Calvin Merritt’s problems at Hillrise Apartments are pretty simple.

“Mostly bugs, roaches and all that…”

The “all that” is bed bugs. Dead ones were easy to find under Calvin’s mattress, and piles of them behind the bed. When exterminators come in to spray here, their work’s easy to see, pesticide stains run down Calvin’s walls. Calvin pays 313 dollars a month for this one bedroom…what little furniture he had was mostly pitched, because it was infested.

Calvin Merritt, Resident: “I done lost everything got here, my couch, my other chairs, all the stuff I had was new, I had to get rid of all of that.”

At the other end of the hall, Jeanette Jessie doesn’t have any bedbugs, but she worries about them just the same.

Jeanette Jessie, Resident: “They just spread them from one end of the building to the other, this is crazy, get this place cleaned up, spray it at one time and get rid of this mess.”

It sounds a bit like the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA in Washington DC, Halcyon House in Denver, and Warren Towers in East Moline, Illinois. Elderly people, disabled people, and anyone in low-income housing is being dealt a raw deal when it comes to getting rid of bed bugs. Let’s face it, bed bugs are expensive to treat. They’re also a rather sudden problem no one was expecting and no one has budgeted for.

Bed bugs are difficult to treat, too. Traditional treatments require multiple pest control visits at short intervals. Residents must prepare for treatment, which can be a lengthy process and costly too (especially for those on a fixed income).

However, make no mistake: non-aggressive treatment (treating only some of the infested units, treating at too-long intervals, or not coming as many times as needed), waiting for tenants who might be unaware they have bed bugs to report them, and not providing assistance with preparation costs and physical labor–all of these reactions from landlords and housing managers mean that bed bugs will be around longer, spread into more units, and cost much more to get rid of.

It just does not make sense on any practical level to not be aggressive, thorough, and quick to treat bed bugs in a building you are responsible for. It is simply a display of ignorance about the nature of this beast.

We can’t entirely blame landlords for this ignorance; none of us were expecting bed bugs. But we need to educate the public about the signs of bed bugs, and we need to educate professionals in all walks of life (from those who provide housing, to hospitality services, to health care, education, and on and on) about the need for a bed bug protocol which includes both proactive searching for signs of bed bugs, and swift reactions to any bed bug signs or sightings.

Too many people seem to be hoping they’ll just go away. Good luck with that. In the meantime:

Channel 12 reports,

Officials from the Cincinnati Health Department tell us they’ll soon be taking a closer look at conditions in the apartments.

I love the Cincinnati Health Department. But you knew that.

• Indianapolis Housing Authority vs. Bed Bugs
• Cincinnati Establishes Bed Bug Furniture Pick-Up Procedures and Hotline
• Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Housing Authority vs. Bed Bugs
• Cincinnati fights bed bugs, declares some success

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Ivan Moreno reports for the Rocky Mountain News that the court date finally arrived; the owners sent an attorney to represent them (they’re in Maine), and they were fined $41 for “failing to spray for bed bugs”. That wasn’t the only thing wrong with the building–remember this is the one where disabled people are trapped at home because the elevator doesn’t work. And there are other problems.

Although fines for these violations “rarely exceed $1000,” the $41 still seems minuscule compared with the hardships tenants must be enduring. Management said they stopped paying for treatment because the owners did not give them money. Previous articles said there had been bed bugs in the building for 16 months.

Adding insult to injury, the owners say they’ll be upping the rent in September, to pay for maintenance.

Since 70% of the rent is subsidized by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, it seems like the government is also responsible. You can’t have an affordable housing building infested, and you can’t expect tenants on fixed incomes to pay more rent.

It’s not just private business people who are dropping the ball on this one, folks. It’s our government too.

Now what are we going to do about it?

• More on Denver’s Halcyon House and bed bugs
• More bed bugs in Nashua, NH: rooming-house tenant goes to court
• Windsor, Ontario: bed bugs in public housing
• Denver’s elderly, disabled, fight bed bug Shaq attack

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So imagine my surprise when WBTV 3 in Charlotte had this to say:

Bed Bugs are Back

An outbreak of bed bugs in southwest Charlotte. Some people in Steele Creek are concerned these small bugs are taking over their apartment complexes. They met with police, code inspectors, and apartment managers to discuss the issue today. Exterminators told the group they’ve seen an enormous spike in bed bug calls since last year. Exterminators say a lot of these pests brought here by folks from overseas.

