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

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

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

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

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

[Emphasis mine.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Emphasis mine.]

State and local regulations unfortunately are not always sufficient.

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

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

• Residents sue motel on Staten Island due to bed bugs
• Family sues Chicago area Holiday Inn over bed bug infestation
• 2009 Great Sofa Roundup in Fort Collins, Colorado cancelled due to bed bugs

Can someone please tell the good folks at the Johnson City, Tennessee Fire Station #2 on Cherokee Road that leaving mattresses outside in the heat is not a reliable way to kill bed bugs?

This news video says they’re “hoping the heat” will deal with bed bugs in the mattresses.  Not likely.

They got a pest control operator to spray after finding bed bugs Monday.  It sounds like they’ve also put all their furniture outside.  But this is not necessarily going to make the furniture bed bug-free.

Mattresses can be covered in encasements designed and tested to keep bed bugs in or out, but other items will also have to be treated.

I hope the department is able to get rid of bed bugs quickly, so these firefighters can relax when they’re not saving lives.

Check out this video from WJHL in the Tricities:  Bed Bugs Invade Johnson City Fire Station.Similar Posts:

• Johnson City’s John Sevier Apartments tenants get new mattresses
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• Langdon Mill Apartments: now 85% bed bug-free

Residents of the John Sevier Apartments in Johnson City, Tennessee, formerly the John Sevier Hotel, live in a building historically associated with Al Capone. More recently they have had something else in common with people who stayed in the same building during Prohibition, when the town was known as “Little Chicago”: bed bug bites.

Their battle with bed bugs has been going on for a year and a half, according to this article from News Channel 11.

And yesterday, between 40-50 residents whose mattresses had been thrown out have had new ones delivered, bought by the Salvation Army with donations.

Another story six weeks ago from WJHL said Terminex was beginning treatment in the building, with freezing and pesticides.

I assume that the mattresses are being replaced because the bed bugs have completely disappeared.

A few questions spring to mind:

• Were all tenants educated about detecting and avoiding bed bug infestations in the future?
• Are the bed bugs 100% gone? (If yes, how do we know this?)
• Were tenants issued with bed bug proof encasements?  Because it’s probably inevitable in the current climate that someone will reintroduce bed bugs at some point.

And if there are still bed bugs in the building — which is difficult to determine with any certainty, frankly — good encasements, used properly, will at least keep them from harboring on or in the mattresses.

Happy Thanksgiving to our readers in the US, and may all your bites today involve turkey (or Tofurkey)!Similar Posts:

• Bed Bugs hit Johnson City Fire Station
• 18-story Dayton apartment building infested with bed bugs to be treated with Vikane gas
• Towels under the door: when cities abandon tenants with bed bugs
• Bed bugs at college: SUNY Potsdam
• Another 23-25 Temple St., Nashua, N.H. tenant sues landlord over bed bugs

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

WKRN claims,

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

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

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

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

Click to read the article or watch the more extensive video report from WKRN.com.
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Bed bugs are now more widely found on media reports on broader topics than bed bug infestations and new bed bug-proof mattress encasements. For example, this article from Time about Barack Obama’s upcoming week-long vacation visit to his native Hawai’i:

Obama is also scheduled to hold a fundraiser at the posh Halekulani Hotel in Waikiki that could rake in more than $500,000, reaping the rewards of being the first presidential nominee to travel to Hawaii since Richard Nixon in 1960. There’s no word on where he might be staying during his visit, but he may want to avoid that particular hotel, which suffered a plague of bed bugs in April, according to the Pacific Business Journal.

This is a past story from Bedbugger about a woman who claimed to encounter bed bugs at a function at the Halekulani Hotel, and bring them home.

You may be interested to know that, unlike the head of the Tennessee Hotel and Lodging Association who was quoted here yesterday as calling bed bugs a “non-issue” in Tennessee hotels, the Hawai’i hotel industry group is admitting bed bugs are a problem in Hawai’i, and is taking steps to improve the situation.

According to this article in the Pacific Business Journal,

The state House approved a nonbinding resolution in 2006 that asked the Department of Health to work with the state’s tourism liaison and the Hawaii Hotel & Lodging Association to raise awareness on dealing with bedbugs.

