In the 3 1/2 years it’s been open, Jurys Boston Hotel has never found bedbugs on its premises, nor have its guests complained about being bitten. Still, the luxury hotel in the Back Bay began dispatching a bedbug-sniffing dog to each of its 225 guest rooms last year. And when the canine detective barked, after detecting the suspicious scent of the itch-inducing insects or their eggs, the hotel fumigated two rooms and burned the mattresses.

“At the first sign or suggestion of a problem, our reaction would be to treat the room with chemicals, no questions asked,” said general manager Stephen Johnston, who calls the dog in every three months.

Every three months hardly means you won’t be bitten by bed bugs in the hotel, but it is definitely a start, and would prompt many of us to choose such a hotel over another that has no strategies to detect or prevent bed bugs.

Jurys isn’t the only hotel to take a proactive approach to bedbugs. The Omni Parker House brings in an insect-sniffing mixed Labrador from Advanced K9 Detectives LLC, the same Milford, Conn., firm that Jurys and about 10 other Boston-area hotels use. The Omni’s general manager, John Murtha, is also considering buying special encasements for mattresses and box springs to prevent bedbugs from building homes on them.

My advice to hotels is not to think too long about mattress encasements–just get them. They won’t prevent customers from being bitten but make it hard for bed bugs to hide on the actual mattress, and can mean you don’t have to destroy mattresses or spend considerable time and expense sanitizing them if an infestation does occur.

In addition, I hope all hotels and motels will educate staff about how to prevent spreading and detect bed bug infestations. Stephen Doggett’s article for Executive Housekeeping (an Australian hotel industry journal) is a must-read for industry professionals. Click here to load a PDF.

How many hotels are infested?

Judith Black, technical director at Steritech Group Inc., a pest-control company that serves the hospitality industry, found only 0.6 percent of the almost 76,000 rooms the company inspected between November 2002 and April 2006 needed to be treated for bedbugs, but those infestations were spread across 24.4 percent of the nearly 700 US hotels it studied.

I’d take those numbers with a grain of salt, and consider them in juxtaposition with another statistic the article offered:

Scientists are trying to find ways to fight the bugs, too. The Entomological Society of America’s annual conference, held in San Diego last month, featured three half-day symposiums on the insects, with nearly 30 scientific presentations on topics like “How bedbugs survive long xeric periods between blood meals” and “The effect of sex-ratio on dispersal and aggregation behavior of the common bedbug.”

Three years ago, no one at the conference presented any bedbug research.

So in 2004, bed bugs were not considered important enough to merit one single panel presentation at the ESA annual conference, and this year the topic merited thirty presentations.  To me, this obvious growth in bed bugs signals that perhaps Steritech’s data from 2002-6 is largely outdated.  (Steritech’s data also seems to be based on hotels who hired their services, in which case it is already biased towards hotels which are more proactive against bed bugs.)

Assume many more than 24% of hotels are affected, but try to keep this in perspective: remember that “a hotel with bed bugs” may have them in only a room or two.

In my opinion, with the requisite precautions, it is still safe to travel. Click here to download the CBC video for a good lesson in searching a room for bed bugs, and read our travel FAQs. Seeing the world is too good to miss. Let’s hope all hotels, motels, and hostels soon see having a sound bed bug protocol as being as important as changing the sheets.

Read the rest of the Boston Globe article here.

• 25% of hotel rooms have bed bugs? I don’t think so.
• Second Greater Boston Bed Bug Conference
• “Disproportionate Horror”: Vancouver Hoteliers Get Schooled
• Bed bug dog Joni: fighting bed bugs in New Zealand and Australia

ShareThis

UPPER WEST SIDE—It seems there is a little detail about the condo conversion at 30 Lincoln Plaza that may have been overlooked: “You failed to mention that the building is infested with bed bugs…the management has confirmed this and is handing out pamphlets and they have even had a bedbug sniffing dog in some apartments..who knew! I would think this situation is going to really boost sales on those $1,185,000 647 sq/ft one bedrooms.” Bedbug sniffing dogs?!? Excellent. [CurbedWire Inbox]

While it’s always surprising to find out another building has bed bugs, it’s a good thing that the building management is aware and is taking action. I hope they undertake aggressive treatment throughout. (Imagine, hypothetically, the legal activity that would ensue if some units were infested but did not identify the presence of pests, were not treated, and were sold infested.)

This item from Curbed.com reminds me that a lot of the interesting bed bug “news” in the last four days has been leaked via gossip blogs: legal gossip, real estate gossip, ivy league college gossip (although this one probably had another itchy culprit).

Unlike “real” news–which is covered in the newspapers, and on TV and radio–like the spread of MRSA drug-resistant staph bacteria, which tragically killed a 7th grader in Brooklyn, bed bugs aren’t yet confirmed to cause disease and death. They have been unofficially confirmed to cause distress, stress, anxiety, sleeping trouble–and in rare cases, allergic reactions so severe they can kill. But nothing compared with the threat of deadly MRSA. I saw an ABC news segment here in NYC Friday night–kids at the school that youngster attended, were carrying bottles of purell, and startled parents and teachers were looking on in amazement as they reported washing their hands after using the lavatory (ABC7 produced multiple clips in which the students admitted this was new behavior.) The segment also featured a poster on the door of the school, and though it was not shown close-up, I am pretty certain it warned that the school had been exposed to MRSA and that people had to take precautions not to catch it.

Since bed bugs aren’t on the same level of threat, the reasoning seems to go, we don’t need to actually warn people about bed bugs in specific locations. And so “bed bug reports” are confined to the realm of gossip blogs.

Yes, it is true that hotels, real estate developers and brokers, restaurants, theaters and other businesses that are reported to have bed bugs in the mainstream media, will face worried customers and may lose business. The hotel industry in NYC, in particular, will be hard hit. One can only assume Mayor Bloomberg chooses to avoid confronting and admitting the true number of infested homes and businesses in this city (which I first considered in this post), because it would scare off tourists, who contribute so much to the city, as well as negatively affecting real estate, and maybe even how people spend their leisure time (and money).

But it does not follow that if we do not discuss bed bugs, publicly, then they will go away. The opposite is true: as long as businesses are in denial, or putting up a bed-bug-free front, the problem will keep spreading at an alarming rate, and eventually, I believe, the hit on businesses will be greater.

• Maya Rudolph’s former loft (again): bedbugs ADD value!
• Bed Bug Helloise is shocked…
• The strange case of bed bugs in Bushwick
• What means this *TIPPING POINT*?

ShareThis

Dear Pennypacker Resident:

After reading the Crimson opinion piece from October 22, 2007, “I’ve
Got an Itch”, it seems worthwhile to review where things stand after
the incidents of skin complaints two weekends ago at Pennypacker.

At that time, three individuals came to university health services
(UHS) with similar symptoms. After being evaluated by a physician at
After Hours Urgent Care, the possibility of scabies was considered.
Discussion with proctors at Pennypacker revealed that there were at
least 5 or 6 students at Pennypacker with itching skin and rash, though
only three of them wished to be examined.

Given the symptoms, also under consideration was the possibility of bed
bugs, though the skin findings were not classic for this diagnosis. A
scraping from the skin of one student was done to look for mites, but
these were not seen. It’s important to note the presence of mites on a
skin scraping absolutely confirms the diagnosis of scabies; if they are
absent, though, the diagnosis is not excluded. Frequently, the
diagnosis of scabies is difficult to make, and it takes several
examinations of a patient over time before other possibilities are
excluded. This is because the rash associated with scabies can be
fairly non-specific, and the “burrows” are often not seen.

But the three students’ rashes had cleared up within three days, leading an entomologist to speculate that scabies was not to blame:

Four days later, Dr. Michael Alpert, an entomologist from the Harvard School of
Public Health came to Pennypacker and talked to three symptomatic
individuals and concluded that scabies was unlikely, given the rapid
clearing. He speculated that the causative bug could have been
mosquitoes, though he never saw the bites when they were present. The
physician who did see the bites, said that the appearance of the bites
was not consistent with mosquitoes, and that their locations on the skin
was more consistent with scabies. As is frequently the case with rashes,
the simple symptoms can lead to a variety of diagnosis, and it
is often difficult to tell, in the absence of definitive testing, which
one is correct.

