We’re familiar with bed bug dogs, here at Bedbugger, but it is interesting to read of the situation in NZ.

“She’s not big, she’s clean and she’s a clever dog,” Mr Morley said of the three-year-old. “She can get into little places and sniff inside mattresses.”

Well, I bet she’s less clean when she comes out of some of those mattresses.

Yesterday Joni worked through 20 rooms and even detected bedbugs that were behind a headboard fixed to the wall.

When she finds something, she will tap at it with her paw before Mr Morley asks her to check again with her nose. After bedbugs are found, each surface of the room can be treated with steam within a day whereas chemical treatments could see a room shut off for many days. Mr Morley says the combination of Joni and steam produces a 98 per cent success rate. Manual treatments have a 20 per cent success rate.

I found this interesting, and I’d like to hear more about companies working with a combination of dogs and steam. What it sounds like Morley is describing is a situation in which the dog pinpoints the exact location of bed bugs (or eggs, which the article tells us she can also detect), and then that area is carefully steamed (I assume with a dry steam machine). Steaming that pinpoints a specific area does seem both more reliable and easier than steaming the whole area, hoping to strike bed bug gold.

I’d also like to know what that 98% success rate represents: I assume it means 98% of cases need not be serviced twice. (Or does it mean most cases eliminate 98% of their bed bugs? Big difference, no?)

This does sound promising, though as a customer, I would not mind if they then employed a bit of residual or mechanical (dust) killer to seal the deal. When it comes to killing bed bugs, I don’t think there’s such a thing as overkill.

It sounds like Joni does a lot of sleuthing looking for bed bugs in hotels, and a regular run through with the bedbug dog and an industrial steamer would be greatly reassuring to me as a prospective hotel guest.

In Australia, similar dogs are used to sniff out termites, which mainly affect the coastal urban areas of the country. Joni was trained in Queensland, one of five dogs around the world trained to sniff out bedbugs.

I think this may be based on outdated statistics, since I know of at least five bed bug-sniffing dogs currently working in the United States! Nevertheless, it does sound like bedbuggers in New Zealand and at least some parts of Australia have or will soon have access to this service, which is spreading quickly, as is (unfortunately) the need for it.

• Bed bug dogs in the news
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• University of Florida tests bed bug dogs
• Abbey the Bed Bug Dog: news report

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Terry says, “A pest control program for bed bugs is very detailed. You’ve got to get all the crevices. We are doing a little more than we really need to, but it’s to make sure we don’t have a problem in the future.”

That means Terry’s son, Tony, has to bag contents of every locker in the school, and then spray those contents with an insecticide.

Tony and his mother are wearing only gloves now, but when the heavy fumigation gets underway, they’ll be wearing face masks, too.

I am interested in these methods, since I have not heard PCOs here talking about spraying into bags of belongings. Perhaps a PCO would tell us what this might be.

I initially thought it was a good thing that Bracken County Schools were taking bed bugs seriously after finding a bed bug in school, since cities like New York City are so slow to take action against similar situations. My initial positive sense was based on Bracken County’s willingness to treat schools for bed bugs. I thought that their treatment of every school in the district was based on a sense that bed bugs must be more widespread than in just this one school.

Now, however, I am becoming more concerned about the community’s response, especially their apparent obsession with pinpointing its source. It betrays a lack of education about bed bugs and their behavior, which appears to be a prevalent problem elsewhere too.

Parents in Brooksville are divided about the schools closing an extra day just for bed bugs.

Elizabeth Aulick, a mother of two Bracken County students says, “Yeah, it does concern me, but the letter I got said they only found one bug. If it’s one bug isolated to one child, keep him home for a few days.”

A mother of three Bracken County students, including one at the Middle School says, “I guess it’s a little unexpected. I never expected something like this, but I guess it’s a good thing. Just to be on the safe side. It didn’t both me, I said, ‘Well, that’s fine.’”

The school fumigation in Bracken County is getting the full support of the county health department there.

I am glad the health department in Bracken County recognizes bed bugs as a concern, since many don’t. However, I have to say that what’s being said about the child in this case is absurd.