A symposium on dealing with bedbugs is in the works, said Murray Towill, president of the Hawaii Hotel & Lodging Association.

Great news! I am glad to hear that government and industry are admitting there is a bed bug issue in Hawai’i, and working to address it together.

There’s no doubt in my mind that bed bugs are spreading in hotels in all fifty states. Hotel industry folks everywhere should be working on stopping the spread of bed bugs, not playing ostrich and hiding their heads in the sand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

News Channel 5 in Nashville tells viewers,

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

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

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• NYC Department of Education advertises for bed bug killer

Lisa Hoffman did a story on bed bugs inThe Knoxville News on Tuesday. Most interesting was the article’s examination of the rise of bed bugs, and comments from University of Kentucky entomologist Dr. Michael Potter.

A scourge of mankind since caveman days, the wingless creatures all but disappeared in the United States after World War II, when the widespread use of DDT and other powerful insecticides apparently spelled their doom.

A general shunning of such chemicals in recent times, and a surge in international business and tourism travel, are most often identified as responsible for the re-emergence, which some say has not yet even peaked.

“It’s going to get worse,” said University of Kentucky urban entomology professor Michael Potter, a scientist not given to hyperbole or melodrama. “We’re in for some very, very interesting times.”

Just how interesting will be hard to quantify, however.

No one is counting the number of infestations nationwide. Because the insects are not believed to spread diseases, there is no federal requirement for city or state public-health departments to report the number of cases they come across. Only a few local health agencies even keep track of the problem in their own jurisdictions.

Pest-control companies provide one of the few gauges available, and they portray a fast-growing market for their services, driven in part by increasing public awareness of the long-forgotten insect, which usually are the size and oval shape of an apple seed, though often flatter.

Industry giant Orkin, Inc. says “bed bugs” is the No. 1 search term it registers on www.orkincommercial.com, and reports that the number of states in which its exterminators have done battle with the bugs jumped from 35 in 2003 to 48 now. (The two missing states are the Dakotas, where Orkin has no outlets, Meek said.)

I’m glad to see the article commenting on how the government is not tracking infestations (as I believe it should be).

It’s no surprise that the article reports Orkin has now had bed bug cases in every state except the Dakotas, where they have no outlets. (Other reports have said all 50 states are experiencing bed bug infestations, so I hope someone is experienced in dealing with them in the Dakotas!)

Another unscientific measure of the problem is an assortment of Web sites operated as victim-support groups, such as www.bedbugger.com, where the afflicted trade tips and tales of woe.

No press is bad press, and I’m glad the Knoxville News did research on our site. I prefer the term “bed bug warrior” to “victim,” though I’ll take the latter if it means people see having to live with bed bugs as a crime, unfair, and something that must be stopped at once!

From these and other sources, a picture emerges of the proliferation of bed bugs — and it is not a pleasant one. Many distraught travelers and tenants describe their experiences as life-changing episodes that leave them emotionally scarred, saddled with hundreds of dollars in exterminating bills, perpetually cleaning, and scared to sleep or travel. Some report suffering with more than 100 bites.

As an example of a “victim’s” experience of bed bugs, the article says,

Listen to “Selma B.,” of Cincinnati, who moved to escape an infestation: “I am still freaked about this. I am convinced my new apartment will get infested. To my friends, I compared this to having a fire destroy all of your possessions. What little things you might get to keep, you have to clean it like a crazy person. It’s just as devastating as a fire, but a fire doesn’t usually come back,” she wrote in January on one Web site.

Oddly enough, after having already mentioned Bedbugger, Hoffman decided not to mention that this was the site where Selma B. had left her comments in January. She’s the sixth commenter on one of Jess’s posts, here. I am glad this reporter read our site so extensively, even if she did not attribute that quotation to one of our commenters. The important thing is that the message gets across about how bad bed bugs are. “100 bites” is the tip of the iceberg: some Bedbuggers have lived with bed bugs for months and months. I don’t think people can fathom what that means, unless they’ve gone through this for even a few weeks.

