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Bed bugs and furniture rentals: a risky business

nobugsonme — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 05:32:05 +0000

Aaron Schalk told Channel Four in Nashville (see: Bedbugs Infest Family’s Sofas) that his pest control operator suspected sofas from an unnamed furniture rental firm brought bed bugs into his family’s home:

Schalk said the pest control worker asked where the couches came from.

“She said, “Did you get them from a rental place?” We said, “yeah.” She said, “Those bugs came in on those couches.”

Schalk’s fiancée, Alma Arroyo, was making payments on rent-to-own furniture; but whether the bedbugs came in with the couches is the subject of some dispute.

The furniture rental company confirms the couches were used, not brand new, but says they were treated in the store in accordance with store procedures. A spokesman for the store said, “We are confident we are not the source of the infestation.”

[Emphasis mine.]

It would be interesting to know more about what the unnamed company Schalk hired was doing to ensure that bed bugs were not in the items he rented before they entered his home.

One way to ensure bed bugs were removed from furniture might be to properly use proven thermal technologies to kill bed bugs in items between rentals. Equipment, once installed, could be used by the company’s employees.

Another option would be chamber treatments of rental items with Vikane gas (sulfuryl fluoride). That would probably be pricier because it would require licensed experienced fumigators and lots of piecemeal treatments.

Remember that items would have to be treated upon pickup from prior customers, before being returned to the store or warehouse (to avoid infesting the storage area), and the delivery truck would have to be treated after every pickup, to ensure it was not harboring bed bugs and infesting subsequent deliveries.

(Note that this is not a problem which is isolated to rentals, but is instead something that can happen to new furniture: many mattress companies will cart your used mattress off after bringing you a new one, potentially infesting the truck and subsequent deliveries.)

One idea would be to have pickups done by trucks with thermal heaters installed. At the end of the day, the entire truck could be heated to 140 F and left for long enough to ensure all the items inside reached core temperatures of 120 F or so. Done properly, this could help keep the pickup vehicle and the warehouse bed bug-free.

Deliveries of fresh items would have to be made in separate trucks to avoid cross-contamination.

We heard a rumor years ago that some rental firm was employing heated trucks, but we do not know the details or the firm.

Back in July, the Tennesseean reported that a Nashville woman named Evangela Cowan was suing a local Rent-a-Center, alleging they delivered bed bugs with rental furniture. (The full article is no longer available from the site, but you can find an abstract here, and here’s another article on the same case from UPI.)

A spokesman for the company said in the July Tennesseean article that they “use a number of agents to sanitize the equipment” once it’s returned and that they visually inspect items before and after they are rented.

It’s also worth noting that the laws regarding sanitizing of rental items may not mandate treatment guaranteed to remove bed bugs. UPI cited the Tenneseean article regarding Cowan’s case in July:

The Tennessean said Tuesday that Rent-a-Center declined comment on the lawsuit but stated that company policy is to aggressively sanitize its merchandise in accordance with state regulations.

[Emphasis mine.]

State and local regulations unfortunately are not always sufficient.

You’ll recall that it’s perfectly legal to spray “sanitize,” recover and resell used mattresses in New York City. The local regulations permit it, for now. But by no means does it mean bed bugs are removed from the mattress during this “sanitizing” process.

Keeping rental furniture stock, stores, and trucks bed bug-free sounds like a very challenging business.Similar Posts:

Why are people with bed bugs being told to throw out all their furniture?

nobugsonme — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 05:28:24 +0000

According to WKRN in Nashville, bed bugs have infested Madison Towers, a public housing development run by the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency, or MDHA, in Nashville, Tennessee.

WKRN claims,

The first step in treating bed bugs is to throw out all furniture where the pest can hide.

Can someone please tell me why some government officials and pest control operators and reporters in the news media are still telling people on limited incomes to “throw away everything” that’s infested with bed bugs, and then complaining or expressing surprise when the neighbors raid the dumpsters and themselves become infested with bed bugs?

I know why: it’s harder to get people to treat items than to tell them to toss everything out. But bed bugs can come back. People need to be educated about how to deal with bed bugs properly — and how to avoid them.

Teaching people to treat items, and encase mattresses, and helping them do so, also means the tenants are not left sleeping on a bare floor, in an empty apartment. And it can help keep bed bugs out of someone else’s home. Seems like a win-win, no?

Click to read the article or watch the more extensive video report from WKRN.com.
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None Found

Tennessee Hotel and Lodging Association: “Bedbugs are really a non-issue”

nobugsonme — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 05:54:43 +0000

Several articles came out Wednesday about the spread of bed bugs in Nashville, Tennessee, both in hotels and in homes.

The Tennesseean reports that the Metro Health Department in Nashville investigates complaints about bed bugs in hotels, and keeps track of them:

The Metro Health Department has received 30 complaints of bedbugs at area hotels and motels in the first seven months of 2008, compared with 35 complaints in 2007.

That means the rate of bed bug complaints in Nashville hotels has gone up from an average of 2.9 a month in 2007 to 4.2 a month so far in 2008. That’s a significant increase.

But the increase does not concern the head of the Tennesee Hotel and Lodging Association:

Still, Walt Baker, chief executive officer of the Tennessee Hotel and Lodging Association, said visitors to Nashville can rest easy.

He noted there are 23,000 hotel rooms in Davidson County, 60 percent of which are occupied on any given night. So, he said, 30 complaints in 2008 is insignificant.

“Bedbugs are really a non-issue,” he said. “It’s not on our radar screen, it’s so small.”

If there were only 4.2 cases of bed bugs in Nashville hotels every month, some would argue that this is a small problem. (I’d still say it is worth taking seriously, especially given the increase from the previous year, and considering the havoc those bed bugs can wreak in the homes of paying customers who take them home.)

But we should assume that since a sizeable percentage of people do not react to bed bug bites and will have no idea they were bitten, that there are likely more bed bug encounters in Nashville hotels.

Add to this the fact that it probably does not occur to most people to call the local public health department when they encounter a pest in a hotel, and still others simply won’t bother. I’d assume that if you have 4.2 complaints per month, there are many more actual cases.

Now, I’m not much of a litigious sort. But if I encountered bed bugs in a Nashville hotel, Walt Baker’s dismissal of the bed bug problem as a “non-issue” would make me want to sue the pants off the hotel where I was bitten or where I picked up bed bugs and brought them home.

This dismissive attitude from the head of the lodging trade group in Tennessee definitely does not make me want to spend my tourist dollars in that town anytime soon.

News Channel 5 in Nashville tells viewers,

To check if a specific hotel has bedbugs, call the Metro Public Health Department at 615-340-5630.

And if you encounter bed bugs in a Nashville hotel or motel, why not call Metro Public Health at that same number, and report it?Similar Posts: