Drew University recently alerted its students that bed bugs were found in a student’s room.  The student was moved temporarily while the room was treated and furniture and mattresses were replaced.

A campus-wide e-mail was sent out on Oct. 15 letting students know that two bed bugs had been found. Student response to the e-mail was mixed.

“It’s disgusting! Bugs and I get along just fine as long as they aren’t in my bed,” Whitney McClees (’12) said.

“They’re bugs. Unless they’re going to kill me in my sleep I don’t care,” Dana Sumner-Pritchard (’12) said.

“It made me really glad I don’t live on campus,” commuter student Alexandra Kiely (’12) said.

“It was kind of gross but I wasn’t really worried. That was the first I heard of it,” Arielle Sorenson (’12) said.

“Our interest is in making sure the population [of bed bugs] doesn’t spread. We’re being overly cautious,” [Drew Chief Communications Officer Dave Muha] said about the University’s goal in dealing with the bed bugs and the reason for the campus-wide e-mail.

[Emphasis mine.]

A prompt response to a single bed bug case is a good thing.

Bed bugs did not just magically appear in this room. They were either brought in by the student, other students, or employees, or they were delivered in some manner (the old “bed bug Trojan horse”), or they walked over from another space which has a bed bug issue that is as yet undetected.

Since students are vocalizing that bed bugs are not a big deal (”Unless they’re going to kill me in my sleep I don’t care”), I hope Drew will follow up by educating students, staff, and faculty about bed bugs, how they spread, how to detect them, and why they everyone needs to be concerned about and alert for them. Similar Posts:

None Found

There are a lot of reports about bed bugs in colleges this week, in the wake of the recent high profile John Jay College bed bug infestation (and the less high profile Manhattan College bed bug troubles).

The Loyola Phoenix reports that Loyola University in Chicago was treating bed bugs with steam and pesticides, encasing infested mattresses, and (students claim) telling them not to talk about their infestations:

In addition to the rooms being treated, items that were on top of beds or on the floor near the beds were removed from the rooms to be cleaned. According to [Andrew Naylor, assistant director of Facilities Operations], these items were taken to a company that specializes in cleaning items that housed bedbugs or came into contact with them.

Throughout the process, residents affected by the bedbug incident were communicated with on a consistent basis, said Naylor; however, residents on other floors were not informed of the incident. “It’s certainly not like we’re trying to keep a secret. We just didn’t feel it was necessary to alarm the whole building,” said Naylor.

[Juniors Mike Fernandez and Eric Finnegan] said they were informed to not talk about the incident. “They told us ‘don’t say anything,’ because they didn’t want to start a mass panic and have all the students worry, which is understandable until they got the problem under control,” Fernandez said.

[Emphasis mine.]

Ke Alaka’i reports that Brigham Young University in Hawaii is giving dorm RAs Steri-Fab for treating bed bugs and eggs; Ke Alaka’i says

Bedbugs live in both the seams of and in the crisscross stitching of mattresses. They are visible by pulling down on the edge of the cording.

However, as we understand it, Steri-Fab is not recommended as a sole treatment option (Dr. Michael Potter found Steri-Fab had a “very low egg mortality”) , and bed bugs can live anywhere in a room, not just on the seams of mattresses.

The most encouraging story this week comes from Boston University, where the Daily Free Press reports that housing officials proactively searched on-campus housing for bed bugs in August.

Boston University housing officials have identified the bedbug infestation in dormitories such as Student Village and Myles-Standish Hall as a serious concern within the last year.

The infestations don’t just occur in older dormitories — they can show up in any building, new or old. There were five StuVi1 apartments infested with bedbugs at the start of the academic year, Director of Housing Marc Robillard said.

“Bedbugs travel with people. It has nothing to do with hygiene,” he said. “Some of the nicest hotels in the world have bedbugs because of the transition of people coming into their properties.”

In August, housing officials checked each of the larger residences for bedbugs after the dorms housed different groups during the summer, Robillard said. Housing officials said they are currently unaware of any active cases on campus.

Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences graduate student Emily Wilkinson said she found out her four-bedroom StuVi apartment, which she shared with roommates last year, was one of the five infested.

“I guess they found the bedbugs when they were doing an inspection so they didn’t want to put us [in our apartment],” she said. “They moved us into StuVi 2 and told us it would take two weeks for the whole process to happen. It took more than three, which was annoying.”

[Emphasis mine.]

There’s no guarantee that bed bugs can be eliminated in two or three weeks, and it would be interesting to know how the college performs these proactive bed bug inspections and how it signs off on housing units as being bed bug-free after bed bug treatment.

However, it is a good idea for colleges to have residences proactively inspected for bed bugs; remember, not everyone reacts to bed bug bites, and it can take some time before one sees obvious signs of a bed bug infestation.Similar Posts:

• University of Central Missouri (and other Missouri colleges) vs. bed bugs
• More bed bugs at Wilkes University (in University Towers apartments)
• Bill Clinton’s offices have bed bugs, according to New York Daily News
• Back to school: news media focuses on bed bugs in college dorms
• Bed bugs infest multiple areas of New York’s John Jay College (CUNY)

Several dorm rooms at the University of Manitoba are infested with bed bugs; they’re undergoing treatment, and residents have been relocated to temporary accommodation.

While university officials here are “taking the issue very seriously,” according to CBC, they’re also assuring the media that bed bugs are “not a health risk” (as officials almost always do).

But universities should take note: bed bugs are stressful.  They cause anxiety and make people lose a lot of sleep.  Bed bug bites can cause intense itching and sometimes more serious allergic reactions.  They can make people miserable.

Magali Leveille told CBC News, bed bugs made her want to drop out of her program at the university:

Leveille moved to Winnipeg from Montreal to brush up on her English through a program at the university that includes accommodations at the campus. The program brings in students from Canada and abroad that want to improve their English language skills.

Some say the bed bug experience has ruined the program.

“With me, I just want to go home, and I’m just upset about that, and it’s enough,” said Leveille. “The bed bugs, it’s really not funny, and I don’t want to be in the program anymore.”

[Emphasis added.]

Note: we have heard from many students dealing with bed bugs on the Bedbugger Forums.

And infested dorms are often the best case scenario; students living in private rented accommodations often have less hope of seeing the problem sorted out; they are often new to the world of rented apartments, don’t know where to turn for advice, and usually receive no assistance from their colleges in dealing with deadbeat landlords.

Some are thinking of dropping out of their programs.  Some are failing exams.  Some are suffering from extreme anxiety and depression.

If that doesn’t ring parents’ and university administrators’ warning bells about bed bugs, I am not sure what will.

See the full article here: University of Manitoba residence fumigated for bed bugs.Similar Posts:

• University of Central Missouri (and other Missouri colleges) vs. bed bugs
• More bed bugs at Wilkes University (in University Towers apartments)
• Bed bugs — and bed bug legislation — in the news
• George Washington University has treated 60 student rooms for bed bugs since Fall semester
• Back to school: news media focuses on bed bugs in college dorms

According to independent student newspaper, The Daily Aztec, twenty-seven “comfy” chairs were recently removed from the lower level of the San Diego State University library after bed bugs were found there.

Bedbugs are back with a recent infestation in the library, specifically in the “comfy” chairs on the lower level of the Dome.

“Twenty-seven chairs from the lower level of the dome were removed,” Mark Lester, director, Access, Administrative Operations and Communication of Library and Information Access, said. “We resolved the problem in the best way we could think of.”

This article from the university’s independent student newspaper notes that bed bugs were found in SDSU dorms earlier this semester.

And we also reported back in January that, again according to the Daily Aztec, bed bugs had been found in the “egg chairs” in the Counseling and Psychological Services Office at San Diego State.

Since bed bugs do hitchhike on clothing and in people’s bags, these should not be assumed to be unrelated incidents. Bed bugs in chairs in multiple buildings around campus should be taken very seriously.

A campus that is seeing bed bug infestations in chairs around the campus should be taking a very proactive role in detecting bed bugs and treating them properly — both in student housing and in other facilities.  If they are in the counseling office waiting room and the library, they could be anywhere.

Check out:  The Daily Aztec – Bedbugs found in library.Similar Posts:

None Found

Northern Kentucky University is suffering from the bed bug scourge, independent student paper The Northerner reports today:

Director of University Housing Peter Trentacoste said, “I can confirm we had a (bed bugs) incident. We successfully treated the six rooms.”

It appears they took swift action and ordered a thermal treatment for six infested rooms in Callahan Hall.

I was a tad concerned about how the university determined which units were infested, however:

When University Housing discovered a possibility of bed bugs, it began calling every resident on the infested floor to ascertain which rooms were affected. Students were relocated to begin extermination last weekend.

I am not sure what questions can be asked of students to determine whether they had bed bugs.

I hope the housing administrators understand that bed bugs and their signs can be hard to see, especially in newer infestations, and that entomologists estimate that 50 to 70% of people do not react to bed bug bites.

In other words, students could have bed bugs biting them, and have absolutely no idea.  And it’s essential to detect and treat all infested units if you want to get rid of bed bugs in a building.

It does sound like precautions were taken when students were relocated.  This is crucial, to avoid spreading the problem.

via The Northerner – Crawling on campus.Similar Posts:

• RainCity Housing’s “bed bug sauna” now active in new Vancouver building
• Bed bugs bite in Richmond, California public housing development
• Wisconsin Dept. of Corrections houses former inmates in bed bug-infested motel
• 160-unit Richmond, California complex evacuated for tent fumigation of bed bugs
• University of Central Missouri (and other Missouri colleges) vs. bed bugs

Back in September, the George Washington University student paper, The GW Hatchet, reported that one student was known to have received bed bug bites at a pre-semester off-campus retreat. A dozen more, an administrator noted, might have been exposed to bed bugs.

Those were engineering students, whose dorm was treated for bed bugs in the Fall.

This week, a new article from the Hatchet reports that since the Fall 2009 semester began, twelve dorm rooms have been confirmed to have bed bugs and sixty rooms in multiple dorms have been treated for bed bugs.

The Hatchet notes,

The inspection and eradication process conducted by the University’s Residential Property Management requires that students living in possibly infested rooms move all of their belongings to the center of the room, vacate the room for four hours and wash all bedding and clothing.

Students affected by the decontamination efforts receive $10 to $20 on their GWorld cards as reimbursement for the cost of laundry and trash bags to store their belongings – a response many of the affected students interviewed said they found unsatisfactory.

It is not clear what sort of bed bug treatment is performed, or whether follow-up treatments occur.

It also is not clear whether non-washable belongings are bagged during treatment.

Colleges struggling with bed bugs would do well to consider some of the bed bug detection and treatment procedures which are being employed at other colleges, including searches by bed bug sniffing dogs, heat treatment of belongings, and — perhaps most crucial — educating students and staff about bed bugs, how to detect their presence, and what to do if bed bugs are suspected.
Similar Posts:

• University of Central Missouri (and other Missouri colleges) vs. bed bugs
• Back to school: news media focuses on bed bugs in college dorms
• Colleges react to bed bugs: Loyola (Chicago), Boston University, Brigham Young (Hawaii)
• Bed bugs infest multiple areas of New York’s John Jay College (CUNY)
• University of Manitoba student rooms infested with bed bugs

The Yale Daily News reports bed bugs have recently been found (and apparently successfully treated) in an Old Campus student room.

Around Valentine’s Day weekend, a student in Lanman-Wright Hall had a visitor in her bed.

The freshman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she initially thought she was having an allergic reaction. The red blotches on her body — on every surface of her skin that was not covered by pajamas — were a reaction to another culprit: bedbugs.

“I found a friend on my pillow,” she said of the bedbug, which, she recalled, was the size of her pinky nail.

Although the L-Dub bedbug was a seemingly isolated incident, in the month after it was discovered a group of administrators gathered to discuss the problem of bedbugs, Dean of Administrative Affairs John Meeske ’74 said. Old Campus residents were informed of the incident at the beginning of March.

The University decided to re-inspect the affected suite and its neighboring room during spring break, even though the rooms were treated for bedbugs within two days of finding the pest in February. No other bedbugs were subsequently found.

One of the students in a neighboring suite said she was surprised to hear about the microscopic guest across the hall.

“I thought it was something that only existed in nursery rhymes,” she said.

via Yale Daily News – Bedbugs make an unwelcome appearance in Lanman-Wright.

Every student in every college should be educated about bed bugs — no one should think that bed bugs only exist in nursery rhymes.

Some colleges have used educational campaigns to help students learn about this problem, a good preventive measure.  Stanford has a PDF about bed bugs on their website, though it is not easy to find by searching.Similar Posts:

None Found

I love Tripadvisor.com. I always use it to choose hotels when I travel (and I am not just avoiding those with bed bug reports, either, but also looking for a room that’s convenient, reasonably-priced, and hopefully with a little something extra).

Tripadvisor also knows a thing or two about bed bugs in hotels; last year, they asked their members how many had encountered bed bugs in hotels, and 8% reported that they had. The same survey found 80% of Tripadvisor members surveyed were worried about encountering bed bugs in their travels.  This is good news to us, since it means word is getting out about bed bugs.  People need to be worried before they will take smart steps, like learning to search a hotel room for bed bugs (more on that below).