People in Bracken County must not associate the schools’ bed bug issue, if they indeed have one, with this one student who may have had the bed bug on his things or on his clothing. Bed bugs can live and breed in schools or in school buses or public transportation, and they can crawl onto students at any of these locations (as well as many others). As we have taken pains to explain in the past, the presence of a bed bug on a person or their things absolutely does not prove the person brought the bed bug in.

All parents, including those of the child who was bitten by the bed bug, must search at home and have a qualified PCO inspect if anyone is complaining of bites or if they see any bed bugs or possible signs. However, it is crucial that parents and school officials realize that bed bugs are not lice, and do not live on people. They crawl on, feed, and run away. If a bed bug is found on a person in a school, it does not mean the person brought the bed bug to the school.

I would assume the Bracken County School officials know this, since they are treating every school, and not just the one the bed bug was found in. And yet it does not sound like the parents or media have been picking up on that fact.

If the child did indeed have had an infestation at home and brought them into the school, then his family, too, caught them from somewhere. They spread easily. And everyone should be alert. Everyone should be asking where this family might have picked up bed bugs: parents’ workplace? YMCA? School? Bus? Motel? Because where they got them, you can get them too.

However, the child should not be blamed, nor should he be kept home. People with active infestations need to take some steps to avoid spreading bed bugs. Treating the child himself as if he were contagious is an ignorant mistake.

• Schools in Bracken County, KY shut down due to bed bugs
• NYC Bedbuggers: time to have some local politicians over for a bite or two
• New York City public schools continue to be treated for bed bugs
• Spring break bed bug warnings!

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“There’s a lot of folks who don’t bother to call us. They’re embarrassed. The social connotation goes back to the early 1900s; they were associated with slummy places. And that’s not the case now,” said Michael Waldvogel, an entomologist with the N.C. Cooperative Extension. The bugs are a problem all over the country, experts say.

Waldvogel says he has gotten reports of bedbugs from across the state — some tied to vacationers bringing them home from beach houses or hotels.

Perhaps a few of them can also be tied to the reselling of used, unsanitized mattresses in Charlotte, N.C. This woman claimed to purchase a heavily infested bedroom suite from another N.C. retailer. Judging from these two stories alone, we can see how easily North Carolina, or any other state, would acquire a bed bug epidemic.

Getting back to the article,

… getting rid of [bed bugs] isn’t simple. Waldvogel advises hiring a skilled professional, in part because it’s important to consider carefully what chemicals to spray in living areas such as bedrooms.

“The person who treats your home should spend more time with a flashlight than a sprayer,” he said.

We’ve heard that advice before, but Bedbuggers tell us this PCO is a rare find indeed.

At Bayer Environmental Science in Research Triangle Park, entomologists are working to develop new techniques and make existing products more effective against bedbugs. Training is a big component of Bayer’s work, said Byron Reid, product development manager.

“There are thousands of pest control professionals out there who have never had to do the bedbug job,” he said. Bayer runs a training facility for pest control operators in Clayton, N.C., where it can re-create bedrooms and apartments to train in proper techniques.

If they want additional training grounds, maybe Advanced Hotel Services in Charlotte could just hand over a list of hotels who purchased mattresses from them while they had 600 unsanitized used hotel mattresses in stock. And then the hotels could hand over a list of people who stayed in the rooms in which those mattresses are used.

I bet some of them are suffering pretty badly right now and would not mind some PCOs coming in and learning bed bug-fighting techniques in their homes. Break out those flashlights, fellas!

• inspectors find 600 unsanitized mattresses at Charlotte, N.C. used furniture store
• Stirring up anti-immigrant sentiment in Charlotte: let’s start the blame game
• Mr. K, a North Carolina bed bug dog, in action
• Bed bugs: what’s really working?

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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.

• Cincinnati Establishes Bed Bug Furniture Pick-Up Procedures and Hotline
• Cincinnati fights bed bugs, declares some success
• Cincinnati: “best weapon against bed bugs is … education”
• Cincinnati government discovers bed bugs are not easily treated, news at 11

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They’ve started a bed bug hotline for “tips and information,” and people are asked to completely encase infested items in plastic before disposing of them. Residents can call to have infested items picked up curbside by a dedicated sanitation crew that knows what they’re picking up.

Dale Grigsby, Cincinnati Health Department: “Get the stuff as clean as you can, cracks and crevices of the mattresses and box springs, the best thing you can do is wrap them, completely encase them in some sort of a plastic, zippered liner, bed bugs can’t feed if they can’t get out, and that’s where they harbor.”

I note that even though Cincinnati officials remind us that bed bugs do not spread disease, the Cincinnati Health Department is a key player in this campaign.

Residents are also being warned about the dangers of used and rented furniture.

And one woman’s story reminds us how easily bed bugs may travel home with us. Pamela Mackey believes she got them from a hospital where she spent two days at her husband’s bedside; apparently, it came home in a sealed envelope:

After staying by her husbands bedside for a few days at University Hospital recently, Pamela Mackey says she returned home, and opened the admissions packet to find something she didn’t want to see.

Pamela Mackey, Bond Hill: “Took out a letter and unbeknownst to me there was a little critter…and my dismay I crushed this little critter and blood everywhere.”

Mackey says the critter was a bedbug, and while she contacted the hospital to tell them she’s still…

“Angry because I had brought something into my home that previously had not occupied my space.”

Click to view the video. For anyone in Cincinnati who’s reading this, you probably know more than we do! But just in case, the bed bug hotline for Cincinnati residents only is (513) 591-6000. (If you’re not in Cincinnati, please don’t use that number. Seek the services of a qualified PCO, read our FAQs, and come to the forum if you have questions!)

I am very impressed with the way the government in Cincinnati is trying to work on this. I seriously hope that the news reports will focus on treatment options, as well as furniture disposal, which seems to be a major focus. It is essential to get a hold on bed bug refuse in order to halt the spread. However, good bed bug treatment, from experienced PCOs who know bed bugs, is also essential. It’s important that people know how to find a good PCO, and also know about the dangers of self-treating this difficult pest situation. Other tips might also help Cincinnati residents solve their bed bug issues more swiftly.

Cincinnati is still the only city in the US that is taking action on such a large scale. And there is still so much more that can be done. Mayor Bloomberg, are you listening? I’ll bet you a bucket of diatomaceous earth that New York City’s got more bed bugs per capita than Cincinnati. It’s a bet I hate to win, but I think my odds are good. Why are we waiting, New Yorkers?

• Bed bugs taking over Wales too; hospitals and bed bugs
• Cincinnati Establishes Bed Bug Furniture Pick-Up Procedures and Hotline
• Cincinnati: awareness spreading, funds needed to fight bed bugs
• More from Cincinnati: senior housing complex

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The folks at National Allergy wrote recently to let me know they had done tests as to whether bed bugs could feed or pass through, or their eggs could pass through the fabric or the zippers of the mattress encasements, and I am happy to post them on the site for your perusal.

Click here to load a PDF of the report. The results begin on page 7.

• New mattress encasement comparison test data
• New: discount on National Allergy covers for Bedbugger readers!
• new Useful Stuff page
• Ossining, NY 8-year-old suffocates in Mattress Cover / sealed mattresses

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Journalist Sarah Ferguson dropped me an email to let me know that her Village Voice article on the seminar was up, here.

As expected, the bed bug news is not good:

“We have to be in an absolute bed bug state of mind,” warned Dr.
Michael Potter, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky and leading expert in the now global bed bug war, with no apologies to Billy Joel. “This problem is not going to go away. I don’t see how the problem is going to get better. It’s going to get chaotic.”

Potter came equipped with a PowerPoint presentation and tales of bed bugs “oozing their way” through hospitals, nursing homes, movie theaters, drycleaners, Laundromats, schools, and all manner of dwelling spaces.

“Probably every major university in the U.S. has bed bugs in its dormitories,” he said. He flashed a particularly disheartening slide of an infested mattress in the “heart transplant wing of a major urban hospital.”

