Stern stresses the need for a residual placed down after Cryonite in order to deal with bed bugs not knocked down by the process; one person in the forums has claimed to have had multiple Cryonite treatments and a persistent infestation.

Some additional non-pesticide options not mentioned are Vikane gas and the careful and diligent use of a steamer (preferably a dry steamer, to avoid mold and fungus growth). Steam is a lot of work, and most effective in experienced hands, but can seriously reduce your bed bug population. Coupled with dusts and pesticides, it is a viable option.

Thanks to the anonymous Bedbugger who pointed us to this video.

Click here to watch the film.

• The iceman cometh.
• The Wall Street Journal on “new” bed bug-fighting tactics
• bed bugs on NPR again: “Bed bugs spiralling out of control all over” according to Richard Cooper
• Cooper Pest evaluates ozone treatments for bed bugs, finds current methods ineffective

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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.

• FAQ: Are bedbugs a health issue?
• Berkshire Fringe show conveys “the neurosis, the exhaustion, the paranoia, the fascination” of bed bugs
• New PCT podcast with Dr. Michael Potter
• Bed bug dog Joni: fighting bed bugs in New Zealand and Australia

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But this article in Friday’s Toronto Sun has some interesting statistics. On the one hand,

According to Reg Ayre, the city’s Healthy Environments manager, Toronto Public Health received 194 calls for bed bug inquiries in 2004, 147 calls in 2005 and 160 in the first nine months of 2006.

That’s just calls to the public health department, though.

The little insects are spreading their non-existent wings and once again showing up in beds, and homes, across Canada, making them a significant issue of public concern.

“We started receiving anecdotal reports that bed bugs were on the rise,” Ayre said. “Prior to 2003-04 it was a non-issue for us.”

Four years later, Ayre says they are constantly sending investigators out to bed bug calls around the city.

From surveys of pest control companies, Ayre said it’s clear all communities are seeing an increase in bed bugs this year.

Disturbingly, individual Toronto PCOs record much higher figures, with one PCO seeing as many as four times TPH’s yearly figure per month.

One company said it performs 1,200 bed bug treatments per year while another said it’s spraying 400-500 homes per month.

Readers will recall a similar discrepancy between official complaints and PCOs’ reports in New York City: six months after the HPD tallied around 4600 calls and 1190 actual bed bug cases reported to 311 in twelve months (summer 2005-summer 2006), one well-known PCO claimed to be getting 85 actual bed bug calls a day (and presumably another 15 false alarms). That’s 22,100 cases per year for one PCO alone, if numbers held steady. (And that was a year ago.)

Clearly someone needs to get data on the full number of homes–public and private rentals, owned homes, as well as institutions– treated every year. Data on bed bugs in hotels and other businesses needs to be collected too. Even if bed bugs have not been proven to transmit disease, they definitely cause stress and much loss of property and income. They hurt individuals and business owners.

I’ve long said we need actual data on bed bug cases in New York City, where the only official data on bed bug cases comes from renters’ calls to 311 (the city’s information line). How people are supposed to know to call 311 with a pest complaint, which everyone knows is something you call your landlord about, is a mystery.

However, why most people don’t call 311 in such circumstances is not a mystery: want to stay in your apartment and not piss off the landlord? Give him/her a chance to solve your pest problem before reporting the building to the housing department.

And that, my friends, means most cases are under the government’s radar, and NYC does not have any reliable data about how many people here have bed bugs. We need a bed bug study done in New York, and so does Toronto.

Read about the 2003 Toronto data here on the CDC website.

• bed bugs: incidence studies needed in NYC and elsewhere
• Roger Smith Hotel on Lexington in NYC: latest bed bug lawsuit
• Toronto Public Health now has a Bed Bug Action Committee. Action, people.
• Reg Ayre of Toronto Public Health: bed bugs a “health concern,” not a “health hazard”

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newyorkshitty.com » ‘Tis The Season: Don’t Let The Bedbugs Bite!

miss heather of newyorkshitty.com shares a current photo of suspected bed bug refuse at the Astral Apartments in Greenpoint, and shares an article from exactly 121 years ago, decrying the need for “quality affordable housing”, free of vermin.

Glenwood Springs Post Independent - Valley News (Colorado)

“Tom Cornwell, president of the Colorado Pest Control Association, will be speaking to representatives from hotels and motels, … and public and housing personnel from 11 a.m. to noon Friday, Dec. 7.” Public education is the key to beating bed bugs.

Stamford, CT: The Advocate - Flooding and failing health leave residents seeking help (flood evacuees get bed bugs in hotel)

“During the spring nor’easter, a Stamford senior housing complex was flooded, and residents were forced to move to a hotel temporarily. Upon returning home, residents discovered their building was infested with bed bugs.”

Some Crazy Garbage: Away, ye critters

A blogger’s first-hand account of a Pest Control Operator’s visit. Yes, google alerts sends me multiple such posts a day from various “newbites” around the world. But this one was entertaining to read, even as it conveyed the tale of woe you have come to expect.

• Bed bugs at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec
• Portland’s public housing and bed bugs
• Comment dites-vous le bed bugs en français?
• Surrey, B.C. public housing infested with bed bugs

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The same day that we ask, with Rene Laraine, what might be causing his bed bugs to persist despite nine bed bug treatments by licensed PCOs, Nicholas Brown brings to mind similar concerns.

Brown, chronicling his bed bug experience on the Huffington Post, is now well past his seventh week. He has had five treatments (so treatment intervals are not the problem in this case). He is planning treatment six, the last one before he moves.

Again, I would bet money on the neighbors as source.

Like many of us, on this blog that was originally dubbed “Your foxhole, in the war against bed bugs” by its avowedly pacifist creator (yes, people, that’s how much I hate bed bugs), Brown mobilizes the war metaphors for his final assault:

Day 52

There comes a time in most insurgencies when you should cut your losses and leave. Maybe the enemy was more persistent than you imagined; maybe he was better at hiding; or maybe the weapons you used against him were inadequate. In any case, no one has ever accused the United States of pulling out of a conflict too early. And while I am all for America, I dont wish to repeat her mistakes.

I have returned from the farm and the squalor that confronts me confirms that the bedbugs are winning in our apartment. Yes, we have inflicted casualties. Yes, we have damaged their infrastructure. But at the end of the day, there are more of them than there are of us and we cannot win their hearts and minds. Moreover, there is great suspicion within the building that our downstairs neighbors are harboring bedbugs. Despite several requests, they have refused sprayings in their apartment. The bugs, we suspect, hide downstairs until the toxins in our place wear off and then return in greater strength. We can only assume they have training camps. We are keeping diplomatic channels open, but are not optimistic about pacifying either our apartment or the one below us.

We are calling in one more spraying, but the backbone has fallen out of our effort and we do not expect success. Our departure wont involve an embassy swamped with desperate refugees, but it will involve the horrid logistics of moving, made all the more awful by the necessity of inspecting and poisoning or freezing every item before it is packed away. Its a depressing thought, but honestly not all that much more work than washing, drying and sealing away all your clothing and papers and other possessions. Now come the slow logistics of apartment hunting, brokers fees, and long Saturdays devoted to subway rides and open houses. We are optimistic though. In the neon-lit consumerism of the new American Christmas, minor commercial miracles happen all the time. Uncle Bob might get some nose trimmers from the Airmall catalog; Delores might tip a busboy; and cousin Herbie may finally give in to those Debeers commercials and propose to that on-again off-again cocktail waitress he has been seeing for years. And maybe, just maybe, we will find our own minor Christmas miracle: a small apartment thats reasonably priced, relatively clean, and blessedly uninfested.

Unfortunately, we’ve heard from readers who moved almost nothing, took extreme precautions, and nevertheless brought bed bugs with them. In some cases, they chose new, equally infested quarters. Maybe they even rented a truck with bed bugs. But in most cases, they probably simply managed to move their bed bug despite precautions.

It’s worth moving during treatment, and treating at the other end. Yes, anonymous poster who raves when we mention pre-emptive treatment, we know “preventive” treatment isn’t supposed to work. But we know too many nice people who felt they had to pay for treatment in their new digs. This isn’t preventive, it’s reactive.

Good luck to Nicholas Brown. Unlike Amanda’s saga on Apartmenttherapy, I do hope we get to hear the end of the story.

• Nicholas Brown’s “The Bedbug Chronicles: Part 6″ sounds pretty familiar
• bed bug news for 2007-11-09
• The Huffington Post: Nicholas Brown’s bed bugs, volumes 3 and 4
• The Huffington Post on bed bugs

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This article carries more details on the bed bug war going on in the Montana Rescue Mission men’s shelter than the one blogged last week. It is a harrowing reminder of how hard it is to get rid of bed bugs under certain circumstances.

More than a year ago, the mission spent $5,500 replacing all 27 wooden bunk beds in the men’s shelter dormitory with steel bunks that give the bugs no openings to hole up in or to build nests. All the wooden beds at the mission’s Women’s and Family Shelter on First Avenue North were replaced at the same time, [shelter manager Tracy] Hansen said

Ecolab Pest Elimination Services has been coming at least once a month to do treatments at the shelter, and shelter workers also use a nontoxic powder to treat areas in which bedbugs are found. All the mattresses were replaced at one point, and sheets are now washed daily.

Blankets are also washed regularly, Hansen said, and soon they will be dried in a large commercial dryer, which will kill any bedbugs.

After initially making good progress against the bedbugs, the shelter saw another outbreak over the summer. As Drake explained, “We have so many people bringing in so many things on their persons.”

Hansen said the problem this summer and fall has been concentrated in the chapel, which handles overflow sleepers. Although the dormitory sleeps 54 people and 20 more men involved in change-of-life programs sleep in several common rooms, as many as 40 men a night will stretch out on mats on the floor of the chapel. People are asked not to bring in bags or their own blankets, but they still end up bringing in bedbugs in their clothes.

Over the summer, mission workers ripped out the baseboard all around the chapel, where they found several nests in decaying wood and plaster. Those areas were treated, but there are still occasional finds, Hansen said. Over the summer, he might find 10 to 15 live bugs a day. On Thursday, he said, he found two.
.

Replacing wooden beds with metal probably helps, though bed bugs can also infest metal beds; they can even harbor in the groove of a screw-head. And replacing bed frames does nothing, if mattresses are not properly encased (whether replaced or not). I would like to know if the mattresses are encased, which will help keep them from becoming reinfested.

Regular treatments are good, but most PCOs who know bed bugs seem to recommend treating more than once a month. Washing/drying sheets daily and washing or even just drying blankets (which should also be done daily under such circumstances) is a good idea.

The sad fact is that it is probably hard to do more than control bed bugs in a shelter situation. Even if guests do not bring in bags, as long as people are coming in wearing clothing, the potential for reinfestation is there.

One statement in the article really jumped out at me:

Barbara Schneeman, the communications and advocacy manager at the Yellowstone City-County Health Department, said the department hasn’t heard of any problems with bedbugs anywhere else in Billings. In a given year, she said, there might be one or two calls about bedbugs.

If a homeless shelter has bed bugs, a person brought them in, or they were brought in with a shipment. The former is more likely.
The person can have been an employee, visitor, or homeless guest.

If people are exposed to bed bugs in the shelter, they will also carry those bed bugs elsewhere.
Those people can be employees, visitors, or homeless guests.

Where those people go next, they may leave bed bugs: stores, cafes, government offices, laundromats, buses, trains, cars, schools, hospitals, PCO’s offices, employees’ and visitors’ and guests’ and their friends’ apartments and houses.

If a homeless shelter in Billings has bed bugs, there are problems with bed bugs in other places in Billings.
It’s a matter of time before people realize it.

I hope everyone in Billings with bed bugs will call the Yellowstone City-County Health Department and let them know. Public health officials will not recognize bed bugs as a problem unless you call them and tell them they are a problem. If they shrug it off, do not take it personally. If everyone calls, officials will have to take this seriously. Other health departments are beginning to.

• Salt Lake City Firehouse closed due to bed bugs
• bed bugs in Toronto; Vancouver; Billings, MT,
• Toronto Community Housing does good; Orlando, Florida tenants and Billings, Montana shelter guest demonstrate why more bed bug education is needed
• Charlotte, NC Salvation Army Women’s Shelter has bed bugs again

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This is NotSoSnug’s comparison of a nymph and adult bed bug (perhaps one of our entomologist friends could confirm the life stage of the nymph for us?)

bugz4_F

Originally uploaded by NotSoSnug

After having the landlord get a pest control operator (PCO) in to treat his apartment for bed bugs, NotSoSnug did not simply go about his business while the bed bugs died. Yes, he did stick around and sleep on his air mattress, on a tarp surrounded by double-sided tape. (A common strategy, I am nevertheless skeptical about how often people trap bed bugs this way.) Just as others do, he kept sleeping in his room, if not in the actual bed.

NotSoSnug went further, though. He made it his personal mission to wake up every two hours and hunt bed bugs with a red light, which he informed us does not disturb them as a normal light would.