Lisa Hoffman also covers bed bugs today in Scripps News, where she mentions PCO Sean’s helpful bed bug resource. Congratulations, Sean!Similar Posts:

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Such an interesting assortment of bed bug news came through my inbox this evening.

First, WLNS of Lansing, Michigan warns that bed bugs are the pest of the 21st century, that they “wreak havoc on your skin and your life,” their incidence has increased 75% n five years (oh, I’d say much more than that), and fighting an infestation is costly, upwards of $300 per room. After scaring the living bejaysus out of the good (Lansonians? Lansineers?), what one, tiny pithy nugget of practical advice do they give?

When returning from a trip, experts say it’s a good idea to vacuum out your suitcase.

Well, it’s not bad advice, but is that the only thing you’ve got for us WLNS? Looks like your readers might need them a few Bedbugger FAQs.

WVLT in Tennessee also seems to have latched on to the phrase “bug of the 21st century.” (All right, which entomologist let that one out of the bag? Well, if it replaces that nursery-rhyme mumbo-jumbo, then we’re on to a good thing, I guess.)

More suggestions here, including suitcase-vacuuming (again, I’m sensing a pattern here), and the warning to those who are thinking it’s a bedsheet issue,

If you’re leaving for a trip, don’t think taking your own bedding will help. They live in the mattress.

Just make sure and check the bed before bringing your stuff to the room.

Well, sorta, but not quite: they also live in the baseboards, bed frame, electrical sockets, light fixtures, ceiling, floor, and sofa, among other places. The information is more plentiful for Tennessee than for Lansing, Michigan, but the quality is a bit hit-or-miss. They’re obsessed with bed bugs being “in the mattress,” but they also warn people not to toss vacuum bags in the trash, and so on. (Tennesee is also playing a bit fast and loose with the rules of punctuation, spelling, and grammar, so compulsive proofreaders and your high school English teacher should steer clear!)

OSU’s student paper The Lantern reports that an infested grad student dorm at Ohio State University is getting some serious “fumigation” in response to bed bugs. The collection of all students’ non-washable belongings—isolated, bagged, placed in red carts—sounds promising. It’s a bit mysterious what will happen to that stuff (in the red carts, they have to be red carts!), but hopefully it will be picked through with a fine-toothed comb by PCOs with bed bug knowledge, and returned.

If this is so, and if OSU also follows up at 10-14 day intervals (follow-up was not mentioned at all in the article), this would not be unlike the Stanford bed bug protocol, which we believe to be the best reported in any response to college dorm bed bugs. (You can scroll down this list to see past coverage on Bedbugger of Stanford bed bug cases, and gawk at the love fest I’ve put on for Stanford upon hearing the descriptions of how San Francisco’s Crane PCO and the Stanford admin dealt with those cases. It’s beautiful, really.) I only note this because reports have also come from many other colleges of poor bed bug procedures.

Update 5/25: 100 rooms on 3 floors are being treated. Bed bugs were found on the 9th and 11th floors, and they’re treating the 10th as well. (What about the 8th?)

Finally, Australians appear to have been battling bed bugs a wee bit longer than those of us in the US. (Canada, too, a bit ahead in the Bed Bug Olympics.) So no surprise that they’re at the forefront of innovation: this dry steamer does the bed bug killing job, without getting your stuff all wet (that’s dry steam, i.e. no mold!) Their website says,

Duplex Cleaning Machines has a variety of industrial and commercial strength steam products to tackle bed bug epidemic including the Jet Steam, Tosca and JetVac range.

The JetVac Professional Plus is an ideal solution to the bed bug problem as it delivers 160°+ Dry Steam with a tool which applies the steam evenly without blowing the bugs away and then also vacuums away the dead bugs and their eggs.

Wait, they have a steamer named Tosca? Puccini must be tossing in his grave.

But the question on everyone’s mind: when will my PCO have one? I can just see it now, integrated pest management: first, they bring in the bed bug dog. Then the dry steaming and caulking. And finally, the chemical and mechanical onslaught begins. Well, the bug of the 21st century needs the PCO of the 21st century, no?Similar Posts:

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