There were also entomologists and PCOs talking about pesticide-resistance, and rental property owners trying to cover their backsides:

One property owner wanted to know whether tenants could be sued for bringing the evil critters into a building—a notion that, given the rates of infestation in parts of NYC—struck us a little like suing for getting the flu.

The ‘flu analogy is an apt one we’ve often made ourselves.

“You’d have to be pretty confident that tenant was the cause,” responded Denise McCurry, an attorney for MGM Mirage resorts and casinos in Las Vegas, who was flown in to address the mounting liability issues faced by property owners and their exterminators. “And remember,” McCurry added, “the tenant is not likely to have a lot of money.”

As we keep saying, the blame game just does not work with bed bugs. (Click here for previous articles discussing the limits of the bed bug blame game.) Everyone is not allergic to the bites, and those who are allergic to bites generally notice bed bugs first, regardless of whose infestation actually started first. Those not allergic to bed bugs are the last they know they have them, and so very likely to spread them, as appears to have happened in Amanda’s case, covered on apartmenttherapy.com. But even in that case, as far as AT readers know, at least, there is no proof the bed bug infestation started with the “cute neighbor.” Who knows how many others in the building are infested. We’ve even heard of bed bugs being transmitted from one building to another via a shared wall.

Sarah welcomes you, and I encourage you, to leave a comment on the article.

This was mine:

I sorely wish that the NYC government would heed Dr. Michael Potter’s warnings about how bad bed bugs are and how much worse they’re going to get.

Most people in NYC with bed bugs, once they realize or suspect the problem, call their landlord, or a pest control operator.

Unfortunately, the city of NYC bases its statistics of how many new yorkers have bed bugs on how many people call 311, the city’s question and complaint hotline, to report bed bugs.

Since no homeowners, and few renters actually call 311 to report an infestation, the city’s statistics are very skewed.

When NYC undertakes a real study of how many homes pest control operators treat for bed bugs, as Toronto did in 2003, they will be very surprised to find out how widespread the problem is.

Unfortunately, Bloomberg prefers to pretend they are a minor problem, like cockroaches. When they finally spread to almost every building and almost every workplace, it will be too late to enact changes to halt their spread. Not only do we need a public education campaign, and a required-by-law service for picking up bed bug-infested refuse (as per the article), we need systems for tracking bed bug infestations, and better systems for dealing with renter’s complaints. Most people won’t call 311, I am told everyday, because they don’t want a bad reference from their landlord.

Until reporting bed bugs to the city is divorced from reporting a housing violation, we are not going to know how many people are infested.

I’d love to hear from anyone who was at the Bed BUg Control Seminar–what did you find interesting or new, that we should know about?

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• More bad news about Denver’s bed bug-infested Halcyon House

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First, learn a little bit about the enemy. Read the Bed Bugs 101 FAQs on this site, and use the links to bed bug photos to learn what bed bugs look like at different life stages.

Click to download this PDF of this comprehensive article by entomologists Steven Kells and Jeff Hahn of the University of Minnesota, which describes the steps you should take if you’ve been exposed to bed bugs. Remember you have the most chance of avoiding bringing bed bugs home if you take the necessary steps before getting in your car or going to your home or anyone else’s home. It is possible to spread bed bugs to your car as well as to other locations. Following the steps in the PDF carefully as soon as you realize the exposure to bed bugs means you probably won’t bring any with you.

If you already are home before you realize the problem, do follow the same steps listed in the PDF regarding inspecting luggage (do it over the bathtub so you can see the bugs and kill them easily) and cleaning luggage, clothing, and other items. If you are home before you realize the problem, and you brought possibly infested items in (including the clothing you’re wearing as well as any luggage), then you should quickly do some major cleaning where the luggage has been brought in and where you sleep (vacuuming, steaming, etc). If you brought home a bed bug or two and have not found them, it is sometimes possible to get rid of them before they take root. Even if you don’t find any bed bugs, and you’ve done all the cleaning and followed all the other steps in the PDF, you might consider taking some time to declutter, so that if you do have any bed bugs, the signs will be more visible. You should be on the alert for several months.

Once home, if you do find bed bugs or signs of bed bugs in your luggage, clothing or in any rooms, call a PCO right away (we have a FAQ on choosing a good one who knows bed bugs). Save any samples to show them.

Finally, if you got your bed bugs in a hotel, hostel, or other accommodations, please do leave a review on Tripadvisor.com, to warn others of your experience.

A note about using freezing temperatures to kill bed bugs: Kells and Hahn and Michael Potter have slightly different ideas about the temperatures and length of time needed to kill bed bugs. According to Michael Potter’s article from the January 2007 PCTOnline, Steven Kells is apparently researching the method of “leaving things out in cold weather,” with the inevitable fluctuations in temperature. For now, until we have definitive data, I’d err on the side of caution and go for colder temperatures and longer time frames wherever possible.

• FAQ: How can I avoid bedbugs while traveling?
• More bed bug research: Stephen Kells at the University of Minnesota
• FAQ: Leaving stuff out to freeze, walk-in freezers, etc: how cold and how long?
• Report Bed Bugs to 311

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Erica Shaw, Orkin customer service representative, said the problem should not be taken lightly.

“It’s a serious problem,” Shaw said. “They are not the easiest to get rid of. If one tenant has it in their apartment, they risk the chance of wasting their money because they come back again. They should fumigate the apartment complex. It can get worse if not treated.”

Bed bugs are increasingly becoming a problem, she said, adding that they are everywhere, from hotels to cruise ships, dormitories, shelters and apartments.

[Tenants] The Langlaises say they have spent thousands of dollars on three sprayings through Orkin. The apartment complex didn’t offer to pay, they said.
The Langlaises have been posting fliers on the doors of other tenants of the complex to notify them of problem. On Thursday, as the Langlaises put up the fliers, the maintenance man tore them down, denying the infestation exists.

“Some people might not even know, the only way they would know is if they get really a bad infestation,” Gerald Langlais said.
Shaw agrees.
“Even if you spray one apartment, [bed bugs] could travel through the walls and go into another apartment and come back,” Shaw said.

The Langlaises have the right idea about trying to organize fellow tenants, something we often suggest here at Bedbugger, in cases where others in the building are (or are likely) infested, and landlords are not taking care of things.

As we suggest in the FAQ on organizing tenants, the Langlaises should put notices under the doors of neighbors, if possible, since landlords who don’t care enough about their tenants to get rid of bed bugs properly, are probably also not going to enjoy seeing them organize themselvs and inform one another.

• ABC 7 Eyewitness News: Edison, NJ infestation
• Bedbugs called “a new kind of roach”; building managment lies
• Dumpster-diving tenant evicted after Winnipeg apartment seriously infested with bed bugs
• Bed bugs & tenant organizing: don’t take this lying down

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Do you have bed bugs? Are you thinking of replacing that computer keyboard that may harbor bed bugs, cast shells, or feces?

Consider the Unotron Spillseal keyboards and mice. They’re completely sealed except for the USB plug, so you can wash them in the sink with soapy water! And they come in wired and wireless versions. Sadly, they do not appear to support Mac computers at this time. That’s a shame. Mac keyboards are lint traps.

You can google “Unotron Spillseal” to find retailers.

They’re made for doctors and others whose keyboards give them the heebie-jeebies. I know you Bedbuggers with active infestations know what I mean! (Before anyone comments to tell me that bed bugs do not want to live in my electronic devices, I hear you. But sometimes, we’ve heard, they do.)

Bed Bug Helloise has found all kinds of nasties in her keyboard, from pet hair to questionable “dirt,” so she thinks this is a good idea anyway. And she does not need to tell you that she does not have any stake in the Unotron corportation. If she did, they’d be making Mac keyboards too. Bed Bug Helloise is a housekeeping whiz, but she doesn’t do Windows.

• Hints from Bed Bug Helloise!
• Bed bug Helloise: a nice, reasonably-priced white metal bed frame with no wooden slats
• Gender, race, and being bitten by bed bugs
• Bed Bug Helloise with “exciting” XL Ziploc bag news

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