Every entomologist I’ve heard from has painted a much more complex picture of the causes of bed bugs’ return. Most PCOs (and note: they don’t like to be called exterminators anymore), also paint a more balanced picture of the causes. This Charlotte, NC CBS affiliate should be more responsible. This kind of one-sided report just stirs up bad sentiment against immigrants, and spreads misinformation, by neglecting to mention these other reasons for the return of bed bugs.

I’m glad Charlotte residents, police, code inspectors, and apartment managers met to discuss bed bugs, and heard from “exterminators.” But they’re not getting the whole picture.

If they want to know why bed bugs are spreading in Charlotte and elsewhere, they might consult this post we ran back in February, when a Charlotte used furniture warehouse was found to have 600 unsanitized mattresses in its possession. I’d like to link to the original article, but it has since been taken down by the newspaper (many news sites don’t allow access to old articles). We did quote it at some length in our original report.

The Charlotte Observer reported at the time that inspectors had ordered the mattresses to be cleaned or destroyed, but 600 of them were still in the shop a month later. It was unclear how many had already been sold. What’s more, the warehouse was still planning on “dumping” 200 of them. Now where do you suppose some of those mattresses ended up? Probably as beds for local people who convinced the store to sell them one (even though they were intended for hotel guests), or who found them dumped. It is unlikely that hoteliers shopping in the store did not purchase any of the used mattresses during that month. So some of us from elsewhere may also have been subjected to these unsanitized mattresses and the bed bugs that surely lived in some or many of them.

It would be nice if the media gave more care to covering such stories rather than simply blaming one segment of our society.

When I said it was not only travelers (of every kind), but also business people who were spreading bed bugs, I did not only mean those business people who were traveling and staying in hotels (though this is true too). Remember, some people can actually make money spreading bed bugs. Greed spreads bed bugs. As, for that matter, do stupidity, misinformation, turning-a-blind-eye, looking-for-scape-goats, and keeping-your-head-in-the-sand. But especially greed.

Before playing the blame game, look to yourself, look to your neighbors, look to those who want to make a fast buck and don’t have much foresight.

• inspectors find 600 unsanitized mattresses at Charlotte, N.C. used furniture store
• Thai trains play the bed bug blame game: blame backpackers for bed bug infestation
• Charlotte, NC Salvation Army Women’s Shelter has bed bugs again
• Bed bugs in another women’s shelter in Charlotte, North Carolina

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Reports of the nasty critters skyrocketed from 34 cases at 24 public schools in October and November to 72 cases at 43 schools in January and February, according to the Department of Education.

And despite the surge in the creepy-crawlers, the school system continues to resist calls to inform all parents in schools where insects are found.

There’s nothing else that’s really substantial in this NY Post article reminding us that bed bugs are spreading in NYC public schools. So far, the New York City Board of Education’s official policy on bed bugs is that only the parents of the child found with bed bugs on his or her person are notified. And it’s absurd.

All you Bedbuggers out there should invite some local politicians (preferably school board officials) into your homes, and have them sit on your infested sofas, and offer them a nice beverage and some hummus and a mini pita bread or two. Maybe crank up some music or put on that new Tudors show if you get Showtime (Tudors! I bet Henry VIII spread mad bed bugs.)

Now, after a while, a bed bug may crawl onto your local elected official; when it does, you can point and say “You! You brought bed bugs into my home!” You can then trap and bag it, and say, “I am going to call the newspapers and report that you, local politician so-and-so, infested my home with bed bugs!”

You may find this to be a silly analogy, but it’s exactly how children in our schools are treated when bed bugs are found to be crawling on them.

Assuming the bed bugs found on a child came into school on the child or in his or her stuff, is ridiculous. It’s as ridiculous as assuming your local politician brought them in, when we all know you’ve had them for months.

