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
• How to spread bed bugs, in three easy steps!
• bed bugs at Pace University; bed bug buzz in Portland, Oregon

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However, this isn’t one of those stories. This is new news.

The Charlotte Observer reported Sunday that inspectors found 600 unsanitized mattresses at Advanced Hotel Services on Sugar Creek Road, Charlotte, N.C., a used hotel furniture store, during monthly spot checks in 4 months (October through January). “Used hotel furniture” is sounding like such a bad idea right now.

Some mattresses had fake tags that indicated they were sanitized when they were not. The inspectors do not know how many mattresses were sold in that condition.

Two different owners each say they never sold any, though an inspector was told by workers in January that some mattresses were set to go to a motel chain.

After failing to clean the mattresses following four inspections, the state ordered Advanced on Jan. 22 to destroy 374 mattresses on its sales floor, a state inspection report said.

Workers cut the mattresses, but an additional 200 or so in the store’s stock room were not destroyed because an owner said he was dumping those, Anderson said.

N.C. law requires sellers to sanitize used mattresses, couches and recliners at 230 degrees for two hours to kill bacteria and bed bugs, Johnson said.

Used bedding also cannot have stains, and sellers must glue on a yellow label that says the items are used. Sellers must sanitize even relatively new bedding — such as mattresses returned after a 30-day trial, Johnson said. The law does not apply to private, individual sales.

Most of us did not get our bed bugs from unsanitized mattresses, but they’re certainly a way in which bed bugs may have been spread initially. Especially if they’re making their ways into hotels. Or (in the case of other resold mattresses) the homes of our neighbors and co-workers.

My own city’s officials balked at a ban on reselling mattresses because of a sense that the poor really needed to save $50 by buying a used mattress.

Back in September, the NYTimes reported that

… Andrew Eiler, director of legislation for the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs, expressed uncertainty about the [proposed NYC] bill [to limit the re-sale of used mattresses]. A twin-sized mattress without a box spring can be bought for $40 from the Salvation Army, or about $50 less than a new mattress. “While $50 may not appear as a significant difference to some, it may be an unbridgeable gap to consumers with limited incomes,” he said.

I am sorry, but that’s bull. The poor really do not need bed bugs. I spent several years sleeping on a 3″ futon (not the futons most people in the west use, but the thin ones). It was immensely comfortable. I was somewhere between a cheap new mattress and a reconditioned mattress for cost, and I’d sleep on one forever rather than have bed bugs.

Shame on these foolish, foolish businessmen. And shame on the system:

After failing to clean the mattresses following four inspections, the state ordered Advanced on Jan. 22 to destroy 374 mattresses on its sales floor, a state inspection report said.

Workers cut the mattresses, but an additional 200 or so in the store’s stock room were not destroyed because an owner said he was dumping those, Anderson said.

If they can be given four months, four inspections, and still have the mattresses in the back room, maybe the inspections system is faulty.

Ever bought something special from the backroom of a store? In this case, it was no bargain.

And the article says that the majority of used mattresses sold elsewhere are also unsanitized:

About 60 percent of the mattresses inspected at stores and flea markets have not been sanitized properly or at all, Anderson said.

• Bedbugged North Carolina: Bayer’s training grounds for bed bug detection and treatment
• Stirring up anti-immigrant sentiment in Charlotte: let’s start the blame game
• Virginia Beach hotel sued over alleged bed bug attack
• Bed bugs in “refurbished” mattresses on Fox NY

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