Channel 3 in Waterbury, Connecticut reported today,

There’s a lot wrong in that statement alone, let alone the report that follows.

First, check your children?!?

Bed bugs do not live on children. They are not like lice.

They may be carried briefly in clothing or harbor in bags.

But they primarily live in places: in beds, chairs or other furniture, in floors and walls. The child picked bed bugs up somewhere: could it be home? School? In a friend’s home, relative’s home, afterschool care? Restaurant? Public transportation? On the school bus right before he came to school? It could be anywhere.

Home is a likely source but not the only one by any means.

So what you need to check, or carefully inspect, or better yet have a professional (who is experienced with bed bugs) carefully inspect, is the physical environment the child lives in, goes to school in, and otherwise spends time in.

Second, the news report says bed bugs are the “size of a poppy seed and range in color from white to dark red.” Not quite accurate.

Bed bugs have five nymphal (pre-adult) life stages and one adult life stage. The smallest nymphs are 1/32 inch (1 mm) — as long as the thickness of a credit card. But adults are closer to 1/6 inch (6 mm) or a bit larger than an apple seed. And they will be more on the rusty-brown side of the color spectrum. Only the youngest nymphs will be “white” or translucent, or blood-red if just fed.

Third,

Health officials said that bed bugs can be removed from clothing by putting them in the dryer for two cycles.

“Two cycles” is pretty vague and misses the important point about the temperature needed to kill bed bugs.

A very hot dryer (180 F) will kill bed bugs and eggs hidden inside a sock in 5 minutes, entomologist Dr. Michael Potter tells us. Other fabrics may take more time based on thickness or size, possibly much longer. But the dryer really must be hot. A cooler dryer (120 F) would take at least 1/2 hour or more once it reaches that temperature. I really don’t know what a standard US dryer heat is, nor how long a typical dryer cycle is. It is probably best to be as specific as possible under the circumstances.

Finally, when I hear stories like this, I want to know more about how school officials determined the bed bugs were coming from the child’s clothing or things.

Because if you simply found bed bugs on a child, they could also have crawled onto him from the immediate surroundings.

I really hope all the parents will learn about bed bugs and inspect their homes carefully. I also hope the family of this child will get help if their home is indeed infested, and that others will not treat them badly. Because even if he did bring bed bugs into school, it is not his fault.

Bed bugs can happen to anyone and should not be the source of shame. They are not caused by a lack of hygiene, but spread easily from one person to another. People who have them always, always caught them from someone else. It’s usually not really anyone’s fault.

Waterbury has apparently had lots of bed bug infestations.

And other schools have been dealing with this problem to varying degrees of success.Similar Posts:

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We know bed bugs are all over Waterbury, CT.

And all over Craigslist.

Craigslist reader BOB warned fellow Craigslisters (namely residents of Oakville and the Waterbury area) to beware:

re oakville

Reply to: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-12-20, 11:07PM EST

Watch out for bed bugs. THey are spreading fast. They are all over waterbury and the reactions are too slow. Check out http://www.bedbugger.com Don’t pick up stray furniture or people. It spreads fast takes up to a year before people realize they have a problem then if they are a tenant it takes another 2 months to start treatments then people throw thier furniture on the street. ITs a spreading nightmare and of course nobody is talking but the exterminators are making a fortune. WHy because they are impossible to get rid of. THey crawl in holes. survive or even if they get them all you probably infected someone familiar to you who reinfects you. Oh and how many family things have you gone too when they take you jacket and throw it on a bed…with everone elses Merry christmas from waterbury….and happy itching f—ing new year….BOB

it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 515776675

I cleaned up a word. You can see the glorious original by clicking on the screenshot above (then choose “All Sizes” and then “Large”). The original was here and may still be.

We don’t know BOB, but we know why he’s angry.Similar Posts:

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IMG_1153.JPG

Photo by ry_aka_olympia

Waterbury, Connecticut has had a recent bed bug outbreak in a number of locations. Last week, we were told in the Republican-American online of these locations with bed bug infestations, which had been reported to the Health Dept.:

553 South Main St. (two apartments in a multi-unit building; all the rest of the following had at least one infested apartment in a multi-unit building):
42 Pine St. (the Wilby Apartments),
107 South Leonard St.,
182 West Main St.,
148 Grand St. (where the entire building was declared infested back in April), and
995 Bank St.
Also: the Salvation Army shelter.

A news report by Eric Parker of Eyewitness News 3 on Friday said that this week, two more apartment buildings were added to the list of bed bug infestations reported to the Waterbury Health Department: the Enterprise Apartments at 13 Cherry Ave., and an unnamed building “near Waterbury Green” (the Waterbury Republican named this as “two apartments at Plaza on the Green… 2 North Main Street”).

Let’s be completely realistic: these buildings that the Waterbury Health Department has been made aware of are likely just the tip of the iceberg. Single family homeowners, condo owners, hotels, and other businesses are unlikely to report their infestations. So are landlords of multi-unit buildings, and fearful tenants who may be wary of reporting their landlord.

Eyewitness News 3’s Eric Parker tells us,

The reports are spreading, and that has people at the Enterprise Apts worried.

The Health Department is not surprised that reports keep appearing. Parker reports (note, I transcribed his actual video report, since the transcription on the website differed from it):

Officials at the Health Dept say that when they get a few reports of bed bugs, they expect a few more. Because people who have the bed bugs at their house will travel around, and that spreads it. So they usually have several weeks of reports before they can finally kick the bed bugs for good.

Cookie Rosado, of the Enterprise Apartments was planning to move because of her bed bug infestation. Eyewitness News 3 just told us bed bugs were spread via people; why not reiterate here how easily bed bugs can be moved from one location to another, and how likely it is Cookie Rosado’s new building, too, will become infested.

The Health Department, Parker tells us, is going to “continue to follow the bed bugs as more reports come in.”

Cool! So are we, Health Department. The only difference is, we are a media outlet (yes, I know, it is a grandiose term for a blog. But we are trying to spread the bed bug news and information as best we can). You, however, are the Waterbury Health Department. You need to do more than assume that after a few weeks of reports in various locations, that your town will be able to “kick the bed bugs for good.”

It is true that bed bugs in one space (say a single apartment) can be gotten rid of in a few weeks. But we also know that most people do not recognize the problem right away. And then few people recognize it at all: it is commonplace for some residents in a building to report an infestation while others will have no idea. If they are not allergic, it may take ages to see the signs. Still others are fearful and simply live with or try to self-treat the problem. So while a small, isolated infestation can theoretically be gotten rid of in a few weeks, in most cases, the problem will continue spreading to others.

So not only will a few more weeks uncover many more infestations, most of them likely to be unreported to the Health Dept. You’re also likely to find that many of these cases drag on for months (or even years) because there’s one or two tenants reporting a problem, and several neighbors who have it but have no idea and so are not treated. That reason alone makes treating bed bugs in multi-unit buildings really difficult.

I can only hope that journalist Eric Parker misunderstood the Health Department officials’ line on bed bugs. Because Waterbury only needs to read some of the bed bug news from other cities in order to see that, yes, bed bugs will continue to spread. But they won’t be eliminated in time. They will only get worse and spread further. Unless drastic steps are taken by the city to halt their spread, and educate people about the problem.

What’s displayed in this report is either ignorance of the true nature and likely scope of the bed bug epidemic in Waterbury, or a fear of disclosing the truth to residents.
Either way, it’s a shame.

You can catch Eric Parker’s segment here.
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Bed bugs creeping their way around Waterbury, CT, the Republican-American reported on Friday that the Waterbury Health Department has gotten complaints from around the city:

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.

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