Someone in an infested school can have bed bugs on them because they’re in an infested school. The children may be the ones the bed bugs rode in on, or not, and so could the Principal (even if s/he lives in a nice Manhattan co-op, many of which are crawling), teachers, staff, and visitors.

I need to qualify the above suggestion: Bedbuggers, please do not invite Queens Assemblyman Michael Gianaris over for hummus on your infested sofa. Michael Gianaris is, according to this and other news reports, the lone voice in favor of notifying all parents–not just the parents of the child who is wrongly thought to be “infested.” (This is an error in thinking; bed bugs are not lice, they don’t live on people.)

The local news media needs to stop printing things like this:

Currently, only the parents of an affected child [my emphasis] are automatically notified. The city’s Office of School Health decides on a case-by-case basis if other letters need to be sent out.

This implies that a child is “affected” as opposed to all children and other humans in the vicinity. That sounds a lot like implying the child is infested, and not the school. The reason everyone should be notified is not only because everyone is exposed to the bed bugs, as these articles imply, but because anyone at all could have brought them in, regardless of who bed bugs are found on. Seriously.

And they’re still saying things like this:

The blood-sucking insects get into schools on student clothing, bookbags or other items.

No, bed bugs come into schools on people, not students, and leave that way too. Since the New York City Board of Education policy on bed bugs is that the school doesn’t have an infestation unless a bug is caught, bagged, and sent in by the teacher, you can bet that many, many more than 43 schools are now infested. You can also bet that bed bugs may be creeping around in offices, on administrators’ purses and briefcases, on teachers’ backs.

But as long as being caught with a bed bug on you or your stuff marks you as the “source” of the school’s problem, there’s no incentive to find out if there are really bed bugs in the school. It’s a game of musical bed bugs: the bed bugs move from person to person and if the music stops, and you’re the one caught with a bed bug on you, you lose.

There’s something racist and classist going on here, where public school children are assumed to be the (only possible) bringers of filth into the school. Sadly, the truth is they’re taking it home to their uninfested homes. And so are teachers, administrators, lunch staff, and everyone else.

Update (4/3): here’s the backstory on this issue, which we’ve been talking about since December: in December, and again in January, the Queens Gazette reported the story, especially in relation to that bedbugged borough, and Queens Assemblyman Gianairis’s attempts to change this ridiculous Board of Ed. policy, then February, a UFT official commented on our blog, asking how teachers could get schools to change their policy, and in mid-February, the Daily News covered the issue.

• Gianaris’ Bedbug Legislation Passes
• New York City public schools continue to be treated for bed bugs
• NYC schools closer to having bed bug legislation
• More on the New York City schools and bed bugs

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However, this isn’t one of those stories. This is new news.

The Charlotte Observer reported Sunday that inspectors found 600 unsanitized mattresses at Advanced Hotel Services on Sugar Creek Road, Charlotte, N.C., a used hotel furniture store, during monthly spot checks in 4 months (October through January). “Used hotel furniture” is sounding like such a bad idea right now.

Some mattresses had fake tags that indicated they were sanitized when they were not. The inspectors do not know how many mattresses were sold in that condition.

Two different owners each say they never sold any, though an inspector was told by workers in January that some mattresses were set to go to a motel chain.

After failing to clean the mattresses following four inspections, the state ordered Advanced on Jan. 22 to destroy 374 mattresses on its sales floor, a state inspection report said.

Workers cut the mattresses, but an additional 200 or so in the store’s stock room were not destroyed because an owner said he was dumping those, Anderson said.

N.C. law requires sellers to sanitize used mattresses, couches and recliners at 230 degrees for two hours to kill bacteria and bed bugs, Johnson said.

Used bedding also cannot have stains, and sellers must glue on a yellow label that says the items are used. Sellers must sanitize even relatively new bedding — such as mattresses returned after a 30-day trial, Johnson said. The law does not apply to private, individual sales.

Most of us did not get our bed bugs from unsanitized mattresses, but they’re certainly a way in which bed bugs may have been spread initially. Especially if they’re making their ways into hotels. Or (in the case of other resold mattresses) the homes of our neighbors and co-workers.

