What caught my eye were the designer’s comments about how she tries to avoid bed bugs in her search for salvageable items:

. . . sometimes New York thrift stores are useful. She went first to the Salvation Army at 536 West 46th Street, but its furniture inventory was exhausted. Next she tried Green Village Used Furniture & Clothing in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The 10,000-square-foot building had countless shelves of dining sets, credenzas and bed frames. Two prospects had potential but were dismissed: a white ladder-back chair had several wood plugs, and a beat-up wood-frame chair was too wobbly.

But she saw promise in a rusty wrought-iron chair with a hairpin back, its seat covered in a stained orange fabric. She said she liked simple and sturdy frames with strong lines, but that she rejects some pieces, no matter how sturdy. She never takes upholstered pieces from the street for fear of bedbugs. “In a thrift store, I ask how long it has been on the floor,” she said, explaining that the longer a piece has been in the store, the better. “This is not scientific, but obviously, if it’s not been in human contact,” she said, there is less chance of an infestation.

I would personally avoid thrift stores and used upholstered furniture altogether.

Nevertheless, I was impressed by this sign that word about bed bugs is obviously spreading. I doubt this is something set designers were concerned about a few short years ago.

• bed bugs and thrift stores
• upholstered lounge chair
• lounge chair fabric
• Aaron Rents: furniture rental firm sued over bed bugs

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Earlier this week, there was the bed bug bill in the U.S. Congress.

And yesterday, an article in the Maine Switch (a website for those in Greater Portland) about the city’s yearly trash pick-up of bulky trash items. Not surprisingly, the day is a yearly impromptu festival for bargain hunters and curb-crawling small-time entrepreneurs:

Just like spring flowers, the sprouting of ratty recliners and beat-up toys on the sidewalk is a sign of the changing seasons in Portland. These cast-off belongings cluttering the grassy strip between the pavement and the sidewalk represent the city’s annual bulky waste pick-up. And like a siren song, yard sale buffs, bargain-hunters and freegans can’t resist this annual opportunity to turn trash into treasure.

I’ve known people who’ve practically furnished their whole apartments with curbside finds. One of the best was the gorgeous sleigh bed a friend found a few years ago. One of the worst was a couch covered in cat hair (and god know what else), which, thankfully, only made a brief appearance in another friend’s apartment.

But the main point of the article, discussed at length, is the dangers of bed bugs lurking in used items.

Oh, but beware those mattresses. Should you haul one home (like one hapless Craigslist poster did recently), you may gain some unwelcome roommates.

“If you’re picking up a mattress or other pieces of furniture, you need to be conscious that they may have bed bugs,” says Doug Gardner, Portland’s director of health and human services. “There’s no way to tell with 100% accuracy.”

That is until you install your lovely find in your home and begin to wonder why you’re suddenly covered in little red bumps.

Unfortunately, unlike Doug Gardner, the author mostly fixates on “mattresses,” whereas any used items might potentially bring bed bugs to your home. Although to her credit, the author later notes wooden furninture is also a problem, I’d stress that other items are also potentially infested. Many, many people throw out everything they own, even though it’s almost never necessary (and they’re not usually acting on the advice of bed bug experts). Throwing everything out can cost you lots of money, won’t get rid of your bed bugs, and will spread them to neighbors and others.

The article has two other Bedbugger points of interest.

First, because of bed bugs, Portland started giving their refuse collectors Tyvek suits last year for the annual bulky trash pickup day. Unfortunately, the city isn’t itself attempting to warn trash pickers about bed bugs, for example here, or here on this PDF flyer. Even a brief one-line warning would help. I understand from this article that they don’t want to seem to be condoning the practice of trash picking during the bulky trash days, but warning against it would not do so and would be germane to avoiding further spread of the problem.

Second point of interest: if you have bed bugs and rent in Portland, the article notes that your landlord does need to get rid of them. If not, you can call the city inspections department:

If apartment renters find themselves assaulted by bed bugs and can’t get their landlord to respond, [city inspections director Jeanie] Bourke’s office fields the complaints. Her team of inspectors then makes sure the landlord hires a pesticide company to spray the place down and that the residents follow a tightly regimented routine requiring the washing of everything and the sealing of clothes and mattresses in plastic.

