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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Entire Kansas City high-rise gets thermal treatment for bed bugs

nobugsonme — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 04:27:22 +0000

All of the residents of Kansas City, Missouri’s Plaza Towers apartments are being evacuated for two nights so that the entire 81-unit high-rise can be treated using ThermaPureHeat’s thermal methods.

Residents told KMBC reporters they had as little as six days’ notice before evacuating and they were understandably frustrated by this.

On the other hand, many tenants with bed bugs would give anything to have their landlords treat the entire building using thermal methods –which, done properly, solve the bed bug problem in one treatment.

The building has had bed bugs for “about 18 months.”

Tenants were given free hotel rooms with breakfast and drink vouchers for the two nights they had to evacuate their homes.

Thermal treatment can get rid of bed bugs in one go, but what thermal methods can’t do is prevent bed bugs from being reintroduced into the structure — the day tenants return, or weeks or months later.

Everyone who has contact with the building must be educated and take steps to avoid such a scenario. And it isn’t easy.

We can only hope tenants and employees were thoroughly educated about:

what they should take with them (if anything) while the building is being treated, and how these items should be treated to be ensured to be free of bed bugs;
how to avoid bringing bed bugs to a hotel (or any other place they would be staying — relative’s home, friend’s home, employee’s home), and how to avoid picking bed bugs up from those same places;
the possibility that bed bugs came to the building via a tenant’s or employee’s friend’s or relative’s home, or a school or workplace — even if no one else was aware of a problem there;
the dangers of taking in secondhand items, which may also have brought the problem in.

In the KMBC video linked above, it was disturbing to see a tenant load an open cloth bag of clothing and a computer into his car, as he prepared to evacuate for treatment. Bed bugs could potentially be carried in these items — not just to a car or hotel, but back into the building after treatment.

Ultimately, a building like this needs an education program (starting with the above information), as well as an ongoing plan for inspections and prevention.

Dusting and sealing cracks and crevices between units and regular professional inspections may go some way towards preventing future bed bug problems.

Prompt, aggressive treatment (and extensive inspections) at the first sign of future bed bug bites or bed bug sightings may help avoid the need to treat the whole building again.

And at $65,000, that would be a worthwhile goal.

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Faulty bed bug information

nobugsonme — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:55:45 +0000

Florida’s WCTV.com recently ran a story about the wonderful methods used at the University of Florida to bake bed bugs in furniture (they set up an ad hoc oven in the center of the room).

That’s not news to us.

However, this report also contained a curious sidenote:

The environmental protection agency has prohibited the use of pesticides to kill bed bugs.

Huh?!?

I think not.

See the original article here: Bed Bug Heater.Similar Posts:

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RainCity Housing’s “bed bug sauna” now active in new Vancouver building

nobugsonme — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:02:22 +0000

Remember when we reported back in June 2008 that a new RainCity Housing development in Vancouver was going to contain a “bed bug sauna” for treatment of infested items?

The new building “The Lux”, at 65 Hastings Street, is in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a highly infested neighborhood, and provides 25 transitional housing units, and 67 supported long-term housing units. And they’ve started baking tenants’ bed bugs.

RainCity is a chartiable organization which provides housing to people who need it. Their website states,

The men and women who benefit from the services of RainCity Housing are treated with dignity and respect, and are offered a safe place to live, independence and improved quality of life.

Nothing says “dignity and respect” as much as helping people to live without the presence of bed bugs.

The Vancouver Courier reported of the new sauna room, that

Staff take bed bug-infested furniture to a 200-square-foot cream-coloured room with a grey cement floor and four metal troughs. A gas boiler heats water and an electric fan spreads heat throughout the room. Simpson, operations manager for RainCity, wraps infested mattresses, carries them carefully to the ground floor room, cranks the dry heat to 60 degrees Celsius for four to six hours, and watches bed bugs creep from the highest point of an item down, until they dry out and fall off.

It does not replace bed bug treatment for the unit, but does mean tenants do not have to throw out belongings which they may have been asked to toss in the past.

However,

RainCity hasn’t run the belongings of tenants moving into The Lux through the oven before they get set up, but it might do so when the flow of tenants moving in decreases. The nine-storey building provides low-barrier transitional housing with intensive staffing on two floors, and provides apartments for men and women who have a history of homelessness.

In my opinion, it would be best to run new tenants’ belongings through the unit. Many people will not notice they have bed bugs until the problem is pronounced — especially since many people do not react to bed bug bites. And tenants with bed bugs can spread bed bugs to others via common areas, and outside of the building (buses, hangouts, etc.).

With construction and consultant costs, Simpson estimates the bed bug room cost $8,000 out of the $22 million it took to construct 92 new social housing units in the Downtown Eastside. Extra money was spent in an attempt to seal each unit. Electrical outlets include flanges to keep bed bugs at bay. RainCity’s maintenance contract with a pest control company continues but in this new building, treating rooms above, below and next to an infested one shouldn’t be necessary.

$8000 out of $22 million? Peanuts.

And simply sealing each unit carefully from the outset may go a long way to helping prevent bed bugs spreading.

The bed bug sauna idea is attracting interest from public housing provider BC Housing:

Bill Briscall, RainCity’s communications manager, said B.C. Housing is interested in including bed bug saunas at each of the 12 city-owned sites where social housing is planned. RainCity Housing runs shelters, including the controversial HEAT shelters under Granville Bridge, long-term housing, outreach programs, life skills and food services.

The Globe and Mail also reported on the Bed Bug Sauna at The Lux (PDF here).Similar Posts:

FAQ: What is a Packtite?

nobugsonme — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 22:57:47 +0000

Someone commented on an old post about this product today, and seeing much of the information was outdated, and we have so much more to say about the Packtite now, I wanted to bring it up to date.

The Packtite is a little machine into which you can place packed or unpacked luggage, stuffed animals, shoes, “unwashable” clothing, and other items. You leave your stuff in it for several hours while it heats up, killing bed bugs and eggs inside. You need to carefully follow the instructions and monitor the temperature at the core of your items, in order to make sure 120 F is attained throughout, and then leave the Packtite running for an hour after the temperature is reached.

Although the unit was originally designed so that frequent travelers could bake their luggage when they got home from a trip — for the purpose of preventing a bed bug infestation at home, people with bed bugs quickly saw the possibilities in terms of de-bugging items in the home.

Packtite measures measures 36l x 19w x 24h inches and looks like this:

The Packtite was independently evaluated by entomologist Sean Rollo of The Bed Bug Resource, who found the Packtite did reach the required temperature of 120 F, and said “In summary, I am happy with the unit.” On our Bedbugger forums, bedbugs78 asked if the item would melt plastic bags. David James, the Packtite’s creator, responded:

I can answer the plastic question, with our newly designed unit we tested cheap thin walled plastic bags to see if we would have any melting issues, these bags were tested by tying them directly to the metal frame inside and were positioned closest to the heat source- after 4 hours of heating we did not have any plastic melting issues. The inside of this unit reaches sauna like temperatures and is a good guide to use when considering what to put inside. We are currently including a digital thermometer with each packtite so that the user can monitor temperatures of personal items placed in the unit to insure they reach killing temperatures.

As Sean notes in the same thread, “It can be used to treat anything that can be heated to 120-140F. ” And Packtite creator David notes,

… we have a long list of specific safety instructions plus we are including a digitial thermometer with every unit so that our customers can track the heating process if they like. Each unit also has a timer so that it will shut off after 4 hours.

The timer is an important safety feature. People began to use the machine to get rid of bed bugs in all kinds of stuff which was previously difficult for individuals to treat. Bedbugger forum user Overwhelmed said,

I’ve treated a pretty wide variety of stuff: purses, books, shoes, mail I need to send to my roommate who is away at grad school, the footstool and removable seat of an armchair that lives in my bedroom, the carpet attachment to my vacuum, the wood-framed mirror that hung on a wall near my bed . . .

Adele tells us she baked a loosely packed box of papers.

Mangycur had some creative ideas also, including heating empty clean-but-used Ziploc XL bags, yoga props, and a cat scratching post. She asked here if we might compile a master list of items which could be treated in the Packtite, and David reminded us that the best practice is to learn to use the probe to monitor the temperatures, so we can judge whether any particular item has reached the correct killing temperature: David said,

The master list idea would be nice, but I think there will be just too many variables and might discourage use of the included thermometer to monitor ones progress. We could say x number of hours for sweaters, but the type of sweater, the size of the sweater and how tightly folded etc the sweater was put in would effect treatment time. I would recommend running the thermometer into the center mass of what you are heating and once it hits 120 give it another hour just to be sure. I love the different things you mentioned putting in the unit, who knew bed bugs could be into yoga?

Packtite owners must use their own judgment. Remember you are baking an item at 120-140 F. Even items which can usually be safely treated (such as leather shoes) may suffer effects in time. One has to use own’s own goog judgment.

Of course, if you have an infestation of bed bugs, you have to worry that even the cloth-covered Packtite might become infested while sitting around on the floor. Not to worry, David notes here,

… if you are worried about the outside of the unit being infested, you can remove the internal frame and put the canvas bag part in a dryer.

Thinking back on a short time ago when people used to put sealed things in storage for 18 months rather than keep potentially-infested items in the home after treatment, this is really quite a revolutionary option.

For people who are infested at work, or whose children are attending a school known to be infested, this may be a way of keeping bed bugs in clothing, backpacks and purses, from coming into the home.

You can see a video of Jeff White of Bed Bug Central talking about and demonstrating the use of the Packtite below.

Note: Bedbugger has an affiliate relationship with Packtite. If you purchase through the links here or via one of our other Packtite ads, part of the proceeds of your purchase go to help support the operating costs of Bedbugger.com, at no additional cost to you.

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Joe Fiorito on thermal, DDT, and public health

nobugsonme — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:48:06 +0000

Joe Fiorito has an excellent new article today, and it represents a departure from many of his past bed bug stories, which focused on individual stories of life with bed bugs, often focusing on low-income and elderly tenants.

This time, Fiorito reports on a presentation by Dr. Michael Potter, long one of our favorite entomologists, who spoke at a Canadian pest control conference recently.

He describes the wonders of thermal treatment (which we agree is very appealing, but will not work and should not be tried as a do-it-yourself remedy). He also notes that bed bugs developed resistance to DDT (which we already knew).

Fiorito also notes that Potter questions why health departments are so reluctant to declare bed bugs a public health pest:

Potter noted that cities were quite willing in the past to declare bedbugs a public health menace. He seemed puzzled by our reluctance to do so today. He said, “This is the most serious pest of our generation.”

He’s right.

It’s important to remember that while having your city actively engaged in fighting bed bugs (as Toronto is, and most cities aren’t) is hugely important, it is not a cure-all. It’s just a start.

Bed bugs remain, and they stink.

Please do read Bed Bug News Only Gets Worse in the Toronto Star, today.Similar Posts:

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San Diego State University: don’t wait for students to show you a bed bug

nobugsonme — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:18:40 +0000

The Daily Aztec (an independent student paper) reported yesterday on the bed bug situation at San Diego State University. Officials there say there are currently no known bed bug cases, though the article notes there have been bed bugs found on campus in recent months.

One place bed bugs were discovered: the “egg chairs” in the Counseling and Psychological Services office. (This makes sense: people with bed bugs are under a lot of stress, and liable to seek help!) Director of the center, Dr. Sandy Jorgensen-Funk:

“We immediately shut down the chairs,” Jorgensen-Funk said, “so that they weren’t used by students, as soon as we found this out.”

Jorgensen-Funk added that the chairs were then treated for a second time in November and again last month.

“We didn’t know what they were,” she said. “We just wanted to make sure that we weren’t exposing students to a problem.”

Whether any students were exposed to the problem before the treatments were conducted is not known at this time.

The existence of bed bugs in the egg chairs strongly suggests the existence of bed bugs elsewhere on campus.

Here’s why: the bed bugs did not spontaneously arise in the egg chairs. Someone who had been exposed to bed bugs sat in the chairs, and the bed bugs stayed there. They could have climbed off a person, or walked directly out of a person’s bag.

They may have come from a dorm. Or a student’s off-campus home. But either way, we have to consider that if the bed bugs hitchhiked to one location, they can (and probably did) go to others as well.

We do not know how many bed bugs were seen in the chair, but it is also possible that the bed bugs were not harboring in the chair but climbed up into it to bite the person. Rooms, structures, can be infested as easily as pieces of furniture. The actual harborage could have been a nearby desk, a crack in the wall, another chair.

It is highly likely that anyone who sat in the chairs was exposed to bed bugs, and may possibly have taken them to other places — classrooms, library, cafeterias, dorm rooms, off-campus housing, etc. Bed bugs are hitch-hikers.

However, although the presence of bed bugs in the egg chairs suggests bed bugs are somewhere else on campus, The Daily Aztec reports having heard several bed bug reports from various residences which were found to be “unsubstantiated after discussions with the Office of Housing Administration and Student Health Services.”

Benita Mann, manager of custodial and maintenance services for the OHA, said there hasn’t been any known bed bug problem in campus housing for some time.

“Several years ago we had a problem,” Mann said, “but those buildings have since been torn down.”

Yet those bed bugs did not spontaneously appear in the egg chairs. Whoever responded to the egg chair bed bug infestation must sure have been asking himself or herself “who brought those bed bugs in, and where else did bed bugs from the chairs end up?”

If students come to the on-campus health service suspecting bed bugs, the health service wants to see an actual insect sample before they take a bed bug complaint seriously:

Dr. Gregg Lichtenstein, medical director at SHS, said complaints of bed bug bites isn’t something SHS sees very often.

“It’s not anything regular,” Lichtenstein said. “We see people who come in with bites of various sorts on an occasional basis – and most of them are, frankly, flea bites.”

Lichtenstein said that student inquiries about bed bug bites are rare, and no one can actually recall seeing a bed bug being brought in to confirm a diagnosis.

While it is absolutely true that one cannot diagnose bed bugs based on skin reactions, it is also absolutely true that it is difficult — except in heavy infestations — to catch a bed bug.

Students simply cannot be expected to find, catch, and bring in a bed bug sample.

Instead, when bed bugs are suspected, the room should be inspected, either by a trained pest professional willing to spend a lot of time doing so, or perhaps by a bed bug sniffing dog.

Lichtenstein also misunderstands the health problems posed by bed bugs:

“Bed bugs are not vectors of disease. They may be annoying, but that’s about it.”

Yes, bed bugs are not known vectors of disease. But bed bugs are more than annoying. They can trouble students (who may have difficulty getting help, especially if evidence is not obvious). They can make people lose sleep and create stress. This in addition to skin reactions from bed bug bites which vary from nothing to severe. And in very, very few cases, people have had life-threatening allergic reactions to bed bug bites.

Not only do colleges need to react well to suspected bed bug infestations. Colleges also need to be proactive against bed bugs.

Here’s why: we are told that as many as 70% of the population may not react to bed bug bites (per Dr. Jerome Goddard the state medical entomologist with the Mississippi Department of Health in Jackson, Mississippi); this means many people may not suspect they have a bed bug problem until it is very far advanced — so far advanced as to be visually obvious, even in daytime.

And if your bed bug infestation has gotten to that point, bed bugs may have already spread beyond that particular room.

College officials need to understand that it is hard to see a bed bug or catch it in the act, since they generally feed in the wee small hours, and are designed to hide between meals in tight cracks, undetected.

They also need to understand that bed bugs are a problem no one should have to put up with — even if they are not yet known to spread disease.