Here’s what NotSoSnug had to say about his methods:

I sleep on a tile floor isolated by tape/vaseline about two feet from my retracted murphy bed. The bed when retracted looks like a big cedar tongue in groove closet against the gyprock wall in my bachelor suite. This is their harbourage, hopefully their only one as there is alot of tongue in groove in this place and it all wasn’t treated! So far I’ve only noticed activity associated with the treated murphy bed and one treated lounge chair. I am unsure but I may have received a bite from an isolated, untreated, upholstered computer chair.

Yes: murphy bed, built into a wooden tongue-in-groove structure: are you getting worried? This is, unfortunately, a bed bug paradise.

Even with the isolation I am not sleeping well, partly out of anxiety and partly because I am incessantly curious. So I wake up at intervals all night. At first I was using my white LED camping light when they were limited mostly to being active in early morning before treatment and before they got really hungry from my isolation. But I could see the white light alarmed the critters and I had to be furtive with it. Even so I caught 25 one night with the white light a few days before treatment! Then I realized from reading somewhere a red light might work and I had my red LED tail light from my bike. So out it came and me and my trusty sticky tape were ready.

The red light does not alarm them but movement does. I have to lay still on my air mattress and sweep the murphy bed with the red light to spot them. They may be moving or still. If I sneak slowly I can tape them before they realize I’m upon them. I use a piece of 2″x2″ sticky packing tape cut to size. Since I don’t have to move far it’s not hard to sneak up on them even with their speed. Sometimes I have to wait until they have crawled away from a groove or crack sufficiently so I can nab them. Sometimes I can clumsily and groggily nab them half into a crack. I’ve nabbed 2nd instar nymphs up to adults this way. Some 1st instar nymphs were inadvertently retrieved during taping the older bugz as well.

Any ones I’ve seen I’ve nabbed, with patience. Even if they disappear for a bit they inevitably come out as they are looking for a meal and unwilling to leave with a fresh bod nearby.

I’ve noted that they seem unwilling to venture out on the tile preferring to lurk on the wood. I’ve only caught very few out on tile, two adults and two nymphs before treatment and since treatment I’ve only seen two adults venture onto the tile, and then only close to furniture. And I’ve only seen 2 (adults) out during the day, on the floor, pre-treatment and none on any walls or the kitchen or bathroom or closets. Of course the 1st instars are virtually invisible to me on any surface so I may have missed some. But I am thankful for having the tile, it makes looking for them easier and seems to limit their excursions somewhat!

I’ll add that it embarasses me I didn’t notice this many critters in the months preceeding my discovery. I had bites but thought it was my seasonal excema. I wonder that so many bugs have remained limited to one area. Lots of nooks and crannies I guess.

NotSoSnug had bed bug bite reactions for two months before discovering the problem. There are clearly a lot of bed bugs here. This is the tally for the bed bug hunting he has done after treatment began on November 11th:

Date/Number of Active Insects Caught
Mon. Nov 12 - 2
Thurs. Nov 15 - 25
Fri. Nov 16 - 2
Sat. Nov 17 - 7
Sun. Nov 18 - 1
Mon. Nov 19 - 12
Tues. Nov 20 to Nov 23 Free from visible activity so far

In an email, NotSoSnug mentioned only one dead bed bug was found in the last five days. It is important to note that there were probably many more bed bugs (these are just the ones NotSoSnug caught while on his regular “hunts”) and there are likely still bed bugs there now. Bed bugs take 3-10 minutes to feed, from what we understand, and anyone getting some shut-eye, even if it’s once an hour or two, will miss some of the action. This surely represents only a sampling of the real total population. And some of these bed bugs likely crossed pesticide and would have died anyway, but no doubt at least some of them would not have.

Nevertheless, I thought this was an interesting experiment, and even if this sampling represents a wider population, it gives us some idea of the arc of the treatment’s effectiveness. A downward-moving number is a very good thing.

NotSoSnug caught and categorized the bed bugs according to when he found them, then scanned the results.

And here is NotSoSnug’s pictorial record of his “finds” (you can click on the photos and then choose the largest size for better viewing):

bugz5_FE

Originally uploaded by NotSoSnug

bugz6_FE

Originally uploaded by NotSoSnug

bugz7_FE

Originally uploaded by NotSoSnug

This is one way that someone with no evidence of bed bugs could obtain proof they were being bitten by bed bugs, for their landlord or PCO. It’s surprising how often people and their PCOs have trouble finding a bug, and the red light strategy seems promising. Remember that if you have a smaller infestation, it could take longer to find a sample.