My own city’s officials balked at a ban on reselling mattresses because of a sense that the poor really needed to save $50 by buying a used mattress.

Back in September, the NYTimes reported that

… Andrew Eiler, director of legislation for the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs, expressed uncertainty about the [proposed NYC] bill [to limit the re-sale of used mattresses]. A twin-sized mattress without a box spring can be bought for $40 from the Salvation Army, or about $50 less than a new mattress. “While $50 may not appear as a significant difference to some, it may be an unbridgeable gap to consumers with limited incomes,” he said.

I am sorry, but that’s bull. The poor really do not need bed bugs. I spent several years sleeping on a 3″ futon (not the futons most people in the west use, but the thin ones). It was immensely comfortable. I was somewhere between a cheap new mattress and a reconditioned mattress for cost, and I’d sleep on one forever rather than have bed bugs.

Shame on these foolish, foolish businessmen. And shame on the system:

After failing to clean the mattresses following four inspections, the state ordered Advanced on Jan. 22 to destroy 374 mattresses on its sales floor, a state inspection report said.

Workers cut the mattresses, but an additional 200 or so in the store’s stock room were not destroyed because an owner said he was dumping those, Anderson said.

If they can be given four months, four inspections, and still have the mattresses in the back room, maybe the inspections system is faulty.

Ever bought something special from the backroom of a store? In this case, it was no bargain.

And the article says that the majority of used mattresses sold elsewhere are also unsanitized:

About 60 percent of the mattresses inspected at stores and flea markets have not been sanitized properly or at all, Anderson said.

• Bedbugged North Carolina: Bayer’s training grounds for bed bug detection and treatment
• Stirring up anti-immigrant sentiment in Charlotte: let’s start the blame game
• Virginia Beach hotel sued over alleged bed bug attack
• Bed bugs in “refurbished” mattresses on Fox NY

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In the normal world, bed bugs pass as “fun”: Parakeets can’t post right now, but she emailed to tell me she saw this great suggestion on familyfun.com posted by reader “carrie f” for a children’s “Bed Bug Party”, with gummi worms, bug juice (i.e. green kool aid), and english muffin pizzas. (Apparently so much buggy fun is prevailing here that the english muffin pizzas do not need to have any buggy or otherwise gross connection a la gummi worms).

The party is just about the opposite of what life is like with bed bugs:

Games & Activities
Everyone came dressed up as their favorite bed bug and remained in character during the party. Later everyone acted out their bed bug and guessed what each other was.

Rather than blood-sucking horror, there was music, dancing, and snacks; and then,

We had a scavenger hunt around the neighborhood collecting items bed bugs might need or like.

You know, carbon dioxide, live humans full of blood, a wooden bed to live in, some clothes to hang out in and lay eggs: the usual.

The kids then changed into their pajamas and slippers and lay down with sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows and watched a movie while waiting for their parents to pick them up. My 4-year-old daughter really wanted a sleepover party but her friends were too young for that, so we did this bed bug party as a compromise. The kids stayed until bedtime, dressed for bed, and tucked into sleeping bags — then went home and woke up in their own beds. but they all felt like they had had a sleepover.

See– this is actually like having bed bugs in that the kids got in bed but did not actually sleep. I do that every night!

The goodie bag was filled with different bug candies, a bug jar with a magnifying glass on top, a variety of plastic insects, and a fun book about insects.

This is actually cool. And will be very educational. When I was a kid, a teacher had us collect bugs and impale them with pins on cardboard. Little did I know I’d need my bug identification skills in adulthood.

Now, despite not getting enough sleep and spending too much time on this blog, I am not totally out of touch. I realize “their favorite bed bugs” is a reference to the children’s television show “My Bedbugs.”

However, although most bedbugs-for-children are funny and cute and not even remotely similar to cimex lectularius, the “My Bedbugs” bed bugs are making me suspicious that they may actually be close to the real thing.

Sure, they’re yellow and green and blue and have human-ish features along with antennae.

But their good friend J. Egdar Hoover is a vacuum. (Since I got bed bugs, my best friend is a vacuum too!) What children’s show has a vacuum for a character?!? This tells me the producers know something about bed bugs, since Bedbuggers spend all our time vacuuming.

Their other friend Snoozy is a pillow, who is sleepy all day (just like me!) You know bed bugs love pillows.
You can even play a fun game called “Match a Bug” (which we real life Bedbuggers like to play, comparing the insects we find with those in pictures our friend entomologist Lou Sorkin provides!)

I don’t mean to sound bitter. I am glad the kids love the show and I think they’d love the party too. It amazes me that we’re just leaving behind an era where nobody remembered bed bugs or was worried about them. Maybe people who’d volunteered for the Peace Corps, or Doctors without Borders, or been youth hostelling, but it was a far-off, adventure-related problem, like malaria-tablet hallucinations, or Montezuma’s revenge, and not something that you’d have to deal with back home.

Wait till bed bugs start spreading from kid to kid at school, as they’re currently doing in some places, and the folks who make “My Bedbugs” are going to discontinue that series so fast, your head will spin. Who’s going to want to watch this with the real vacuum running, with crabby kids who don’t get enough sleep, and with actual bed bug carcasses and sealed bags of clothing on the floor?

• My Bedbugs
• Indiana, call a pest control operator
• Hundreds participate in massive pillow fight, New York City, March 22, 2008
• Bed Bugs and Christmas

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The Daily News of Halifax, NS reports on the bed bug epidemic there. This is a fairly informative, if brief, article. A few things are of interest.

First, the reporter says that

Pest control sevices provide efficient ways to deal with bedbugs. They dust and spray for bedbugs, and inspect residences for sign of the bugs.

But if PCOs provide such efficient control. why do most people need more three or more treatments (as reported widely elsewhere)?
And if they’re treated so easily, why are they spreading so easily? If controlled easily and quickly, we could wipe them out. In fact, they’re quite difficult to treat (and this is because of the limited efficacy of the pesticides legal for treatment), and are spreading rapidly:

In the past two years, there has been a “significant” bedbug increase, says John Zinck, the district manager of Orkin Pest Control.

“Currently, we’re doing about 20 calls a week on average. We’ve done at least 1,000 to 1,500 residential units this year in Halifax,” he says.

Let me highlight that statement, Orkin alone have treated at least 1000 to 1500 residences for bed bugs in Halifax this year.

Halifax has a population of 380,000. Let’s say they live in homes of approximately 3.5 people each. That’s 108,571 residential units. Let’s say Orkin has treated 1500 residences, and other pest control operators have treated the same number combined (a conservative estimate, if Halifax has as many PCOs as other towns, and at least one other major chain besides Orkin). That would be 3000 residences. If 3000 residences in Halifax had bed bugs this year, that’s 2.7% of the homes. Depending on the business other PCOs are getting in the area, of course, the numbers could be much higher.

Here’s another thing to consider: NYC, my town, has had 4500 reports to 311 of bed bugs in the last year. Those reports are to a telephone line, and bed bug complaints are made only by tenants and only to the Department of Housing and Preservation. I can’t emphasize this enough: most people in NYC don’t call 311 to report a pest problem. Homeowners never would. Tenants do only if they think their landlord isn’t dealing with or won’t deal with a problem without pressure from the city housing dept. Most tenants simply tell their landlords directly.

What I know for a fact is that there’s no way there are only 4500 people in NYC suffering from bed bugs this year. I would personally estimate that there could be as many as 20x this or more. I have now interacted with at least 40 New Yorkers with bed bugs (online); I think 2 tried to call the 311 # and one had their report taken (the other was apparently given the run-around by the receptionist, who’d never heard of bed bugs). These are people who searched the internet and found a Yahoo group on bed bugs; if any folks with bed bugs had the wherewithal to find and call the 311 number, it would be these people.

The population in New York City in 2000 was 8,000,000: more than 21 times the population of Halifax. Based on my estimates above, this would translate to 2,285,714 homes of 3.5 people each (a made up number of inhabitants per residence, but identical to the one I made up for Halifax). An infestation in NYC which is comparable to 3000 homes in Halifax, might equal 84,656 residential units (housing 296,296 people) treated in one year, almost 20x the reports to 311. It would absolutely not surprise me if the infestation in NYC were at this level or higher right now.

And remember, it’s growing exponentially, and spreading fast.

I realize all those numbers are estimates, and I am not trying to be alarmist, but we need to realize the magnitude of this. Exactly how many people have to go through this in order for the government to treat it as a problem, despite the fact that right now, no physical diseases are believed to be spread this way?

One PCO interviewed by the Daily News journalist in Halifax said:

Bedbugs are the worst thing people could have in their houses, says Don McArthur, the president of Braemar Pest Control.

“They cause more psychological damage to people than half of the diseases that might be transmitted by insects.”

This is coming from the man who hears about the psychological damage caused by bed bugs. He’s meeting people every day who are covered in itchy welts, exhausted from a loss of sleep and the trauma of possibly having thrown out many of their belongings (and done all the work that involves, on top of the loss itself).

Psychological trauma, financial trauma, and the physical problems that can result from a lack of sleep (which impedes all aspects of daily activity, and all areas of your health)–all of these are real and serious.

Not as serious as Hurricane Katrina or a major illness.

But absolutely as serious as a lot of mental, physical, and financial situations for which the government routinely offers aid to citizens. If people had their homes affected by tornados, there would be federal assistance to the disaster area. Bed bugs are an act of nature, and this is not an easily-managed pest, nor one people could have planned for.

Homeowners and renters might expect the occasional influx of roaches, ants, or even termites; we’re dealing here with a pest we have not seen in 30 years, and in epic proportions. and here’s the key: unlike termites, ants, and roaches, the bedbugs are spreading and infecting everyone in the vicinity. The government needs to take this on because eradicating this epidemic protects the rest of the population from its spread.

We need assistance for homeowners and renters in getting top-rate pest control. Landlords will increasingly be unable to provide good pest management, financially, since eradicating bed bugs requires treatment of entire buildings. As much as I sympathize with people who want to demonize landlords, they’re not all rich. If we want to get rid of this pest, doing so has to be a matter of public interest.

This should also not be a great opportunity for PCOs to get rich quick. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that PCOs inadvertently benefit from the current use of inadequate pesticides to treat bed bugs. If they had DDT, the bed bug boom would be a flash-in-the-pan. They’d be in and out, the problem gone. Instead, they’re contracted to come in repeatedly (usually 3 or more times), and can count on repeat business as the bugs make their way around a building.  Many of us would gladly pay the same price for the short sharp eradication of these pests, that’s for sure.  But maybe we would not have to.

And some people can’t, or won’t pay for the current costs of fighting bed bugs, and cutting corners is leading to their spread.

I am not implying that the PCOs are colluding with the bed bugs, you understand. (No flames, please.) I know most PCOs are as worried as the rest of us and want to be rid of them. They have elderly parents, partners, children–and they’re as or more vulnerable to an infestation as anyone, working as they do in the field (albeit with more awareness).

I do think we need to deal with these bugs as swiftly as possible. Besides helping finance (and requiring) thorough exterminations for all (not just those who can afford the best, or those who show the most foresight and therefore the most diligence in their treatment), the government would help stop the bug spreading further.

We need public education campaigns teaching people not to take in any second hand furniture, period, until this is over. Couches, soft chairs, and mattresses are obvious sources of bed bugs, but wooden desks, tables, and even metal bed frames and other items can carry the bugs. Anything on the curb could have been tossed out by a person with an infestation.

I’d say we also need more effective pesticides. We might consider a careful, controlled reintroduction of DDT, just until this is abated. It took a long time for the WHO to re-introduce it for malaria, and now, finally, people in Africa are getting some relief from those mosquitos.  If DDT is effective against the current bed bugs (and I realize that’s a big “if”), it could be used in small quantities, in targeted areas, indoors (away from wildlife).  From what I understand, there’s no proof it killed any humans or caused any human diseases.  And I, for one,  don’t have any whopping cranes in my closet with the bed bugs.  We once got rid of bed bugs in this country for 30 years.  Why not get rid of them again, and then keep them away?

NY has periodically sprayed for mosquitos in NYC; it began in 1999 and sprayed malathion, permethrin and other pesticides from the air and ground. This was the state Dept. of Health’s response plan in 2000.  West Nile Virus is a different problem, and caused some serious illnesses and fatalities. But my point is that mental health problems caused by bed bugs, not to mention physical health problems (and financial ones), are being suffered by a wide number of people; they’ll be suffered by almost everyone in time if something is not done. We can’t leave it to the individual.  Let’s not discount the effects of this epidemic on the tourism industry, and therefore on local incomes and tax funds.

There’s the theory that DDT is no longer effective against bed bugs; if this is so, serious, well-funded, widespread research must be done into other ways of getting rid of bed bugs. Before everyone has them.

• Halifax tenants angry about bed bugs? Time for action.
• Halifax: where the bed bug “blame game” is the law
• bed bugs: incidence studies needed in NYC and elsewhere
• Nova Scotia home help nurses stop visiting client with bed bugs

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Today, an article in the Rhode Island News provides just one example. A Cranston, RI shelter was so infested that 70 residents and housing advocates marched to the State House, seeking the Governor’s help. (You need a login, which takes a minute, but I will quote the most relevant bits below.)

For the third time in six months, a team of exterminators on Monday visited the state’s Welcome Arnold shelter in Cranston in an attempt to eradicate a persistent bedbug problem that has been plaguing the shelter’s homeless residents.

The bedbug infestation had emerged as one of the chief complaints of a group of 70 shelter residents and other housing advocates who marched to the State House last week in an attempt to get the attention of Governor Carcieri and get him to do something about the conditions at Welcome Arnold.

At that session, Noreen Shawcross, the state’s chief of housing and community development, and Clark Greene, the governor’s chief policy aide, promised the People to End Homelessness that a team of exterminators would be at the site as early as Monday. Also promised were new mattress covers to make the mattresses “bedbug proof.”

Dennis M. Langley, the executive director of the Urban League of Rhode Island, the agency contracted by the state to oversee the operation of the shelter on a day-to-day basis, said he believes that the exterminators did what was asked, but “I would not be telling the truth if I said it has been completely solved. This is a difficult group of insects to get rid of.”

So on the one hand, they believed mattress covers would make the mattresses bedbug proof (well, the mattresses, at least would not be a source of bites). They also realized they needed new mattresses, though only in those cases of obvious damage and disrepair. And they realized the difficulty of fighting bedbugs. And nonetheless…

Langley said that in keeping with another promise to the homeless residents, the shelter has purchased 100 used mattresses to replace those that are cracked or that have stuffing falling out. Twenty-six mattresses, acquired from the Donation Exchange, were installed yesterday, and 75 others, purchased from a nursing home, should arrive soon, he said. Some 250 mattress covers have been purchased but have not arrived.

Everything in that last paragraph is so wrong, so very wrong.

Let me get this straight: you realize the mattresses may be the cause of bedbug problems (and I am sure they are infested, though other parts of the room are doubtlessly also infested). So you buy 100 used mattresses? Used mattresses are a notorious source of bedbugs, and you cannot necessarily see the infestation.

And then, adding another layer of stupidity, you install 26 of those before the mattress covers are available? Thereby potentially spreading more bedbugs around?

Arrgghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you people not listening? Used mattresses are a huge source of bedbug infestations. I would never take on a used mattress, having seen the damage that bedbugs can do. And I certainly would not bring one in without a sealed cover.

And if these are standard vinyl covers, they’re easy to puncture (another reason not to take on used mattresses and try and cover them.)

I realize the shelter has little in the way of funds. But that is wrong! The State of Rhode Island is not doing itself any favors by skimping on attempts to eradicate a bedbug problem. Homeless people with bedbugs in their clothing and in their posessions are riding around on your public transportation system, sitting on your park benches, reading in your libraries, and if they’re lucky enough to come across some money that day, drinking coffee in your resaurants and seeking shelter in your movie theaters.

If compassion for your fellow human beings who have fallen on hard times does not motivate you to agressively treat their bedbug problems, and fund this to the necessary degree, their bedbug problems will spread to you. It’s not an if, it’s a when.*

*I hesitate to warn people of this, because it sounds like I think bedbugs are spread by homeless people.

Let me be clear: bedbugs are spread by everyone: homeless people, truck drivers, hipsters, and Ralph Lauren designers.

Bedbugs are spread by people, period.

In this case, however, they will be spread by people who do not have the resources to properly treat them and to try and prevent spreading them. And so in this case, it is everyone’s fault.

Shame on the State of Rhode Island! Shame on all of us for not seeing the problems of homeless people as our problems.

In this case, sadly, they soon will be.

• Brown student wants to provide free bed bug treatment to those who can’t pay
• Salt Lake City Firehouse closed due to bed bugs
• Bed bugs in homeless shelters, casinos, hotels, apartments: Waynesboro, Atlantic City, Greenpoint, Toronto
• Washington YWCA infested with bed bugs: more elderly, low-income residents being left to itch

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Road rage? Air rage? Going postal?

Wait until we start seeing cases of bedbug rage. Listen, this bug will make you madder than working for the US Postal Service, driving on the LA freeways, and waiting all day in an airport line just to have your toothpaste conviscated and your flight cancelled. Wrap that up and multiply by 100.

But I digress.

The important thing to remember is that certain outlets are recognizing bedbug infestations as a health concern: the Mayo Clinic, and the Allegheny County Health Department, which says:

While bedbugs have been known to harbor pathogens in their bodies, including plague and hepatitis B, they have not been linked to the transmission of any disease and are not regarded as a medical threat. Some individuals, however, can get skin infections and scars from scratching bites. While bedbugs are not regarded as a vector of transmissible diseases, they are a serious stressor and will create a lot of alarm and distress. With some individuals, it may precipitate mild to moderate cases of delusional parasitosis.

Until if, and when, we see Hepatitis or something even worse being transmitted by these monsters, it all comes back to mental health. I am not discounting the possibilities of delusional parasitosis, but keep in mind that many of us do not get taken seriously when we first turn up in the doctor’s office with bedbug bites and stories of bites from insects many of us can’t see, or at least don’t see for a long time. In other words, some people will assume it is, on some level, a mental health issue. (Because every day people who are imagining little-insects-they-can’t-see constantly biting them do come to doctors.)

On the other hand, anxiety and the stress of deadling with this issue, which can take up all your time and energy and seem insurmountable at time, is very much a mental health issue. So it being extremely itchy and never getting any sleep–I’d say those are mental and physical health concerns. And they’re just the reactions most of us get.

Doctors treat us for scabies, send us to dermatologists to have our “skin condition” looked into. My doctor told me I did not have bedbugs: “you’d see them,” she said, “and these don’t look like bedbug bites anyway.”

They did not look like this, or this, or this. You’d forgive my doctor for not knowing they can also look like this; and sometimes they can be smaller versions of the same, and don’t photograph easily. I have a lot of those right now.

And that sent me away to hope she was right. (You know things are bad when you actually hope this is burrowed under your skin and causing your problems.)

A long dark night spent covered in Elimite later, and I was still wondering. But that scabies cream (made of the same wonderful pyrethroids the pest control operator will eventually spray in my apartment) gave me a fever and made my skin really itch. And still, weeks later, the doctor was sure I didn’t have bedbugs.

The bottom line is that they are a health issue. And if you came here to find out if you have them, well, yes– ask your doctor. Maybe s/he will recognize the bites. Look high and low, not just on your mattress or under the bed frame. Look behond pictures, in closets, in cracks, in deep, murky corners. Look under switchplates and light fixtures. And even then, you may come up with nothing. Ask a pest control operator to look. And remember that it’s possible to breed a colony for months before you ever see one.

The people who aren’t allergic can’t do anything until they see one. I guess on some level we should be grateful we have some kind of warning. I just wish it did not itch so very badly…

• bed bugs clear Port Jervis, NY Hospital’s mental health unit
• Presidential Towers sold, with free bed bugs! Doctors and bedbugs (again)
• teaching doctors to diagnose bed bug bites
• World exclusive: Bedbuggers experiment with being bitten, on purpose! (Part 4)

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