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“200 bed bugs in every train compartment”? Rentokil’s PR FAIL

nobugsonme — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:38:13 +0000

On March 3rd, the Daily Mail reported based on research by Rentokil that

. . . on average, a single train compartment houses a staggering 1,000 cockroaches, 200 bed bugs, 200 fleas, 500 dust mites and 100 carpet beetles.

And remember that we suggested back then that this was a bit sensational?

(Along with the Daily Mail, the London Evening Standard and Telegraph also presented the figures as if they were “average” and real.)

Well, Tuesday’s Independent Business Diary reports that

Red faces at Rentokil and its PR agency BrandsLife, which claimed research showed the typical train carriage might be home to 1,000 cockroaches, 200 bedbugs and 200 fleas. The shocking findings were widely covered in the media, but prompted some cynicism amongst scientists who actually know a thing or two about such matters. After a series of blogs questioning the research, Rentokil has published “a clarification and an apology”. This was a worst-case scenario, Rentokil now admits, based on assumptions such as the carriage never being cleaned or carrying any passengers to stamp on the pesky insects.

Note: I want to stress that the figures were presented in the media not as possibilities which “might be true” as the Independent notes, but as averages.

Of course, to those who know bed bugs in particular, cleaning train carriages, or being present to “stamp on” bed bugs is not sufficient to eliminate a bed bug infestation.

Still, Rentokil’s apology notes that other assumptions behind their hypothetical scenario were that the bus in question was left in an isolated place, with an optimal male-female bed bug ratio, a plentiful food supply, and yet — and this is the kicker where bed bugs are concerned — with no humans present.

Some debate around a story doing the rounds over last couple of weeks, when our PR Agency released numbers calculated on a hypothetical worst case scenario, which were presented as “average” or “typical”.

The blogger who got to the bottom of this story was Ben Goldacre (see his March 12 post in the Guardian). He points out in this post on Bad Science that Rentokil’s press release about the potential for pests in public transportation came the day after the company secured a £200 million five-year contract with the London Underground. The Twitterverse picked up Goldacre’s tweets about how Rentokil and PR firm Brands2Life were apparently ignoring his request for information on the figures, which no doubt helped bring about the apology (Twitter fans may enjoy this sampling).

Make no mistake, bed bugs have the potential to seriously infest public transportation. But it’s important that “research” is shared beyond the level of a soundbite and is based on information or at least presented as hypothetical and based on realistic scenarios.

Sensational reports can distract the public from the real problems posed by a pest such as bed bugs, which do get around (but not if they live on abandoned buses).Similar Posts:

200 bed bugs in every UK train compartment!?!

nobugsonme — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:55:28 +0000

The Daily Mail (UK) reports that

Research by pest controllers Rentokil shows that, on average, a single train compartment houses a staggering 1,000 cockroaches, 200 bed bugs, 200 fleas, 500 dust mites and 100 carpet beetles.

Well, blimey! Someone should do something about that!

It’s not that bed bugs and other pests can’t infest train carriages (they surely do), or buses and cars.

But stating the “average” number of insects in a train compartment is just a bit sensational.

Some compartments will be wildly infested with bed bugs, others not so much. I fear that implying every train compartment has 200 of the suckers in it just makes some people think, “why bother.”

Rentokil’s message of doom in the Daily Mail coincides with its launch of Entotherm, a thermal treatment for trains, buses, and cars in the UK.

Of course, I am glad thermal is being used in public transportation and — I assume — to treat personal vehicles which are infested with bed bugs.

How can you hate bed bugs and not love thermal?

However, the message seems to be that, on average, every vehicle is infested with bed bugs, which of course is not true. (And yes, cars can harbor roaches, but not every car will be secreting 20 of them.)

Public transportation would benefit from routine treatments of this sort, if it is economically feasible. Since the economy is lousy in the UK as it is in my neck of the woods, I fear suggesting frequent thermal remediation of the entire fleet of trains, underground trains, buses, and taxis would not go over well.

And let’s be honest: thermal does not keep bed bugs away. So treating every train compartment with thermal is a control measure, but how often can you do it? The very next day someone will bring in new bed bugs. A bit of residual would not go amiss here.

How do we make sure infestations in public transportation are handled swiftly?