I don’t encourage others to try and do this long-term, to the degree NotSoSnug has. Sleep is hard enough to come by when you have bed bugs, and waking at 1-2 hour intervals is murder on your system. I do think we can learn from this experiement, though. I also hope NotSoSnug gets some sleep.

The downside of NotSoSnug’s story is that his landlord is not willing to do a follow-up treatment, so clearly necessary, with a strong infestation like this. And NotSoSnug is going to be moving, a daunting prospect with bed bugs. We wish him well.

You can read the forum thread where NotSoSnug originally posted his story here. And you can look at his flickr collection here.

• recent bites from bed bugs (photo)
• Lou Sorkin: bitten on the hand by 30 bed bug nymphs and 2 adult bed bugs
• World exclusive: Bedbuggers experiment with being bitten, on purpose! (Part 4)
• Booklice vs. bed bug nymphs

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In this installment, we learn that bed bugs are taking a significant toll on Brown’s self-identity and social life:

Despite my anger, even our bug-laden living situation is finally normalizing. This process started first as a change in identity: I now think of myself as ‘the guy with bedbugs.’ It’s how I introduce myself. Maybe it’s not the first thing I say, but it will come up in the first five minutes of a conversation. I am taking an acting class and in the first session I said “hey, I am Nick and I have bedbugs,” as if I was in some particularly gross AA session. When I hear someone mention bedbugs in a conversation at a table next to me, I feel obliged to chime in.

They’re also making home very disorganized and uncomfortable, no small problem for someone whose office is at home. Things are not where they used to be; instead, they’re in bags all over the place:

While I am tempted to reassemble my room and my office (which are the same place), I realize there is every chance that the bugs will be back again so I have stopped trying to create a livable space and now just settle for someplace with interior heating.

We also learn that Brown still has bed bugs, well past the 30-day window landlords are given to eliminate bed bugs, under local housing laws. It is not unusual for landlords to need more time, though. Turns out, there are other reasons to be angry at the landlord:

Day 39

Our landlord, we discovered today, knew this apartment had bugs. The previous tenants moved out because of the bedbugs. The whole building - minus our apartment - was sprayed for bedbugs in the months after we moved in. No one mentioned this to us.

Isn’t this illegal? As I commented on the paragraph above, on Nicholas Brown’s blog, this should be illegal. Landlords should not be able to rent out an apartment that is known to be infested with bed bugs, to an unsuspecting tenant. I have a suspicion, however, that it already violates the housing laws. If any NYC rental housing experts are reading this, perhaps they could clarify.

Moreover, if the entire building except one apartment was being treated, any experienced PCO and even the landlord should realize that this might drive even more bed bugs into this unit.

What strikes me most about Brown’s saga, through these six installments, is how very typical it is. We at bedbugger.com have heard it all many times. While I am horrified to hear Brown’s tale, I thank him for sharing it in such a public medium.

By doing so, he may just convey the mess that bed bugs create in one’s life, as well as how easy it is to get them, and how very difficult it is to get rid of them, to those not yet in the know. And that recognition, my friends, is the first step in getting everyone else to help us fight the problem.

• Brown student wants to provide free bed bug treatment to those who can’t pay
• landlords talking about bed bugs
• Brooklyn tenant not warned of bed bugs before moving in
• New York City: Who’s responsible for paying for bed bug treatment? Complicated, in some cases.

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It contains lots of solid advice about not picking up curbside furniture, being wary of Craigslist finds, and searching for fecal spots and blood stains. But it also contains some advice we don’t normally see. Especially pertinent, this comment from our friend Lou Sorkin, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History. (Hear him talk about bed bugs and other pests today–Tuesday–at 10:40 on 99.5 WBAI in NYC, or listen to the streaming live audio here.)

The telltale signs of their presence are itchy welts on your body, frequently in clusters of three or more. You might see tiny red or brown marks on your sheets where you’ve crushed bugs in the night. If you suspect infestation, check under carpets and in moldings, and survey mattresses, box springs, and bed frames. Look for feces and shed skins. And look for nymphs: “Ninety-nine percent of papers written on bedbugs neglect to mention that a bedbug starts as a tiny egg and hatches from it to become a [1- to 1.6-mm.] nymph that’s translucent white,” says Louis Sorkin, entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History. “If people knew to look for nymphs, they could head off the problem much sooner.” The bugs pass through six stages of development and feed at least once during each, which means you can get bites before there are full-grown adults visible. If you think you have a problem but can’t find anything, press packing tape or a lint roller underneath carpet and in the corners of beds. Nymphs and eggs will stick to it.

Lou is bringing up a really important point here: many people first see a bed bug that is a fed or unfed nymph. And neither bed bug will look much like the image of an adult bed bug typically pictured in a media story. The first five photos in our page with photos of bed bugs and signs of bed bugs convey the enormous visual difference between fed vs. unfed first instar nymphs, and between nymphs vs. adults. Since people who have not yet had bed bugs often hear of them via the two-minute segment on Fox, or an article in their local paper, it would be best if more news outlets would feature a visual comparison giving people some awareness of this range when and if they do encounter a bed bug.

The article warns people against self-treating with Raid or foggers / bombs, and talks about the importance of dealing with clothing properly, notifying neighbors, and getting a professional in.

What I found most interesting was the final paragraph, which was centered around the need for action on the part of the city:

SEE SOMETHING (DISGUSTING), SAY SOMETHING

Last week, bedbugged tenants mounted a Craigslist-based attack on their Greenpoint building, and protesters in front of the Department of Health demanded action on asthma-exacerbating roaches and rats. They’re not the only ones who think the city could do more to crush creeping menaces. “Bedbugs are a major mental-health issue. I get tired of the Department of Health saying, ‘It’s not a physical issue, so we’re not going to focus on it,’” says Upper West Side council member Gale Brewer. She (and many exterminators) advocate a campaign along the lines of the subway-safety ads to spread word about bug-suppressing preventive steps. Other strategies: certification of bedbug-specialist exterminators and bans on mattress resales. To fight other pests, exterminators would like the DOH to enforce pre-demolition extermination laws more aggressively and hire more pest-control experts to manage parks and public spaces. For its part, the DOH says it has retrained staff after the KFC/Taco Bell rat debacle and is working on plans to combat residential bedbug and rodent problems.

I am really glad that Gale Brewer, who originally proposed the ban on reselling used mattresses in NYC, is still speaking out against bed bugs and their very real negative effects on health. I hope we will get an update on the NY City Council Bed Bug Task Force that was begun over a year ago, but is yet to take action (to our knowledge).

The recommendations here–enforcement of pre-demolition extermination laws, the mattress re-sale ban, and the certification of bed bug specialist PCOs are all good ones. We’ve been talking about the need for a public education campaign (subway ads, TV ads, and so on) since Bedbugger.com started.

Finally, Kirsch said, when describing what to do when you determine you do have bed bugs,

Don’t terrify yourself with horror stories on the Internet; check informative sites like Bedbugger.com.

Informative is good: thanks, Melissa Kirsch! We’re doing our best to get information out there and help people with bed bugs stay as calm as possible, so they can fight bed bugs in an effective way.

I hope we can also have something to do with getting people involved–maybe not so calmly–in fighting for change in public policies, like the ones suggested in this article. It’s always a good time to call your city council representative, or to write to the mayor, about bed bugs. Wherever you live, whether it’s New York, Halifax, Melbourne, or Lexington, Kentucky, take a moment to tell a local politician that bed bugs had a serious impact on your life–whether it was on your family, your finances, your job, and your health.

New Yorkers:
Click here to email Mayor Bloomberg.
Click here to look up and email your city council representative.
Click here to email Gale Brewer about the Bed Bug Task Force even if you’re not in her district.

And here’s a few words from the Rolling Stones–way back in 1978–that still ring true:

Don’t you know the crime rate is going up, up, up, up, up
To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!
You got rats on the west side,
Bed bugs uptown!
What a mess– this town’s in tatters
I’ve been shattered
My brain’s been battered, splattered all over Manhattan

Pop this mp3 on your iPod and muse on how little things have changed. And don’t forget: email your city council representative and remind them there are, once more, “bed bugs uptown.”

• New bed bug legislation: House Bill 565 from Ohio on bed bug treatment
• NYC Bed Bug Task Force / City Council Update
• Update on New York State bed bug legislation (parental notification re: bed bugs in school)
• Finally, somebody does something: Cincinnati’s new Bed Bug Remediation Commission

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• bed bugs in Toronto; Vancouver; Billings, MT,
• bed bug news for 2007-11-09
• Bed bugs in homeless shelters, casinos, hotels, apartments: Waynesboro, Atlantic City, Greenpoint, Toronto
• bed bug news for 2007-11-16

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