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Footage from the recent New York Pest Expo: Bed Bug Edition

nobugsonme — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:33:14 +0000

Bug Off Pest Center in NYC recently hosted an event called the New York Pest Expo: Bed Bug Edition. Frank Andorka notes in his PMP column that it attracted 500 pest management professionals. And we New Yorkers can be glad — that’s 500 PMPs who sat down and heard bed bug experts Dr. Dini Miller of Virginia Tech and Dr. Michael Potter of the University of Kentucky, who Andorka said spoke for a total of around six hours. (Pest Management Professional magazine was a sponsor of the event.)

Frank Andorka shared the following video highlights of the event (among others) on his blog (Thanks to Frank for making this footage available on YouTube):

Dr. Dini Miller talking about the use of Temp-Air thermal treatments at Virginia Tech University.

Dini Miller mentions the problem of bed bugs getting through some encasement teeth, and encourages PCOs to tell customers who can’t afford encasements on both the mattess and box to put a high quality encasement on the box spring:

Dr. Michael Potter talks about the challenges of treating apartment buildings for bed bugs. Potter mentions the need for periodic inspections of occupied and vacant units, and suggests 28% of tenants won’t complain about bed bugs (because they don’t react to bites, or don’t want to cause trouble, among other reasons):

Here, Potter talks about how effecive bed bug dogs can be and how much of a commitment they are for the company. He distinguishes between good bed bug dogs and bad bed bug dogs:

Mike Potter recommends PCOs issue gloves to techs working on bed bug jobs. One Chicago tech got a needle stick doing bed bug inspections:

And last but not least, listen to participants field questions in the Great American Bed Bug Challenge. If only journalists were exposed to this quiz, the treatment of bed bugs in the media might improve a bit:

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Mark Sheperdigian on the limits of bed bug inspections

nobugsonme — Thu, 14 May 2009 06:04:15 +0000

Mark Sheperdigian has a new brief — but important — article in Pest Management Professional, about the limits of bed bug inspections.

The author is stating truisms known to those who know bed bugs — not radical new insights. And yet it is crucial for the pest management professional working on bed bug cases both to understand these facts — and to communicate them to their customers.

First, Sheperdigian comments on the difficulty of knowing whether a unit is infested:

We can discover with 100 percent certainty that an account is infested; we cannot discover with 100 percent certainty that it is not.

This is the most frustrating factor for people who think they have bed bugs. Many will spend hundreds of dollars in human and canine scent detection and still have no certainty whether they have bed bugs.

Sometimes people feel they have hired a lousy PCO or dog team; sometimes that is so, but the truth is: bed bugs are stealthy and hard to detect. That’s just how Sneaky Simes rolls. And so, Sheperdigian suggests, the key is for bed bug pros to communicate the difficulty of detection.

And Sheperdigian reminds us that “Most infestations are established before they are discovered,” and

This also means that in a multiple-unit dwelling situation such as apartments and senior housing, the units reporting bed bugs are only a portion of the problem. Therefore, a program that begins by treating only units that have reported bed bugs is treating only a portion of the problem. There are almost always units that have a light infestation unbeknownst to the tenants — and units that have heavier infestations unreported by the tenants.

Perhaps that is the one piece of information I wish all tenants and landlords knew. People tend to complain about bed bugs if they see them, or if they react to bed bug bites — and even then, they will often hesitate while they explore other possible causes (and in some cases, until they hear for the first time that bed bugs exist!)

When tenants or landlords assume that only those who have complained about bed bugs have bed bugs, we can forgive their ignorance of just how bed bugs work.

The problem is that pest management professionals who know bed bugs should know that there are almost always other infested units.

We hear some PCOs insist customers pay for inspection of adjacent units and/or all of a building’s units.

We hear others try to encourage this but are understandably ignored by customers who just don’t get it, or just can’t afford it. Many of the latter will treat the isolated unit anyway. Only later, it may become fully apparent to the homeowner, tenant, or landlord that this was not enough to get rid of bed bugs in the unit.

Frankly, I think Boston is on to the only possible solution for this problem; the Boston Inspectional Services Department requires landlords to treat all horizontally and vertically adjacent units and inspect the entire building.

Few landlords do this voluntarily. And many buildings end up with seriously chronic bed bug problems.

Here, as in his previous articles on bed bugs, I appreciate Mark Sheperdigian’s knowledge and wisdom. All in all, these are important issues that bed bug professionals and customers need to be aware of.

I know you will want to read the full article: “Know Your Limits in Bed Bug Inspection” at Pest Management Professional.

Thanks to Renee for the tip!Similar Posts:

On getting better pesticides for killing bed bugs (no, DDT is not one of them)

nobugsonme — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:51:15 +0000

I was poking around some historical items, for reasons which will soon become revealed to you, dear readers, when I found an interesting document from the Commission for Environmental Cooperation which outlines the history of DDT in Canada, the US (the three countries represented on the CEC) until 1997. Click here to load a PDF of History of DDT in North America to 1997, from the CEC.

Please understand: we don’t think DDT is a solution for bed bugs now. Sure — despite being ecologically-minded and kind of nervous around pesticides in general — like many of you, my first reaction to bed bugs was “Bring back DDT!” However, learning more made me realize this was not practical, and not even an effective solution anymore. I don’t want to entertain a discussion of this.

The fact is, bed bugs started showing resistance to DDT as early as 1948 in Hawaii, and reports from the 1950s and 1960s, as well more recently, tell us that bed bugs were not killed when spraying with DDT was done for malarial mosquitos. (This BBC article from 2001 claims that DDT spraying for malarial mosquitos in South Africa made bed bugs more active. Shudder.)

If you don’t believe bed bugs are resistant to DDT, Renee has previously laid out all the evidence for you at New York vs. Bed Bugs, in this post, and I encourage you to check it out.

However, I do think this CEC history of DDT is relevant to us today, in terms of thinking about the laws around pesticides.

In 1969, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) cancelled the registration of certain uses of DDT (on shade trees, on tobacco, in the home, and in aquatic environments) after studying the persistence of DDT residues in the environment. Applications on crops, commercial plants, wood products, and for building purposes were cancelled by the USDA in 1970. Under the authority of the EPA, the registrations of the remaining DDT products and DDT-metabolites were cancelled on 4 January 1973, with the following exemptions: public health use for control of vector-borne diseases, USDA or military use for health quarantine, and use in prescription drugs for controlling body lice. All of these remaining uses were voluntarily cancelled (due to failure to pay maintenance fees) by October 1989.

Emphasis mine.

I had not realized that even after being outlawed in the US for home and agricultural use in 1970, and after being prohibited for most other uses in 1973, you could still legally get DDT until 1989 for some purposes including treating pests which caused vector-borne diseases (a category which does not include bed bugs) and for body lice.

This is relevant because, while DDT does not appear to be one of them, there are classes of chemicals which are currently outlawed in certain areas which are effective against bed bugs. It is worth remembering that agencies can make exceptions to allow some of those substances to be labeled for bed bug use and allowed in controlled situations. Winston gives us a glimpse of one product not available for this use in the US, Ficam, here:

… as mentioned in my first piece, misguided legislation have forced many products out of the market. Some due to legitimate concerns, some due to a lack of true scientific evaluation and feel-good politics, and some because they simply could not afford to maintain registration due to increased requirements. A prime example of this is Ficam, a material which is used elsewhere with a degree of success, but here in the US is no more. The same in fact would have been true of Drione, one of the remaining effective dusts. Prior to the bed bug outbreak this product was due to go by the wayside simply because of economics, and now it is probably one of the good long-term materials when used properly in wall voids, outlet covers and cracks and crevices.

As Winston has reminded us elsewhere, even pyrethrins are outlawed for use in city-owned buildings by Local Law 37. Despite pyrethroid-resistance, pyrethrins can be an important part of a bed bug treatment plan. This law is misguided and means residents of public housing, homes, kids in public school classrooms and people in city-run institutions may have less effective bed bug treatment.

And while some might think LL 37 is protecting New York citizens’ health, you have to ask yourself: if the pesticides prohibited in publicly-owned buildings, then they’d be outlawed in private schools and apartment buildings too, not just in the city-owned buildings.