Pest control workers, transportation staff, and customers should all be educated about how to look closely and critically at these vehicles — and, d’oh! they also need to look at their homes and other places they frequent — on a routine basis.

They should do these inspections.

They should know who to report to if they see anything suspicious.

And any signs of bed bugs should be followed up on, aggressively.

Update (3/16/2010): Rentokil now admits the research was based on a hypothetical worst-case scenario.Similar Posts:

Round, round, get around, bed bugs get around all the time

nobugsonme — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:35:51 +0000

A recent article from the Vancouver Courier was prompted by a woman’s sighting of bugs on a seat,

Kara Ardan was sitting near the back of a Hastings Street bus earlier this month, when something on the seat in front of her made her jump to her feet.

“I just saw something move,” she said. “It was probably a body louse. A good sized one, too. There were a few of them just hanging out there on the back of the seat.”

So the Vancouver Courier asks the valid question of whether local public transportation buses have bed bugs, and we’re told that

… Derek Zabel, the manager of media relations for Coast Mountain Bus Company, says Coast Mountain has had few reports of bugs on buses and none of its vehicles have been fumigated. Every three to four months each bus is scrubbed from top to bottom and a steam cleaning “extractor” sucks the contents out of the cushy seats.

TransLink switched to cloth seats in 2006 and 2007 because people with limited mobility could too easily slip off the old vinyl seats. Of its fleet of 1,400 buses, about 480 have cloth seats.

Then the following claim:

Brian Johnston, a supervisor in environmental health with Vancouver Coastal Health, doubts cloth or vinyl matters when it comes to bugs. He said bed bugs aren’t often transported on people. They generally feed when their human victims are in their deepest slumber, from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., and then hide. Johnston said bed bugs are lazy, or smart. They don’t stray far from their food source, so if bed bugs bite your ankles, they’re probably living near the foot of your bed.

[Emphasis mine.]

We’ve actually heard that bed bugs are proficient hitchhikers.

Reports of bed bugs on public transportation used to be commonplace.

If bed bugs don’t get transported on people or their stuff, how in the world would bed bugs be spreading from place to place, not just within buildings? How would they have gotten into this Victoria, BC pediatric unit? Or this Vancouver Island detox? Or this fancy hotel?

Just because bed bugs are most likely to be found in beds, does not mean they do not travel.

Perhaps Johnston’s point is that everyone with bed bugs is not going to be carrying them and distributing them everywhere they go all the time. (True.)

However, bed bugs do travel with people, make no mistake.

That’s how our friend Sneaky Simes gets around all the time.

See Coast Mountain denies buses infested with bugs.

See also this related story: Times Article on Spread of Bed Bugs via Trains, Planes and Automobiles.Similar Posts:

Times article on spread of bed bugs via trains, planes, and automobiles

nobugsonme — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:57:50 +0000

A Times (UK) article today on the spread of bed bugs emphasized the role of travel, specifically, the spread of bed bugs in public transportation:

Savvas Othon, technical director at Rentokil, said: “The short turnaround times for planes and other forms of transport means they are sometimes not inspected as thoroughly as they used to be. What should happen is a good vacuum around the back of seats and in the creases of seats. Any small gap is ideal for a bedbug, which can go for quite some time without a meal.”

Pest Control company Rentokil said it was now treating all kinds of public vehicles for bed bugs:

Rentokil says that it has seen a 24 per cent increase in work related to airlines, a 51 per cent increase in road-related call-outs, a 59 per cent jump in the shipping sector and a 9 per cent rise on rail in the past 12 months, compared with the year before.

“Bedbug infestations will continue to rise,” Mr Othon said. “Delays at airports don’t help as people sit in airport terminals, take things out of their bags and the bedbug jumps out and goes in search of another source of blood.”

While the general public is starting to think about hotel rooms as potential sites of infestation, it’s helpful to see a major newspaper highlighting the spread of bed bugs in airports, airplanes, trains, cars, and ships.

Awareness is key, as David Cain of Bed-bugs.co.uk stressed to the Times:

He said: “The number one reason for the spread of bedbugs is the lack of public awareness. People simply do not know how to detect them in the way they would have done in the 1950s and 1960s.

“They are a problem on buses, trains and subway systems, and on cruise ships too — any form of transport where there is a high turnover, really. Recently, on an overground train in South London, I pulled at the parting of the upholstery and found at least four months of dirt and debris.”

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