This memo above to students was from Doctors Sohayla Gharib and Gregory Johnson of the Harvard University Health Service, who also had this to say,

If the diagnosis was not scabies, it is
possible that there was another insect involved, though it does not
appear to be bedbugs (because there are no ongoing symptoms and there
was no evidence for bed bugs when the pest control team evaluated the
dormitory), nor appear to be mosquitoes. Whatever the ultimate source,
it is now eradicated from Pennypacker thanks to your response and
cooperation.

Let’s all hope that Pennypacker is itch-free for some time to come.

Get the full story from IvyGate.

Also, here’s a Columbia University gossip blog, BWOG (put out by writers from the student magazine) alleging bed bugs are in Schapiro 12 (student housing at Columbia University):

According to Bwog,

Now that a few students have been bitten severely, Housing has finally admitted that there are bedbugs. Two rooms have been fumigated, one of them twice. Unfortunately, Housing still refuses to clean the hallway and carpet even though bedbugs can easily travel from one room to another. Housing, you’ve really let yourself go on this one…

• Johns Hopkins suggests SCRATCH method for diagnosing insect bites in kids
• Bed bugs at the College of New Jersey
• teaching doctors to diagnose bed bug bites
• FAQ: What are bed bugs? Do I have them? What else could be causing this?

ShareThis

The context is that interviewer Tony Phillips is apologizing for not having more suggestions for Cho’s stay in NYC:

Tony Phillips: So I wish I could have been more helpful with the New York tips, but I do want to leave you with this: stay out of Bushwick. It’s this trendy ‘hood in Brooklyn and I’m quite sure people will try and drag you out there, but stay away. There’s a huge bed bug problem. It’s all over Gawker today.

Margaret Cho: What? They have bed bugs? What the hell are bed bugs?

Tony Phillips: It’s very Ashley Judd. They’re these little bugs transmitted through bedding and they suck your blood. I mean, share needles, fine, whatever. But who the fuck is sharing bedding?

Margaret Cho: Your trick is going to bring a pillow. Nuh-uh, that’s nasty.

Tony Phillips: It’s fat Janet nasty.

Margaret Cho: And so New York. I can’t wait.

Some observations:

On the one hand, there are still people who do not know bed bugs exist. (People who are fairly tuned in to the media and who live in major cities, mind you.)

On the other hand, there are people who know nothing about Bushwick except that it is infested with bed bugs. (Not exactly accurate, but a testament to the power of a Gawker article.)

What’s most striking, though, is that everyone talks about the bed bugs as if they are elsewhere. Watch out for bed bugs in NYC? Tony, my friend, watch out in Boston.

• Some recent press about bed bugs
• New York City is behind in the bed bug wars
• Bed bugs in the New York subway, going viral
• Hawai’i PCO says bed bugs are an epidemic there

ShareThis

The health department also received complaints of infestations of two apartments at 553 South Main St., and one apartment each in apartment buildings or multifamily homes at 42 Pine St. (the Wilby Apartments), 107 South Leonard St., 182 West Main St., 148 Grand St. and 995 Bank St.

Also, there is a report of bedbugs in the Salvation Army shelter. A complaint received in April resulted in a notice of infestation in the entire building at 148 Grand St. The owner hired an exterminator to take care of the problem.

In most cases, the Health Department ordered property owners to take care of the problem by hiring a licensed PCO.

Meanwhile, in Boston, Massachusetts Institute of Technology student residents of Ashdown House, which has been under attack by bed bugs since last spring, are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Danielle Piskorz reported Friday for MIT’s The Tech newspaper:

A bedbug problem that has been plaguing Ashdown since last spring is close to being resolved. An exterminator contracted to MIT has been visiting rooms several times a week over the course of the summer, and sticky-trap style bug monitors newly installed in each room show no sign of new activity.

I hope that this testing has been done since students have been resident in the rooms. We do know that bed bugs living in rooms or apartments that have been vacated will often move to another location (if humans are sleeping elsewhere in the vicinity, say a neighboring room or another floor). We are also told they may go “dormant,” hiding out until people return. Killing bed bugs is hard when no one is in residence, since they need to be attracted out to bite someone in order to cross the poison and/or mechanical killer and die.

How did MIT deal with Ashdown’s bed bugs? Fairly persistently, from the sound of things:

In Ashdown, the residents of the infested suites were required to have their rooms and clothes cleaned entirely to rid the area of bugs. They were also given new mattresses with covers to prevent the bedbugs from finding a new place to live. The contracted exterminator used “a clear, odorless, safe treatment” to kill the bedbugs, according to an e-mail sent to Ashdown residents from Denise Lanfranchi, Ashdown’s house manager.

According to Bajpayee, exterminating procedures ran in cycles, with the first spraying killing the adults and the second killing their offspring. A problem arose when the original floor was sprayed for bedbugs and the surviving insects ran up to the next. The total number of rooms affected was eight or nine, said Bajpayee. Ashdown has a total of 264 rooms.

To reduce the probabilities of bedbug problems in the future, MIT Housing may consider banning students from bringing used furniture into the dorms, Collins said. Until then, students should “be conscious of who and where they are buying [their used furniture] from.”

“Everybody should be careful,” Bajpayee said.

• Lexington, KY vs. New York, NY: a tale of two bedbugged cities
• Bed bugs at the University of Vermont
• Bed bugs at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec
• Adult home shut down in Monticello, NY with multiple housing violations; 40 beds contained “bed bugs and bed bug eggs”

ShareThis

That means no mattresses, no sofas at the school in Quincy, Mass. The policy only applies to upholstered or soft furniture. As such, it does not mean students cannot bring in potentially-infested items, and the school recognizes that:

The insects spread by hitchhiking on things like luggage, clothing, beds and furniture. Locations with frequent turnover - like hotels, apartments, shelters and dorms - are vulnerable.

“It does not insulate us,” [Robert] Benjamin [Director of Residence Life] said about the ban on used furniture.  “We are trying to eliminate at least one variable.”

According to this article, most colleges that ban upholstered furniture do so because of fire hazards. ENC is banning them not because they have had any known bed bug outbreaks, but because a sister school in San Diego has had bed bug troubles. They are trying to learn from the other school’s experiences. (Good to hear!)

The policy is not unproblematic: besides the enormous cost to students this fall, if the policy continues, students would be buying new items every year for four years. This is a serious hardship and will probably mean many simply live in a much sparser way than prior generations of students.

• How to avoid bed bugs, according to Texas A&M’s student paper
• Boston University’s bed bugs: if we don’t talk about them, they’ll go away
• Bed bugs under discussion at university housing officers’ conference
• Stanford bed bugs: university fights back

ShareThis

Advocacy group fights bed bug outbreak

VANCOUVER - Community advocacy group the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users VANDU is trying to fight a massive outbreak of bedbugs in that city’s Downtown Eastside by gutting infested rooms.

The group’s Anne Livingston says residents have had six weeks notice to decide what to do with their possesions.

After the rooms are gutted, crews move in to spray with powerful chemicals to kill the bed bugs.
Livingston says residents get to bring 60 pounds of clothing out of their apartments that will be laundered and returned to them.

Anne Livingston and VANDU were mentioned here in a post in March. Last summer, they got a $51,000 government grant to provide a round of 2 PCO treatments for bed bugs in two badly infested Downtown Eastside hotels. The residents also got replacement furniture and beds.

The city commissioned a study which said 1/2 of those rooms were bed bug free two months later.

Although the funding was probably was not enough treatment to achieve a higher success rate (which would likely require more PCO visits in many cases), the VANDU activisits definitely know what they’re doing. Back in March, we quoted an article in which Livingston said,

“You really need to create a system whereby you can knock on the door, get a room prepped, get the spray guys in and come back in 10 days and do it again,” said Livingston.

“And then, the real project is to not have people pulling bedbug-infested garbage out of the alley into another place. This creates constant reinfection. So that’s why it needs to be a neighbourhood campaign.”

Livingstone said bedbugs are a growing problem everywhere in Vancouver, and trying to get rid of them in the city’s poorest neighbourhood is money well spent.

Education, as we keep saying, is key–for residents of every treated building, I might add, whether it’s an SRO hotel, an expensive NYC co-op apartment building, a tenement, or a homeless shelter. (Remember, I live in NYC, where well-to-do professionals shop at bohemian flea markets, and yuppies take used furniture off the curb.)

I applaud the work of Livingston and the other folks at VANDU. I know with more funding and support, they will be able to continue to make a huge difference in peoples’ lives.

I hate that community activists like VANDU and the Allston-Brighton Community Development Corporation in Boston have to step in, since I think we need more infrastructure and government assistance helping people get good bed bug treatment and supplies they need (from XL ziplocs to furniture). Both of these groups have had government funding, which is great. I just think they probably need a lot more.

And is anyone in NYC or San Francisco, Montreal, Toronto, or anywhere else doing similar work? We’d love to hear about it.

• Vancouver community activists urge city to pay for bed bug eradication
• Government money needed to help people pay for bed bug treatment
• 80% of Single Room Occupancy units in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are infested with bed bugs; also Rensselaer Polytechnic’s dorms
• Itchy the Bed Bug: an Olympic Mascot for Vancouver

ShareThis

There was much content and these few paragraphs I write here can cover only some things that struck me. This post unfortunately cannot serve as a comprehensive overview of the many topics that were raised or speakers who addressed us, not all of which I could comment on below. It was an excellent program and I’m sorry it wasn’t pod-casted for everyone here to participate and benefit.

The conference gave out a one-page resource guide and our blog was listed 4 times. Not only bedbugger.com, but also three specific URLs for FAQ’s. (think-you-have-bed-bugs, advice-on-getting treatment, how-do-I-protect my bed).

The overall tone was set by the first speaker, a Senior Health Inspector/toxicologist, with the first slides “Got bedbugs? Act immediately. No time for blame.” There were leaders from the Allston Brighton Community Development group that is so pro-active about bedbugs, and someone from Somerville who was also a great community activist. These were caring, sharp people who are out in the municipal trenches!

One presentation at the conference was a live demonstration of a home inspection. They had a mattress and box spring right there on the stage and inspected it. They felt an inspection should take a minimum of an hour and that the inspector should look at the underside of your box spring. Though they felt that with current practices, mattresses could be bagged and furniture treated, but they said that box springs frequently had to be discarded.

There was a lively one-hour question period with a panel of savvy inspectors and local PCOs (which I learned can also be called PMPs now). They knew their stuff. They were very much into people not moving when they had bedbugs. They said they had a case where a unit was so infested the two tenants were moved into a hotel. The tenants moved with only their medications and the clothes they had on. In three days there was evidence these tenants had taken bedbugs with them to the hotel! So they said unless you shower, put new clothes on, and take absolutely **nothing** with you, there is a chance you can take bedbugs with you. (My note: I wonder if bedbugs were transported in shoes or a wallet or the cuff of a pant leg or something?)

The PCOs were fan of using hair dryers when one inspects. Not to kill bedbugs, though they did agree you might be able to kill a bedbug if you a hair dryer up close to it on very high for 5 minutes or more — they used hair dryers as “an inspectional tool” to test to see where bedbugs were when they went into an apartment. They said bedbugs were frequently in clock radios by the bed, and you could aim a hot hair dryer at something like a clock radio and the heat would make the bedbugs come out of the unit.

Though they showed various pesticides, including SteriFab, which they said was 90% alcohol and a contact killer. They said pretty much anything could kill bedbugs on contact, but the problem was you rarely saw bedbugs and you wanted something that would kill the ones you didn’t see.

They were against preventive spraying and said it did nothing. They said preventive inspections were what you should do, and stressed education of everyone, e.g., how hotels had trained housekeeping to look for bedbugs.

In the afternoon there was a panel of three lawyers. The lawyers stressed cooperation and not having an adversarial relationship with the landlord. They said bedbug cases the victims were usually awarded punitive damages of 3 to 7 times the cost incurred, plus legal fees which can be high. They talked of a case where the punitive damages were $26,000 and the legal fees were $25,000, so the landlord had to pay a lot.

In Massachusetts, a landlord who has more than a certain number of tenants (not a small landlord who is living in a 3-family house with the tenants) is considered as running a business and you can go against the landlord as a business using the Consumer Protection Act. They refer to it as 93A, and you have to start with a “93A demand letter.” There were many grey areas, such as who paid if tenants needed to have furniture replaced or if they had to have alternative housing. The panel of lawyers thought the landlord should not only pay for the extermination, repeated ones, but also for the cleaning of the clothes. They said a landlord could not refuse to rent to you if you had bedbugs because it would be discriminatory.

All in all, I really enjoyed the day. There was a lot of other information conveyed that I already knew so I didn’t refer to it here. I realized how I had learned so much from this blog already, but, even so, it was amazing to go to a day-long bedbug conference and learn even more. I particularly liked being surrounded by people who clearly know how serious the bedbug problem is and are educated and committed to addressing it. Great job.

Any errors in my interpretation of what was said at the conference are my own. They were the experts. I was just gratefully taking notes as I learned more at a day at “The College of Bedbug Knowledge.”

PS: There was some discussion of how pets can have bedbugs. They even showed a slide with a parakeet. I know my parakeets were bitten by bedbugs, and it brought a tear to my eye and I was touched, not just because of my screen name here.

• Saskatoon professional development conference apparently bedbugged
• Bed bugs in Lincoln, Nebraska
• Boston and bed bugs: Mayor Bloomberg in NYC could learn a thing or two
• bed bugs in 1920s NYC orphanages; San Francisco building dep., health dept. bed bug inspectors

ShareThis

This article in the Quad-Cities Online reported yesterday on bed bug infestations in a public housing complex in East Moline, Illinois. The reporter quotes one resident who has been battling bed bugs since fall.

“I work too. My tax dollars are going to support places like this (government run low-income housing). If people knew how disgusting this is, I’m sure they’d be upset,” said a resident of the Joseph Fulton Homes. The woman asked to remain anonymous.

Interestingly, a number of comments to the article also note that low-income folks should not have to live like that. At least one commenter (going by the name “some anonymous person”) mentions that “only the poor have to live like this.”

Well, not exactly. While it’s true that in this case, it’s a low-income residence, sadly, people of every social class and walk of life are having to deal with bed bugs. Many, many people we hear from at bedbugger.com — low-income, moderate-income and middle-class– have a problem getting their landlords to treat the problem promptly and effectively. The rich are perhaps in the best situation, since they have more possibility of moving, but this problem is not easy for anyone, and everyone who suffers from bed bugs suffers and takes a hit. And it can afflict anyone at any time.

We need better government support for fighting bed bugs, because nobody should have to suffer this problem for long (and a week is too long).

A second local public housing complex, a senior apartment building called Warren Towers, also has units with bed bug infestations, a story which was covered by the Quad-Cities Online on May 30th.

In other news, even though I have a google alert which tells me when people mention bed bugs in the news or in their blogs, I don’t usually mention non-bed-bug-blogs in our news round-ups. There are just too many people blogging their infestations on a daily basis to keep up.

But today, one caught my eye: this professional blog at LibraryJournal.com, suggests that folks are starting to talk about their bed bug infestations not just amongst their nearest and dearest, or in the workplace, but amongst colleagues they may not know well. That’s good news: talking about bed bugs means more people learn about the problem, how to spot it, and its likelihood of appearing in their lives, too.

Bravo to Heather McCormack at Library Journal, and Heather–we hope your Brooklyn bed bugs are on their way out!

Meanwhile, Lisa Hoffman’s Scripps News article on bed bugs (the one also published in the Knoxville News) continues to make the rounds of syndication, now in the Albuquerque Tribune.

Next, for anyone in Boston who does not have to work next Wednesday, the Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation is having a Bed Bug Conference.

2nd Greater Boston Bed Bug Conference: Extermination and Legislation
Wednesday, June 13, 2007, 8:30AM - 3:00PM

There is still time to register! Registraton is $25.00 and includes lunch and refreshments. (Click the link above to get to the ABCDC site and download the registration form.)

Sponsored by the Greater Boston Bedbug Task Force, this event will provide updated information about the bed bug outbreak to more than 200 exterminators, inspectors, health providers, property managers/landlords, tenants and housing advocates, as well as members of the general public.

There’s also information at the same link for local residents to apply for a grant from the ABCDC to fight bed bugs in your home. Allston Brighton residents take note! We’re big fans of the ABCDC’s bed bug-fighting attempts (some of which are mentioned here), and we’d be glad to hear about other community organizations that are trying to help people with bed bugs, or help people avoid getting bed bugs in the first place.

And finally, today some tenants in a Jamaica, Queens apartment set off a roach bomb which exploded, harming them and damaging their apartment and belongings.

Authorities say the explosion shattered the windows of Apartment 4E at 164-30 Hillside Avenue just after 12:30 p.m. Thursday.

Some residents inside the apartment were overcome, and at least two were taken to the hospital.

The force of the explosion reportedly blew pieces of the fourth-floor window onto a construction shed and the street.

Fire officials said the roach bomb explosion may have been sparked by a pilot light or a refrigerator compressor.

In case the fact that bug bombs do not work to rid your apartment of bed bugs did not dissuade you from using one, they’re also apparently potentially dangerous.
ABC 7’s photo shows what looks to be much of the apartment’s contents pushed up against the (blown-out) window.

I realize the news reports this as a roach bomb, but since there are (for good reason) no over-the-counter bed bug bombs, since we know people attempt to use bombs made for other pests to eradicate bed bugs, and since Queens is experiencing a lot of bed bug infestations, I do have to wonder if that might have been the case here.

Don’t try that at home, kids!

• craigslist: An Open Letter to my Bedbugs
• Toronto Star: Within five years, bedbugs “will be more common than mice, roaches, carpenter ants”
• Surrey, B.C. public housing infested with bed bugs
• More bad news about Denver’s bed bug-infested Halcyon House

ShareThis

For those of you who don’t know, webpages can tell where you’re coming from (though not very specifically). They know the location of your ISP. For most people, this comes up as somewhere near where they live, though it’s not always precise and sometimes it’s just the country. It also tells the webmaster what internet browser you use (Go Firefox!) and whether you like Macs or Windows machines. No, I do not know your name, or where you live, don’t worry!

This may all seem very “meta,” so far, but we know that our readership consists of four kinds of people:

a) People who have, or think they have, or recently had, bed bugs.
b) People whose work makes them concerned about bed bugs (pest control professionals, entomologists, politicians, landlords, hotel managers, social service agencies, government officials, are just some sectors that I have heard from).
c) People who have heard about bed bugs and are concerned, and want to know more.

I think that group (a) is in the majority, and although most people don’t comment, most commenters fit in group a. In any case, the Bedbugger.com readership is a map of bed bug concern, and you’d be pretty safe betting its a map of where bed bugs are popping up–with the caveat, of course, that our site pops up more in US search engines than those abroad, and also that our readers are overwhelmingly English-speakers, though we have dreams of breaking down those linguistic barriers!

This is where the last 89 readers were reading the blog (circa 6:30 this evening):

1. San Diego, California, United States
2. Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom
3. Walden, New York, United States
4. Long Island City, New York, United States
5. New York, New York, United States
6. Plattekill, New York, United States
7. Hull, Quebec, Canada
8. Durant, Iowa, United States
9. Miamiville, Ohio, United States
10. Gibraltar
11. Calgary, Alberta, Canada
12. Boston, Massachusetts, United States
13. Humble, Texas, United States
14. Germantown, Maryland, United States
15. Rowland Heights, California, United States
16. New York, New York, United States
17. New York, New York, United States
18. Hadley, Kentucky, United States
19. Buffalo, New York, United States
20. Hveragerði, Arnessysla, Iceland
21. Pine Falls, Manitoba, Canada
22. Livonia, Michigan, United States
23. Bayside, New York, United States
24. Woodhaven, New York, United States
25. Denver, Colorado, United States
26. New York, New York, United States
27. United States
28. Waterloo, Quebec, Canada
29. Los Angeles, California, United States
30. Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
31. Santa Maria, California, United States
32. Beamsville, Ontario, Canada
33. Kansas City, Missouri, United States
34. Corona, New York, United States
35. Barker, Texas, United States
36. Readville, Massachusetts, United States
37. Palo Alto, California, United States
38. Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
39. Mill Valley, California, United States
40. Ridgewood, New York, United States
41. Mehama, Oregon, United States
42. San Francisco, California, United States
43. Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, United States
44. Swedesburg, Iowa, United States
45. Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
46. West New York, New Jersey, United States
47. Lancaster, Blackpool, United Kingdom
48. New York, New York, United States
49. Miami, Florida, United States
50. Anaheim, California, United States
51. Harrow, Harrow, United Kingdom
52. Wilsonville, Oregon, United States
53. Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
54. Forest Hill, Ontario, Canada
55. Wayne, New Jersey, United States
56. Kecskemét, Bacs-Kiskun, Hungary
57. Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada
58. Short Hills, New Jersey, United States
59. Seattle, Washington, United States
60. Jackson, Mississippi, United States
61. Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States
62. Secaucus, New Jersey, United States
63. Long Island City, New York, United States
64. United States
65. Tranbjerg, Arhus, Denmark
66. Naples, Florida, United States
67. San Francisco, California, United States
68. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
69. Gainesville, Florida, United States
70. Edmond, Oklahoma, United States
71. Hempstead, New York, United States
72. Everett, Massachusetts, United States
73. United States
74. United States
75. São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
76. Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
77. Bismarck, North Dakota, United States
78. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
79. Downers Grove, Illinois, United States
80. United States
81. Bend, Oregon, United States
82. Henderson, Nevada, United States
83. Montréal, Quebec, Canada
84. Sunnyvale, California, United States
85. Arlington, Texas, United States
86. United States
87. New York, New York, United States
88. Fairfax, Virginia, United States
89. Rochester, New York, United States

You might expect that most of these people came from the bed bug hot spots. We get lots of readers from Chicago, Boston, NYC, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto. So it’s surprising that 89 people came from such a wide variety of places:

68 from at least 33 states (only 12 of these from NYC, San Francisco or Boston);
11 from 5 provinces in Canada;
4 from 4 cities in the UK (none of them London);
1 person each from: Hungary, Ireland, Denmark, Brazil, Iceland, and Gilbraltar.

In New York state, 10 of the 17 visitors were from NYC. And of the 10 in NYC, 60% were in Queens, where, unlike Staten Island, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan, each neighborhood has its own name used for the purposes of the postal service: Ridgewood, Corona, Long Island City, Woodhaven, Bayside, New York, are all in Queens, and part of NYC. Remember the Queens Gazette speculating that Queens was the “ground zero for NYC’s bed bugs? Well, I am still not sure it’s true, but it seems plausible: we certainly have a lot of Bedbuggers in Queens.

I peeked at the traffic report for the site because I have a geeky side and I find it interesting to know where you’re coming from. However, looking at it can tell us something about the bed bug problem. This is not a scientific study, but just a snapshot of our site’s traffic does tell you who’s worried about bed bugs (and, we can assume, many are worried because they have bed bugs).

Most of those cities were not capitals or the biggest cities in their regions or countries. A small percentage are from those places you think are hot spots. It should serve as a warning sign that bed bugs, like Bedbuggers, are everywhere, and way more spread out than you thought.

• California fights bed bugs: good news from the golden state
• Portsmouth NH’s Health Officer proactive about bed bugs
• Comedian moves into NJ Ikea store
• Tracing the path of the epidemic

ShareThis