In New York, it’s one reason we need to encourage the city to take action. Some legislative changes can help in the fight against bed bugs.

As Michael Potter said last summer at the PCT Bed Bug Seminar,

“If there is a classic example of why you don’t eliminate entire classes of pesticides,” Potter said, “bed bugs are it. We’re in a heap of trouble in terms of the products we have available to fight this pest,” citing several classes of chemistry that are no longer available (e.g., organophosphates, carbamates, etc.) and the growing threat of pyrethroid resistance. As a result, he said, “I don’t see how this problem is going to get better. I think it’s going to get chaotic. This is the most challenging pest I’ve encountered in my career. We’re in big trouble.”

We are in big trouble.

I don’t even know how to begin to help lobby for better pesticides. I assume pest control operators, entomologists, and their professional organizations are doing so. Maybe they can tell us if there’s something we bed bug activists can do to help. It seems so essential that we get all the help we can get in fighting bed bugs.

Finally, because someone always asks: I am not pesticide-happy. I am, in fact, more enthusiastic about non-chemical solutions to bed bugs. Not only because they do develop resistance to pesticides, but also because I seek safe, ecologically-friendly, easy solutions to bed bug problems.

Steaming, thermal treatments, and other solutions are labor-intensive. Steam requires dedicated, persistent, repetead work (and in most cases, probably requires the backup use of targeted use of dusts or sprays).

Thermal treatments require an experienced operator and expensive equipment. For those who can afford it, and who have access to knowledgeable providers, this can be a good option. We can only hope that effective non-chemical options will become more widely available and less costly.

When we’re talking about the extensive spread of bed bugs, though, we have to be realistic about the types of treatment likely to be implemented. Making sure the most effective pesticides (or at least, a variety of pesticides, to help offset resistance to individual chemicals) is probably better for both people living with bed bugs, as well as the environment. Because getting rid of the problem more quickly means less pesticides will be needed.

Once the bed bug epidemic is under control, and we’re back where we were in the 1970s, with isolated outbreaks, then we might be able to deal with the problem in other ways. We’re a long way from that situation. And we will probably never get there again if pest control operators are not able to use whatever tools they can safely use in order to eliminate them.Similar Posts:

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KillerQueen speaks! Over at New York vs. Bed Bugs…

nobugsonme — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:37:25 +0000

The NYC Pest Control Operator known as KillerQueen on our Bedbugger Forums is, in fact, John Furman, who runs Boot-a-Pest.

The hardest working bed bug activist and blogger, Renee Corea, did a nice in-depth interview with him over on New York vs. Bed Bugs.

Furman’s magic secret may be his belief in careful, detailed inspections:

The inspection for bed bugs takes time. Not 10 or 15 minutes either. My inspections for low level infestations take an hour and a half or more. I don’t do free inspections and if you have a problem, I will usually find it. I turn furniture upside down, I remove the batting on your box spring, and I spend a half hour just looking at your bed. I check behind pictures, pull the edges of carpeting up, etc. This type of inspection and service I can’t do for free.

But the importance of a thorough inspection is paramount. I have done inspections for people suffering from fleas, carpet beetles, etc. they insisted they had bed bugs but no evidence proved there suspicions. They were confident in my findings and moved on to resolve the true problem at hand.

Many PCOs will search for bed bugs, but readers regularly report their inspections lasted for fifteen minutes or less. Some people watch as a PCO pokes around for ten minutes before declaring them “bed bug free.”

Some people, of course, don’t have bed bugs. But the industry really needs to face the fact that cursory “inspections” won’t do.

The next step for many who have such a cursory inspection, but who cannot determine any other reason for their skin problems, is to bring a bed bug k9 team in to inspect. And dogs can be a real help in many cases.

Here’s the problem: if your dog alerts to bed bugs, but the PCO who subsequently comes in to treat still does not inspect carefully, won’t it be difficult to make sure all harborages are detected and treated?

Be sure and read the rest of Renee’s discussion with John Furman, here.Similar Posts: