J. Fred Kuntz has been The Star’s Editor-in-Chief for 26 months and he writes in this article that he is retiring this week.

How is this bed bug news?

Easy: The Star has had the most persistent coverage of bed bugs in any single media publication (outside of a bed bug blog, or pest control industry journal), period. As Kuntz says,

We wrote powerful stories about poverty – and helped to spur increases in the minimum wage, close loopholes in the Employment Standards Act, improve dental care for the poor and stir action against bedbugs in public housing.

The bulk of The Star’s bed bug articles were written by Joe Fiorito.

I do not doubt for a minute that this coverage has helped make things happen in Toronto.

I hope the incoming Editor-in-Chief continues along these lines.

Because if you don’t talk about your city’s bed bug problem, no one is going to do anything about it.Similar Posts:

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… but we can learn something from each and every one of them.

Take this article from Joe Fiorito in the Toronto Star today. Fiorito describes a heavily infested building at 444 Lumsden, where the management provides two sprayings to treat for bed bugs in the homes of residents like Maxine Davidson.

The property manager of her building – it is no longer Toronto Community Housing; all that’s changed, and that is a sorry story best told elsewhere – provides two sprayings in a unit when there is an infestation.

TCHC, more prudent, used to spray a unit three times. But the problem persists. Maxine knows of five floors that are affected.

She said, “There’s a woman here who’s pregnant. She’s due this month. The bugs are biting her and her kids. I asked her why she didn’t report the bugs and get a spraying. She said she wanted to wait until after she had the baby.”

That woman will bring her infant home and the bugs will bite her baby.

This kind of cap on the number of treatments provided is absurd. I don’t think limiting residents to two treatments for bed bugs will save building managers money in the long run, because it will allow bed bugs (which often take more than two or even three treatments to abate) to spread further.

Are you listening, Jersey City Council? Two treatments often are not enough. Bed bugs don’t work like that.

Toronto Community Housing’s limit of three treatments may not even be enough. The number of treatments required for bed bugs is however many you need until they are all completely gone.

The number of treatments needed is probably higher if the problem is mismanaged, for example, if units are only treated after the inhabitants notice the problem and complain, even if other units are known to be infested.

“In another unit, the lady is schizophrenic. I was talking to her outside on a bench. She was bitten all over. I went up to see her. Her mattress was completely covered. She was sleeping on the couch. If you’re a home-care worker and you see a person is not using the bedroom …”

The bed bug stories are endless, and thank goodness Fiorito and the editors of the Toronto Star think the people of Toronto — and beyond — should be reading them.
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