Thanks to the Maine Switch for focusing readers’ attention on the dangers of trash picking in 2008.

• Portland’s public housing and bed bugs
• Chinches de cama en Espanol
• bed bugs at Pace University; bed bug buzz in Portland, Oregon
• Manhattan Mattress Mystery

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Since used furniture is such a likely conduit, why, then, does the article tell us that “Health officials recommend getting rid of any infested furniture. . .”? Surely health officials that believe tossing infested furniture is always the best plan are not thinking about the neighbors who will inevitably pick up that furniture, move it in, and start a new infestation.

Yes, it is sometimes (maybe even often) necessary, as the University of Kentucky site tells us. But cities which tell people with bed bugs to toss out their stuff need to provide services for dealing with the refuse. They can’t have people tossing out stuff that isn’t properly wrapped and they can’t have the stuff picked up by neighbors or junk collectors who can “clean” or cover and resell mattresses, or give wooden furniture a new coat of paint.

Cincinnati does have dedicated trash pickup for bed bug-infested furniture, though we have not yet heard much about how well it’s working.

• Cincinnati Establishes Bed Bug Furniture Pick-Up Procedures and Hotline
• Why we need a massive public education campaign about bed bugs (reason #327)
• More bed bug stories from Cincinnati; also, pig spotted in sky over New York City
• Unlucky in Vegas

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It contains lots of solid advice about not picking up curbside furniture, being wary of Craigslist finds, and searching for fecal spots and blood stains. But it also contains some advice we don’t normally see. Especially pertinent, this comment from our friend Lou Sorkin, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History. (Hear him talk about bed bugs and other pests today–Tuesday–at 10:40 on 99.5 WBAI in NYC, or listen to the streaming live audio here.)

The telltale signs of their presence are itchy welts on your body, frequently in clusters of three or more. You might see tiny red or brown marks on your sheets where you’ve crushed bugs in the night. If you suspect infestation, check under carpets and in moldings, and survey mattresses, box springs, and bed frames. Look for feces and shed skins. And look for nymphs: “Ninety-nine percent of papers written on bedbugs neglect to mention that a bedbug starts as a tiny egg and hatches from it to become a [1- to 1.6-mm.] nymph that’s translucent white,” says Louis Sorkin, entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History. “If people knew to look for nymphs, they could head off the problem much sooner.” The bugs pass through six stages of development and feed at least once during each, which means you can get bites before there are full-grown adults visible. If you think you have a problem but can’t find anything, press packing tape or a lint roller underneath carpet and in the corners of beds. Nymphs and eggs will stick to it.

Lou is bringing up a really important point here: many people first see a bed bug that is a fed or unfed nymph. And neither bed bug will look much like the image of an adult bed bug typically pictured in a media story. The first five photos in our page with photos of bed bugs and signs of bed bugs convey the enormous visual difference between fed vs. unfed first instar nymphs, and between nymphs vs. adults. Since people who have not yet had bed bugs often hear of them via the two-minute segment on Fox, or an article in their local paper, it would be best if more news outlets would feature a visual comparison giving people some awareness of this range when and if they do encounter a bed bug.

The article warns people against self-treating with Raid or foggers / bombs, and talks about the importance of dealing with clothing properly, notifying neighbors, and getting a professional in.

What I found most interesting was the final paragraph, which was centered around the need for action on the part of the city:

SEE SOMETHING (DISGUSTING), SAY SOMETHING

Last week, bedbugged tenants mounted a Craigslist-based attack on their Greenpoint building, and protesters in front of the Department of Health demanded action on asthma-exacerbating roaches and rats. They’re not the only ones who think the city could do more to crush creeping menaces. “Bedbugs are a major mental-health issue. I get tired of the Department of Health saying, ‘It’s not a physical issue, so we’re not going to focus on it,’” says Upper West Side council member Gale Brewer. She (and many exterminators) advocate a campaign along the lines of the subway-safety ads to spread word about bug-suppressing preventive steps. Other strategies: certification of bedbug-specialist exterminators and bans on mattress resales. To fight other pests, exterminators would like the DOH to enforce pre-demolition extermination laws more aggressively and hire more pest-control experts to manage parks and public spaces. For its part, the DOH says it has retrained staff after the KFC/Taco Bell rat debacle and is working on plans to combat residential bedbug and rodent problems.