Finally — and the article does not engage with this issue at all — college officials need to realize that bed bugs travel off-campus too.

Students exposed to bed bugs may bring bed bugs home from campus, causing their parents expensive problems of bed bug detection and treatment. And other students will just as surely bring bed bugs onto campus, from hotels or from home. Faculty and staff will likely do so too. Bed bugs are a pest of exposure, and no one is immune.

Since bed bugs have come back with such a vengeance in society at large, having bed bugs enter a college campus is inevitable. Being reactive is not enough, given the problems of quickly detecting bed bugs before they spread around. And college administrators who realize this, and are proactive, have a better chance of getting bed bugs under control.

Ultimately, I have a hunch that a good proactive and reactive bed bug program may seem expensive at first, but will save money in the long run, over other approaches.

To read more about how colleges are dealing with bed bugs on campus, see this post which considers the model of Texas A&M, which proactively uses bed bug sniffing dogs to detect bed bug problems before students do, and TempAir to treat bed bugs in one shot with thermal remediation.

Heat also features at the University of Florida, where mattresses and other infested items are heated in a makeshift oven, as part of bed bug treatment, according to this article frem Channel 2 in Charleston.Similar Posts:

Seattle Housing Authority, you are smart about bed bugs

nobugsonme — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 06:45:23 +0000

The Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) is buying a bed bug dog to sniff out public housing buildings for bed bugs. NWCN reports:

In Seattle Housing Authority low-income buildings over the past three months the problem has exploded. The critters are becoming resistant to insecticides.

Now the SHA is spending $35,000 to take control.

Smart thinking — because we’re told many (if not most) people do not react to bed bug bites.

If you don’t react, and you don’t see bed bugs, you do not complain. And so your apartment stays infested with no one the wiser.

A pro-active inspection program is a great idea for any apartment building. No, bed bug dogs are not 100% effective in sniffing out bed bugs, but they do a lot better than most humans, I’d venture.

Done properly — with a well-trained bed bug k9 and a knowledgeable trainer — this detection method can be effective. And less time-consuming than having an experienced PCO search (which, many tell us, takes more than an hour to do properly, in a not-very-big apartment).

The SHA is also investing in thermal remediation technology (ThermaPure Heat). And the SHA will be educating residents on how to spot bed bugs.

But one of the best things they can do is keep that bed bug k9 “Bugsy” circulating around and around the units of SHA buildings, before anyone complains about a single bite or sighting.

Combining an effective and pro-active detection method with an effective bed bug remediation method?

Smart, Seattle Housing Authority. Smart.

Go to NWCN.com to see the video.Similar Posts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emphasis mine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are in big trouble.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Baked Bed Bugs spreading holiday cheer, in the form of bed bug carcasses

nobugsonme — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:01:49 +0000

Ahhh, lovely image, no?

Baked Bed Bugs in Vancouver, well known in our Bedbugger Forums, is in the news today, having done a thermal bed bug remediation for a New Westminster, BC family that was short of funds and going through a bad bed bug infestation.

The Province reports that Laura Powell, a mother of two, asked a Christmas wish bureau for help, and received not only gifts for the family, but the greatest gift a bed bug sufferer could get for Christmas: an end to bed bugs.

After Powell’s story ran, she was contacted by the Christmas bureau and told there were several families who were willing to sponsor her during the holidays.

On top of being showered with gifts to put under the tree, a bedbug company by the name of Baked Bed Bugs offered to fumigate her apartment free of charge.

“He is one of the nicest men I have ever met in my whole life,” she said of the owner of Baked Bed Bugs. “We are wonderfully happy. I’m just so pleased.” After having just about all her Christmas wishes answered — although she was unable to visit her family due to the snow — Powell is looking forward to the new year. She hopes to move to a new apartment soon.

Of course, they referred to the thermal treatment as “fumigation.” That word — as a stand-in for “treatment” — seems particularly beloved to the Canadian media.Similar Posts:

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