit is. I
really wanted to tell this to someone who knows how
truly complicated the problem is.

Thank You No Bugs, and all the other bedbuggers for being there,

Sincerely,

Edgie

• Bed bugs in a senior apartment building in San Diego
• Bed bugs in Hamilton, Ontario: lessons for landlords and local governments
• Bowling Green Towers: another infestation in elderly and disabled housing
• Bowling Green Towers: residents organize to demand proper bed bug treatment in low-income building

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But it’s important to note that our bites don’t all look the same. You won’t believe how many people (doctors, PCOs, even friends who had read the articles and seen the TV news segments) saw my bites and said, “those aren’t bed bug bites,” because they did not look like this or this. Mine mostly looked like these bites on Caryn’s leg (only the ones on her leg), but some were like mosquito bites of various sizes.

Thankfully, WebMD’s site on bed bugs quotes Harvard Entomologist Michael Pollack sets the record straight:

Forget everything you’ve heard about being able to tell the biter was a bed bug by looking at a bite. “I feed all kinds of bloodsuckers on my body, and in the vast majority of cases you can’t look at a mark and tell what made it,” says Pollack. “I recently gave a talk to physicians and quizzed them on pictures of bites, and their batting average was zero. The bites resemble those of other blood-feeding insects, such as mosquitoes, fleas, biting gnats, or mites.”

I’m envisioning a website full of comparisons between bed bug bites on various entomologists, who have to feed their bed bug colonies. (If you’ve watched enough news segments, you’ve seen several of them doing so.)

And yay, Pollack spoke to doctors about how to recognize the bites. Perhaps its better going to a doc now than it was last year. I am sure there’s more to be done, but everything helps. What also helps, in a small way, is when we go back and tell the doctors who insisted that those were not bed bug bites that, yeah, they were.

This snippet describes a conference presentation on bed bug bites. It is unclear whether this has already taken place, but I share it because the need for doctors to be more aware of how bed bug bites appear on patients is something many of us are concerned about.

“Resurgence of Bedbug Bites Misdiagnosed as Allergic Skin Rashes in Inner-City Population.” (Abstract #P199: Nov. 11-12, Noon - 1:00 p.m.) - Sreenivasrao Amara, M.D., et al, Brooklyn, N.Y. - There is an increase in reports of bites from bedbugs (Cimex lectularius), a nocturnal bloodsucking parasite, in the U.S. and worldwide. Investigators report six patients with multiple, cutaneous manifestations misdiagnosed as allergic reactions that were proven bedbug bites. They recommend health care professionals be alert to screen for bedbug bites in any patient with a new refractory rash.

I’m a bit perplexed, since I understood that bed bug bites were an allergic reaction to bed bugs. In any case, it’s good word is getting around that people may present with bed bug bites, and those may look different depending on the person (and even different on the same person from bite to bite).

• Lou’s bed bug bite photos
• Lingering sensations, phantom bed bug bites: what does a bed bug infestation really do to our skin?
• bed bugs clear Port Jervis, NY Hospital’s mental health unit
• recent bites from bed bugs (photo)

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You may notice that I am beginning to remove the comment function from the FAQs, since people are overwhelmingly using them to post tales of bed bug woe and questions and answers, rather than comments related to the FAQs. This would be okay, except it means people “lose” where they leave their questions, and they don’t always find their way back.

Instead, if you have a suggestion for a FAQ, you can email me, nobugsonme at yahoo dot com.

Thanks!

• FAQ: I am not in the US. Can you tell me where to buy XL ziplocs, or what mattress covers are called in my country?
• Ask your bed bug questions / share your tales of bed bug woe here
• Hints from Bed Bug Helloise!
• Welcome Bedbuggers!

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Alas, if only.

• 2 workers claim they were punished for asking about bed bugs at work
• Bed bugs infest New Rochelle cell block and three police cars
• World exclusive: Bedbuggers experiment with being bitten, on purpose!
• “bed bugs,” the movie

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Called SCRATCH –the letters form a memorable acronym for symmetry, cluster, Rover, age, target/time, confused, household) – it is a guide to the symptoms and features that help pediatricians and others to recognize the source of a rash.

Insect-bite skin rashes mimic the symptoms of a variety of conditions, ranging from fungal infections, scabies, allergies and environmental contacts to HIV-associated dermatoses. Reactions to a bite are often delayed, making it difficult to trace exposure.

“SCRATCH could spare many children and their parents from going through invasive, not to mention expensive, procedures if pediatricians recognize the problem early on,” said Raquel Hernandez, a third-year resident at the Children’s Center and lead author of the article, published in the July online edition of Pediatrics.

Hernandez and co-author Bernard Cohen, associate professor in the School of Medicine and head of dermatology at the Children’s Center, developed SCRATCH by examining a month’s worth of patient records from visits to the Children’s Center dermatology clinic. They found that the majority of children who were eventually diagnosed with an insect-bite rash had undergone extensive lab tests and skin biopsies before they were referred to Johns Hopkins.

The most common misdiagnosis was scabies, a skin infection caused by a parasite that produces red, itchy lesions. Many of the children were treated repeatedly for scabies.

“These guidelines are really intended to make pediatricians consider insect-bite hypersensitivity as a diagnosis and think twice before referring a child for a skin biopsy or another invasive procedure,” Cohen said.

My doctor did not hesitate to prescribe Elimite for Scabies, which she could have ruled out with a simple skin scraping. Instead, the Elimite gave me a bad reaction, and my “mysterious rash” did not disappear.

Here’s how SCRATCH works, and keep in mind, it’s all applicable to adults too:

Using the tool is straightforward, Cohen said. If the rash fits the SCRATCH criteria, it’s likely bug-borne. The seven checkpoints are:

S for symmetry. Erruptions are usually symmetric and appear on exposed parts of the body, such as face, neck, arms, legs. Younger children may have rashes on their scalps. Diaper areas, palms and soles are not affected. The trunk is rarely affected. By contrast, scabies causes rashes on palms, soles and between toes and fingers.

Keep in mind that you can get single bed bug bites, as well as bites on any part of your body (though the scalp is rarely troubled: they don’t like going through hair). You can get bed bug bites, therefore between toes or fingers, on palms, etc. But they’re not the hotspots they are with scabies.

C for clusters. Lesions appear in “meal clusters,” described as breakfast, lunch and dinner. The linear or triangular clusters are typical of bedbug bites but also appear in bites caused by fleas.

As above, bed bug bites do come in singles. You are likely to see at least some clusters.

R for Rover not required. Presence of pets in the household is not a criterion for diagnosis because a bite might occur outside of the home.

You need not have pets to have fleas or bed bugs.

A for age specific. The condition is most prevalent in children between the ages of 2 and 10.

I am not sure about this one, actually. Most of the bedbuggers are allergic to bedbugs and we’re all grown up.

T for target lesions and for time. Target-shaped lesions – so named for their resemblance to the bull’s-eye on a target — are typical of insect-bite hypersensitivity. Time indicates the chronic/recurrent nature of the eruptions. Many patients may have delayed reactions and may not experience flare-ups until months or years after the initial exposure. Most children develop full immunity by age 10 and no longer have recurrent rashes.

C for confusion. Parents often express confusion and disbelief at the suggestion that there might be fleas or bedbugs in their homes. “One of the primary criteria is that if the parents don’t believe me, I am probably right,” Cohen said.

Forget parents: my doctor expressed said confusion. She said if I had bed bugs I’d see them. Not always as soon as you’re suffering, and for me, many months of suffering without a sighting.

H for household with single family member affected. Unlike conditions that have similar symptoms, such as scabies and atopic dermatitis, insect-bite rashes often appear in a single member in a family.

“Common sense might tell us that fleas and mosquitoes would affect other members of the family, but we must keep in mind that these rashes develop in children who have hypersensitivity that others do not have,” Hernandez said.

This one is very telling: if you have scabies, those in close physical contact with you will too, at least in short order.

Bed bugs can trouble one in a household. They can even trouble no-one in a household. Which is why my neighbors can have given them to me and have no clue they have them.

Hopefully SCRATCH is a start towards doctors better recognizing the growing incidence of bed bug bites in kids. But hopefully all doctors will soon have more relevant knowledge for diagnosing various skin problems.

• teaching doctors to diagnose bed bug bites
• Presidential Towers sold, with free bed bugs! Doctors and bedbugs (again)
• Barona Resort and Casino bed bug lawsuit
• Harvard dorm treated for scabies–but what was it really? Also, bed bugs at Columbia?

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Back in August, there was a local station which covered the NYC City Council hearing on bed bugs and used a photo of a dust mite to introduce it (I’d link to it, but they were embarrassed and pulled it down.) And now this.
Say it with me, dust mites are not bed bugs. Dust mites are a smaller problem. You need to enclose your pillows and mattress in a dust-free cover and wash bedding regularly on hot and dry it on hot.
Bed bugs are a big, big problem. Bedbugs will infest not just your mattress and pillow (which, again, need to be fully enclosed and frequently washed on hot and dried on hot), but will also get in your clothes, walls, skirting boards, picture frames, dresser and other furniture, sofa, and so on. They will bite you day or night and suck your blood, reproducing like mad. They will make you extremely itchy and you can easily pass them on to your friends, acquaintances, and neighbors.

Bed bugs make dust mites look like fun.

And if y’all don’t wise up, Florida, everyone will soon have them.

• bedbugs in Denver
• bed bugs, news at 11
• Bed bugs in Edinburgh, Scotland
• Motel 6 room design changes: cooler, more functional, less bed bug-friendly

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Coming soon: shed skin and feces photos, thanks to Lou Sorkin!

• FAQ: What are bed bugs? Do I have them? What else could be causing this?
• Amazing photos from Lou Sorkin
• Important new page: photos of bed bugs, and signs of bed bugs
• bed bug nymphs, bed bug eggs, bed bug feces, on wood

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