I am really glad that Gale Brewer, who originally proposed the ban on reselling used mattresses in NYC, is still speaking out against bed bugs and their very real negative effects on health. I hope we will get an update on the NY City Council Bed Bug Task Force that was begun over a year ago, but is yet to take action (to our knowledge).

The recommendations here–enforcement of pre-demolition extermination laws, the mattress re-sale ban, and the certification of bed bug specialist PCOs are all good ones. We’ve been talking about the need for a public education campaign (subway ads, TV ads, and so on) since Bedbugger.com started.

Finally, Kirsch said, when describing what to do when you determine you do have bed bugs,

Don’t terrify yourself with horror stories on the Internet; check informative sites like Bedbugger.com.

Informative is good: thanks, Melissa Kirsch! We’re doing our best to get information out there and help people with bed bugs stay as calm as possible, so they can fight bed bugs in an effective way.

I hope we can also have something to do with getting people involved–maybe not so calmly–in fighting for change in public policies, like the ones suggested in this article. It’s always a good time to call your city council representative, or to write to the mayor, about bed bugs. Wherever you live, whether it’s New York, Halifax, Melbourne, or Lexington, Kentucky, take a moment to tell a local politician that bed bugs had a serious impact on your life–whether it was on your family, your finances, your job, and your health.

New Yorkers:
Click here to email Mayor Bloomberg.
Click here to look up and email your city council representative.
Click here to email Gale Brewer about the Bed Bug Task Force even if you’re not in her district.

And here’s a few words from the Rolling Stones–way back in 1978–that still ring true:

Don’t you know the crime rate is going up, up, up, up, up
To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!
You got rats on the west side,
Bed bugs uptown!
What a mess– this town’s in tatters
I’ve been shattered
My brain’s been battered, splattered all over Manhattan

Pop this mp3 on your iPod and muse on how little things have changed. And don’t forget: email your city council representative and remind them there are, once more, “bed bugs uptown.”

• New bed bug legislation: House Bill 565 from Ohio on bed bug treatment
• NYC Bed Bug Task Force / City Council Update
• Update on New York State bed bug legislation (parental notification re: bed bugs in school)
• Finally, somebody does something: Cincinnati’s new Bed Bug Remediation Commission

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Her interviewee, Chip Giller of Grist.org, suggested going to Craigslist or freecycle.org to offer your mattress to others.

Grist says in the related article their website,

In most areas of the U.S., you can’t recycle your mattresses, and they’re even hard to give away — charities like Goodwill often refuse to take them. Old TVs can be tough to unload too. But if your items are still in functional condition, consider that other R, “reuse,” instead of just “recycle.”

One of the best ways to give new life to your old belongings is through the Freecycle Network, an online community with chapters all over the U.S. and around the world, through which people offer up items they no longer want and other people happily snap them up. (Read an article about Freecycle’s founding.) The online bulletin board Craigslist, which also has hundreds of local versions, has a section where you can offer things up for free too. You can get rid of just about any usable item (and some items you didn’t even think were usable) via Freecycle and Craigslist, and you can find great free stuff too.

While this may seem like a good idea, these days mattresses you see curbside (and there is one pictured in the Grist article linked to above) are often there because people had bed bugs and threw them out. While tossing out mattresses and furniture is not usually necessary (or even a good idea), it is a really common reaction to discovering bed bugs.

While Giller and Viera might assume that people would not offer their bed bug-infested mattresses on these online communities, the sad fact is that you can easily have bed bugs without knowing it–a significant percentage of people do not react to their bites. (I’ve heard estimates from 30% to 70%, but I don’t think there is good data on this yet.) Mattresses and furniture items do not always look infested. And bed bugs are spreading at an alarming rate, all over the US, from New York to Cincinnati, San Francisco to Boston, as well as in other countries.

This is probably why Goodwill does not accept used mattresses. (It’s likely they have enough trouble keeping bed bugs out of their shops and warehouses due to donations of furniture, clothing, and other items they do accept.)

While I strive to be as Green as I am able to be, I can tell you that getting bed bugs can do some serious damage to the environment, in the form of tossed out, destroyed, and replaced items, the use of plastic bags to isolate infested materials, the unusual amount of laundry, not to mention the spraying of pesticides.

A typical bedbugger’s XL ziplocs used during an infestation would probably make for a nice little landfill mountain. Bed bugs are not easy to get rid of, and spread easily to neighbors and others. One bed bug-infested mattress can lead to many people getting bed bugs and tossing out lots of otherwise-good stuff. So encouraging people to reuse and share mattresses, when this can spread bed bugs further, just does not make sense. The best thing for the environment would be for fewer people to get bed bugs in the first place.

Avoiding someone else’s Craigslist or Freecycle mattress is a good idea, because you cannot be certain it came from a bed bug free home, and neither can the person who donated it.

Caveat dumpster, and Caveat Craigslist.*

If you’d like to drop Today a note about this concern, as I did, you can email them: today@msnbc.com

*Yes, I know my Latin is not grammatical. It should be Caveat Dumpster-Diver. And Caveat Cragislist-user. But it’s catchy don’t you think? ,

Thanks to poorBugger for mentioning this segment in the Forums.

• bed bugs in the media: the Today Show, Tuesday morning
• Craigslist bed bug warnings
• Dayton and Middletown, Ohio: avoiding bed bugs is difficult
• More bed bug stories from Cincinnati; also, pig spotted in sky over New York City

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First, the journalist Judith Woods says of some bed bug victims:

The lawyer got rid of her bed, both mattress and frame, which ideally anyone with an infestation should do.

Wrong! Tossing such items out is unnecessary, since a Pest Control Operator (PCO) can treat them. Moreover, throwing them away (even labeled and sealed) makes it very likely someone else will pick them up and use them. You’d be surprised how eager others are to bring them home, or sell them secondhand (beware the Car Boot Sales, my British friends). In so many cases, you cannot tell from looking at the items that they are infested. If you’re in a multi-unit building or an attached house, your neighbors may even take them, meaning they can later come back to you.

Similarly, Woods suggests,

Bed linen can be washed at the highest possible temperature – but [PCO Ben Knorton of Rentokil] advises throwing it out.
“I’ve seen sheets literally moving with the sheer number of bedbugs under them,” he says. “In that situation you really need to take drastic action.”

Well, if the bed is moving under the weight of bed bugs, perhaps that’s right. But washing on hot and drying on hot are a better idea in most cases. The above statement implies otherwise. I would only throw out sheets, or a bed and frame, if the PCO advised it. And then I would get them to help (with the mattress and frame) to ensure it was carefully done.

We’re also told of the same afflicted lawyer’s case,

Her room was then sealed and sprayed with insecticide three times over as many weeks.

Does this mean the room was sealed and left for three weeks, meaning no one was sleeping there? If so, the insecticide is not likely to work. Bed bugs need to be lured out to cross the poison and die.

Thanks to reader Fedupandparanoid, in the UK, who wrote me an email to alert me to this article and the issues mentioned above.

She also had this to say:

The article was nearly a full page on the Health on Monday page, and headlined ‘Don’t let the bedbugs bite,’ but I was very dissapointed at the tone of the article and take issue with some of the information contained in it. For some reason the journalist writing had called in Rentokil to check her house because she was so worried about the general rise in bedbugs. She didn’t appear to have any reason for suspecting bedbugs other than that there is a 500-fold increase in cases in London. Rentokil, who she called in, are at the very expensive end of the pest control market and they will be rubbing their hands in glee if they can charge good money to go in and inspect middle class people’s homes for no reason other than there is a general increase.

In fairness, the article did mention signs you can look for, like blood spots and fecal stains, bites in a row and did mention what a bedbug looks like, also the problems with hotels, but they seemed to miss an opportunity of really educating people. The journalist to her ‘great relief received a clean bill of health’ for her beds and although I wouldn’t wish bedbugs on anyone it would have carried more weight if she had actually had them or knew someone who had. There was nothing really about the terrible trauma and life disruption that people go through just a few jokey comments about what the neighbours would think.

Fedupandparanoid also said,

I just feel so annoyed that a paper like the Daily Telegraph - respected for it’s journalism - can make such a hash of a good opportunity. I realise journalists have to write articles that people want to read but there seemed no research and no substance to the article at all.

Yes. I agree with Fedup that we have come to expect more. At least the British press are covering the issue–getting people to talk about bed bugs is the first step.

In other news, in one of the few places that has gone beyond talking about bed bugs, Cincinnati emergency personnel are concerned about catching bed bugs when they go to help the city’s residents, ABC9 (WCPO.com) reports.

Firefighters, police, and health workers are encountering bed bugs in their work. And in the circumstances, where people are in danger, personnel don’t generally have time to worry about whether a place is infested before they go in.

Cincinnati Fire District Chief Ronald J. Texter says they’re working on a plan so crews won’t bring them back to the firehouse.

“The difficulty for us is that we can’t go into a house, survey it first, find out whether or not there’s bedbugs and then take precautions by putting on a Tyvex suit or something like that, like an exterminator would do.”

Texter said the department is concerned about the growing bedbug problem. The bugs are so small, sometimes you can’t see them.

“We’ve also had hospitals call and tell us that the patient, when they started treating them, they found bedbugs and they call us and let us know as a precaution that the patient had bedbugs,” Texter said.

This is good news: hospital staff are tuned in to the problem and the dangers of personnel exposed to it. The bad news is if patients are carrying bed bugs on their person, they must be suffering from very bad infestations.

If a firefighter walks into a home with bedbugs, they’re being encouraged to clean their equipment as soon as they return to the station.

Chief Texter admits that’s easier said than done.

“When you make 15 to 20 runs a day and you can’t stop everytime and take everything out, clean it, and put it all back and make sure there’s no bedbugs.”

The Cincinnati Fraternal Order of Police says officers have similar concerns.

Both departments are working on a plan to deal with the problem.

The fire department is educating personnel in addition to hiring an exterminator.

“If we do have a problem with bedbugs, we already have a pest control operator under contract to treat the infestation.”

Cincinnati emergency personnel, like the Cincinnati health department, are being very proactive about bed bugs. That the police and fire departments are talking to pest control operators in advance of detecting an infestation, is a very good thing. Lots can be done–not only in terms of educating personnel about signs of bed bugs and what to do if one is exposed, but also in terms of developing a protocol for searching the firehouse, for example, or where to store clothing that may be exposed.

And make no mistake: bed bugs are spreading via the same routes everywhere else. The difference is, people in Cincinnati are not afraid to talk about it. It’s the first step to making things better.

Click to read or watch the ABC9 video from Cincinnati.

Click here to read the Daily Telegraph article.

• Cincinnati: awareness spreading, funds needed to fight bed bugs
• Urgent: if you’re in Cincinnati…
• Cincinnati Establishes Bed Bug Furniture Pick-Up Procedures and Hotline
• Cincinnati: “best weapon against bed bugs is … education”

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Yesterday, Joe Wessels of the Cincinnati Post reported that city officials were forming a commission to fight the problem:

The Bedbug Remediation Commission, a five-member panel of local health, social service and elected leaders, is in the process of forming and will try to find ways to better educate the public about how to combat and prevent bedbug infestations.

“It’s just crazy that we have that in our city in the 21st century,” said City Council Member Chris Monzel, who is working with West End state Rep. Dale Mallory to establish the panel. “We need to do whatever we (the city) can to eliminate this.”

That’s exactly what we think too–something must be done. Surely something can be done? And yet local, state, and federal governments have been so slow to take action.

What made Cincy’s politicians take note? According to Wessels,

Workers for the Council of Aging have refused to make home visits to some seniors’ residences because they are infested. The workers complained they were being bitten and unwittingly carrying the parasites back to their own homes.

Residents of a Race Street building plagued with bedbugs have taken to sleeping on the sidewalk in front of the structure to keep from being bitten while they rest. The pests are so thick in the building that Tuesday they were seen during the day, extremely rare for the nocturnal creatures.

“Bedbugs do not typically live outside,” said Erich Hardebeck, vice president of Covington-based Permakil Pest Control, who was called in by rehabbers of a neighboring building to see if the bugs had spread to it.

Cincinnati’s bed bug problem sounds bad, but the things that are happening there are happening everywhere that bed bugs are taking over.

What exactly are the city’s statistics on bed bugs?

Cincinnati Health Department officials said they had received 179 bedbug calls through July 20, including 28 from West Price Hill, 21 from East Price Hill, 21 from Westwood and 10 from South Fairmount. Calls have picked up recently from Over-the-Rhine and the West End.

There is plenty of evidence that NYC’s problem is every bit as bad, per capita, and possibly much, much worse. NYC says only around 1190 actual cases were identified by the housing department based on complaints to 311 in the period from Summer 2005-Summer 2006. It’s striking that no one has cited any statistics for the period from Summer 2006-2007; one can only imagine they are much worse. At the same time, as I’ve written many times before, Mara Altman, in her odious Village Voice story last December, cited the head of one local PCO who claimed to get 85 actual bed bug calls per day (at the end of 2006). Clearly, 311’s statistics are just the tip of the iceberg, as Cincinnati’s probably are too.

Cincinnati’s government officials are smart: they see things are bad, they see them getting progressively worse, and they’re going to get some folks together and work on it.

New York City’s City Council also has a “Bed Bug Task Force.” However, except for a hearing about the issue of reselling used mattresses, we have not seen any public discussion on this issue yet. Except for a fact sheet on the health department’s website, which tells people to clean and that they may need a PCO, NYC has not admitted that bed bugs are a problem, let alone a serious one. They certainly won’t admit it’s a public health problem.

Let’s compare with their counterparts in the Cincinnati-Hamilton County area:

“We believe strongly that the insect should not be allowed to crawl over children while they are sleeping,” said Chris Eddy, Hamilton County’s environmental health director. “We took the position two years ago that (bedbugs) are a public health crisis. We believe that we need to be able to use the nuisance complaint code to get rid of these.”

Bed bugs are a public health crisis? Darn right they are. But sadly, few other public health departments are making a statement like this. And they should be–talking about bed bugs, and taking action on bed bugs.

How did this happen in Cincinnati? Last month, there was a Town Hall Meeting. The Enquirer reports in another article that, in a very effective move, one woman apparently turned up carrying a bag of dead bed bugs from her apartment:

City Councilman Chris Monzel and State Rep. Dale Mallory, D-West End, are working on the issue after hearing at council’s Health Committee on Tuesday what Monzel called “heartbreaking” stories.

One woman, he said, brought a plastic bag of dead bugs to a town hall meeting last month about the problem.

After talking to an exterminator, representatives from area apartment associations and the Council on Aging of Southwest Ohio, Monzel said he decided to try to improve enforcement of city regulations or beef up ordinances to stress that the bugs have become a public health problem.

I am absolutely in love with Cincinnati City Council right now. They actually heard heartbreaking stories three weeks ago and they are doing something? Break out the vikane and the UHauls, kids, and let’s move over there: Cincinnati is a good town.

Hey, I love New York too, but it’s been a year since Caitlin Heller, Bugsinthehood, and several others spoke at a NYC City Council Hearing related to the bed bug issue (which was, sadly, officially only about the resale of mattresses issue). You bet your patootie they had some heartbreaking stories. Where’s my Bed Bug Remediation Commission? Where’s my admission that our city has a serious problem?

Could it be that NYC fears that to admit their problem publicly would mean a loss in tourism revenue? Is this really the only reason we aren’t seeing any action around here?

What is being done in Cincinnati? The Post makes it clear that public education is part of the plan. The Enquirer says the plans also include a hotline residents can call so that infested furniture is picked up quickly. The Bed Bug Remediation Commission also plans to “plan to work with second-hand stores to make sure they’re not reselling infested mattresses and furniture.” Above all else, improving enforcement of existing regulations, and “beefing up” ordinances where necessary, is exactly what is needed to help curb this problem. Bravo, Cincinnati!

Bed bugs are not going to go away overnight, but for goodness’ sake, do something.

• Urgent: if you’re in Cincinnati…
• New York vs. Bed Bugs: NYC is the underdog!
• Cincinnati: awareness spreading, funds needed to fight bed bugs
• Last week’s Town Hall Meeting in Cincinnati

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I previously blogged the same bed bug-infested curbside furniture from another angle, and another photographer.

But I loved this shot. As if someone was trying to warn the aliens not to land on McKibben Street, in Brooklyn.

Please, everyone: label your bed bug furniture. Better yet, slash it up. People are really, truly clueless about this problem and will march right back into your building with your infested stuff, their new “finds”.

Still other people are ruthless and will sell your refuse to someone who hasn’t a clue. Mattresses with warnings painted on can be recovered. When bed bugs go around, they come around again.

• If this couch could talk…
• Dayton and Middletown, Ohio: avoiding bed bugs is difficult
• Manhattan Mattress Mystery
• Bed bug unfriendly mattress re-sellers: recommendations?

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Proud as she was at talking the seller down to $10, she had no idea the deal included a throw-in of the little creatures, which infested her daughter’s room within 72 hours. She immediately took the table outside and saturated it with Raid, then called an exterminator.

Yes, the exterminator, using heavy chemicals, got the bugs out of her daughter’s room.

“But they just migrated to our bedroom,” she said. “And then they were in the couch, on the floor where the cat lies, everywhere.”

We’ve heard you have to have the whole home treated for this reason. But instead of proceeding with conventional spraying, Thor found another option:

While extermination did not work, Thor discovered a new treatment from a company she happened to find working in her neighborhood.

Clean Zone, of Lisle, uses artificially made ozone to eliminate unwanted living organisms — from bugs to mold and bacteria. The company has machines about the size of a golf bag that actually create ozone, the kind we have naturally in our atmosphere.

They seal up a house or building, turn the machines on and go away for a while. The treatment area fills with ozone, which takes all oxygen from the air, effectively killing anything that needs oxygen to live.

Perhaps the best thing about the ozone treatment is it is natural, not chemical. After the treatment is over, the machines are turned off, the rooms unsealed, and within two hours the ozone converts to oxygen.

This is CleanZone’s information on their methods.
This one is completely new to me. I’d love to hear more from our bed bug experts and PCOs whether they know anything about these ozone treatments.

• Cooper Pest evaluates ozone treatments for bed bugs, finds current methods ineffective
• Thermal treatment for bed bugs: bake the little B@#$%^&s!
• The Wall Street Journal on “new” bed bug-fighting tactics
• Share your Tales of Bed Bug Woe

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It focuses on two stories: the St. Vincent De Paul Society, a social service agency, reports on the prevalence of bed bugs, how thoroughly they alter peoples’ lives, and how they’re unable to help people get the expensive treatments necessary:

“We actually do home visits to people who need assistance and find people who basically are going into apartments that are empty,” said the Society of St. Vincent DePaul’s executive director, Liz Carter. “It’s because people have bed bugs and they’ve just cleared out their apartment of all their upholstered furniture, sleeping on the floor. They don’t have a couch to sit on.”

The agency can’t afford the $400 to $1000 to professionally exterminate each client’s apartment.

While the reporter opens her story by quoting the local health department’s insistence that “there’s no real need to be concerned” about bed bugs,
it’s clear from Liz Carter’s perspective, people sleeping on their floors is a concern. Just because something does not (yet) spread a physical disease, does not mean people should have to live with it.

The City Health Department has gotten 200 complaints about bed bugs this year. (That tells me there have been many, many more bed bug cases–because we know most people do not call the health department about their bed bugs. Most call their landlord, or their pest control operator, or–gasp!–just try and deal with it themselves.) That’s enough to make Cincinnati take action. Bed bugs have been a topic in city hall, and the city is passing out flyers to alert people to the bed bug epidemic in that city. (They’re not just hiding a flyer on the Department of Health website, as NYC has done–meaning only those looking for bed bug information online come in contact with it).

“What we want to do is try to get the information out to as many citizens and residents as possible about the problem and how to combat it because it is becoming a big problem in many of our neighborhoods,” said council member, Chris Monzel.

The city is planning to kickoff a campaign to educate citizens about bed bugs.

“We’re going to do some training in schools. We’re going to do some flyers and pass out flyers,” said Dale Grigsby from the Cincinnati Health Department.

The health department says not to pick up used furniture off the sidewalk, even if it looks like it is in good condition.

I wish my (New York) city health department would tell people not to do that. Cincinnati is doing something, and I am glad about this–but the report from the St. Vincent folks tells me more needs to be done: funds need to be made available so that everyone can get the professional bed bug treatment needed to eradicate bed bugs from their homes.

Rich, middle-income, or poor: nobody should have to live like this.

• Urgent: if you’re in Cincinnati…
• Cincinnati fights bed bugs, declares some success
• Cincinnati: “best weapon against bed bugs is … education”
• Cincinnati Establishes Bed Bug Furniture Pick-Up Procedures and Hotline

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