Today, Tripadvisor posted a list of the “Ten Dirtiest Hotels” in the United States.

I was surprised by the banner, which is a graphic of insects with red stripes scurrying across a bed, under a magnifying glass. The caption quotes “a Tripadvisor member” as saying, “I have 30 bites from bugs in room 319.”

I suspect we know what kinds of bug bites they’re talking about.

However, I am not sure what the pictured insects are (and I am sure some of my readers will tell me!) but they are not bed bugs.

Although it’s primarily a place to post reviews, and the “dirtiest hotels” list is presumably an outcome of user ratings, Tripadvisor could do better in terms of educating its readers about bed bugs and how to search for them.

It may be true that hotels with really obvious, visible bed bug infestations may also be neglecting other aspects of care (such as cleanliness). If you can see bed bugs everywhere, and the problem is not being addressed, it suggests something is going wrong in terms of cleaning, maintenance and general upkeep.

On the other hand, subtle, non-obvious, recently introduced bed bug infestations would not necessarily be seen during a visual inspection.  The room could be carefully cleaned, and still have bed bugs present.

It’s really important to stress that all hotel rooms, not just dirty ones, are susceptible to bed bugs. This is because bed bugs travel on people’s clothing and in their bags and stuff.  And so everyone who stays in hotels (or motels, dorms, hostels, borrowed rooms, and other temporary lodging) should inspect for bed bugs before settling in, no matter how nice or clean the room looks.

This FAQ tells you what you need to know about how to avoid bed bugs when you visit hotels. It includes links to resources which show you how to search for bed bugs.  The New York State Integrated Pest Manegement (at Cornell) provides an excellent printable Travel Card on this topic (click for a PDF) which you can carry with you to hotels to help you remember how to search the room, and what bed bugs look like (note: the same PDF includes cards with general bed bug information, and one for college students).

It’s important that people understand that bed bugs do not have anything to do with a lack of hygiene.  Dirty environments and clutter certainly mask the problem, but do not cause or attract bed bugs to a space.

(Oh, and don’t worry — I promise to post more about the Hearing yesterday, soon.)

Update: thanks to bug_girl and , we can confirm the pictured insect appears to be Graphosoma lineatum, or Striped Stink Bug.

Bug_girl writes in the comments below,

It is indeed the Striped Stink bug.

In fact, as someone pointed out:
“Note that bed bugs are not only in a separate Family, but in a separate infraorder (family Cimicidae [bed bugs] is in the infraorder Cimicomorpha, family Pentatomidae [stink bugs], including the pictured species, is in the infraorder Pentatomomorpha).”

Double wrong

As bug_girl notes on flickr, these are plant-feeding bugs.

Stinky bug identification, TripAdvisor!

And besides a re-tweet from @TripAdvisor about this post, this was the only response I got from writing a message to TripAdvisor via their website, about this misleading error:

Hi Bedbugger,

Thanks for taking the time to write to us. Since our motto is, “Get the truth, then go,” we certainly don’t want to mislead our members about bed bugs! I can see that we responded to your comment on Twitter (twitter.com/tripadvisor), and I’ll also forward this email to our PR team in case they want to contact you themselves.

Thanks, and best of luck with all your Bedbugger endeavors!

Regards,
[name withheld]
TripAdvisor Support Team

A striped stink bug:

Photo credit: Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez, under Creative Commons license.

Similar Posts:

None Found

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:

• Ohio County, WV Health Dept. official: bed bugs “public health nuisance” and “psychological disaster”
• Boston University dorm residents bitten by bed bugs
• University of Central Missouri (and other Missouri colleges) vs. bed bugs
• Toronto municipal councillor pushes for bed bugs to be declared a health hazard
• Bed bugs at Spring Valley, NY apartment complex

The National Labor Committee (NLC) has put out a press release claiming that

Young workers in China who make holiday toys for Disney, Hasbro and RC2—including Bratz dolls—are suffering from a serious infestation of bed bugs in their dorms.  Workers report that their bodies are often covered with red welts from the bug bites, which can easily become infected if the wounds are scratched.  A leading entomologist at a major university confirmed to the National Labor Committee that it would be very possible for bed bugs to hitch a ride to the U.S., especially if they hid the cardboard toy boxes.

That’s a pretty alarming idea.  I’m not sure how likely this is.

I am seriously worried about sweatshop workers, who the NLC claim are working 96-hour weeks in 95 degree F temperatures and then spending the night with bed bugs in their dorms.

Your thoughts?

You can read the NLC press release here.Similar Posts:

None Found