Showing posts with label bed bugs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bed bugs. Show all posts
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Biting Back Against Bed Bugs
Here is a mostly accurate article about heat treating bed bugs in Victoria! Biting Back Against Bed Bugs Blogger is acting up and I can't seem to get this to work with proper spacing to make it readable. For now, here is the link instead. http://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_south/victorianews/news/119802619.html
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
By Erin Cardone - Saanich News
Published: November 09, 2010 10:00 AM Updated: November 09, 2010 10:34 AM
A bloodsucking critter is taking over Victoria homes and apartments.
While eastern Canada and much of the United States are fighting off bedbug infestations in hotels, motels and hostels, the insects are populating local living rooms and bedrooms.
“It’s already here,” said Victoria Pest Control manager Daniel Pratap of what has been called a bedbug “pandemic” by national media.
“People are moving and bringing (the bugs) with them. Bedbugs hit 90 per cent of rental apartments.”
Old Island Pest Control owner Blair Dooley said single-family homes, especially ones with rental suites, are big business for his company.
“I’d say when we first started (seeing bedbugs) they were in hotels, hostels, that type of thing,” he said.
“Now it’s definitely more in residential apartment units and the big difference this year is in residential homes. People trying to move away from bedbug problems in rental apartments are moving to rental homes.”
Different sources have pointed to various causes for an increase in bedbug infestations across North America – for example, DDT was banned from Canada in 1985 – but both Pratap and Dooley said clutter and used furniture are propagating their spread.
Victoria’s recycling practice of leaving free furniture for the taking on roadsides isn’t doing people any favours when it comes to keeping the bugs at bay, Dooley said.
“It doesn’t have to be a bed, either. Couches are super common for bedbugs. They’re probably (outside) for a reason.”
Some property managers have begun screening tenants. If a tenant comes from a suite known to have a history with bedbugs, the company could back away, said Rob Hunter, president of Devon Properties.
“We’re just looking to see if (they’ve come from) a building that has had bad bedbug outbreaks,” he said. And as for how those buildings are identified, “it’s a small town. You hear about it through the grapevine of professional property managers.”
Pratap said bedbug infestations have exacerbated over the past four years. He estimated that in 2006, bedbugs accounted for two per cent of his business. Now, that figure is 50 per cent.
Dooley said the problem has grown since 2001 and now accounts for about 15 per cent of his business.
“There’s been a big explosion in the last two months,” Dooley said. “My big belief is it’s the Olympics. It’s a bit of a delayed reaction – it takes a while for that population to build up.”
Though residences seem to be worst-hit in Victoria, Dooley said four- and five-star hotels have been bedbug clients for his business recently.
The University of Victoria’s latest infestation was in April, said communications officer Maria Lironi. Bedbugs were found in one dorm, which was treated.
There have been no bedbug reports at Victoria General or Royal Jubilee hospitals, said Vancouver Island Health Authority spokesperson Shannon Marshall. The only infestations at VIHA-run centres in Victoria were the Archie Courtnall Psychiatric Emergency Centre in May and at the Pembroke Street Detox Centre in January 2007.
The Canadian Federation of Apartment Associations is hosting a conference in Victoria on Thursday (Nov. 4) to discuss bedbugs.
A site called the Bedbug Registry logs unconfirmed reports of bedbugs in North America. Go to bedbugregistry.com and search for Victoria.
ecardone@vicnews.com
Published: November 09, 2010 10:00 AM Updated: November 09, 2010 10:34 AM
A bloodsucking critter is taking over Victoria homes and apartments.
While eastern Canada and much of the United States are fighting off bedbug infestations in hotels, motels and hostels, the insects are populating local living rooms and bedrooms.
“It’s already here,” said Victoria Pest Control manager Daniel Pratap of what has been called a bedbug “pandemic” by national media.
“People are moving and bringing (the bugs) with them. Bedbugs hit 90 per cent of rental apartments.”
Old Island Pest Control owner Blair Dooley said single-family homes, especially ones with rental suites, are big business for his company.
“I’d say when we first started (seeing bedbugs) they were in hotels, hostels, that type of thing,” he said.
“Now it’s definitely more in residential apartment units and the big difference this year is in residential homes. People trying to move away from bedbug problems in rental apartments are moving to rental homes.”
Different sources have pointed to various causes for an increase in bedbug infestations across North America – for example, DDT was banned from Canada in 1985 – but both Pratap and Dooley said clutter and used furniture are propagating their spread.
Victoria’s recycling practice of leaving free furniture for the taking on roadsides isn’t doing people any favours when it comes to keeping the bugs at bay, Dooley said.
“It doesn’t have to be a bed, either. Couches are super common for bedbugs. They’re probably (outside) for a reason.”
Some property managers have begun screening tenants. If a tenant comes from a suite known to have a history with bedbugs, the company could back away, said Rob Hunter, president of Devon Properties.
“We’re just looking to see if (they’ve come from) a building that has had bad bedbug outbreaks,” he said. And as for how those buildings are identified, “it’s a small town. You hear about it through the grapevine of professional property managers.”
Pratap said bedbug infestations have exacerbated over the past four years. He estimated that in 2006, bedbugs accounted for two per cent of his business. Now, that figure is 50 per cent.
Dooley said the problem has grown since 2001 and now accounts for about 15 per cent of his business.
“There’s been a big explosion in the last two months,” Dooley said. “My big belief is it’s the Olympics. It’s a bit of a delayed reaction – it takes a while for that population to build up.”
Though residences seem to be worst-hit in Victoria, Dooley said four- and five-star hotels have been bedbug clients for his business recently.
The University of Victoria’s latest infestation was in April, said communications officer Maria Lironi. Bedbugs were found in one dorm, which was treated.
There have been no bedbug reports at Victoria General or Royal Jubilee hospitals, said Vancouver Island Health Authority spokesperson Shannon Marshall. The only infestations at VIHA-run centres in Victoria were the Archie Courtnall Psychiatric Emergency Centre in May and at the Pembroke Street Detox Centre in January 2007.
The Canadian Federation of Apartment Associations is hosting a conference in Victoria on Thursday (Nov. 4) to discuss bedbugs.
A site called the Bedbug Registry logs unconfirmed reports of bedbugs in North America. Go to bedbugregistry.com and search for Victoria.
ecardone@vicnews.com
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Bed Bug Symposium Victoria 2010!
The first of its kind in Victoria and Vancouver!
We have important news about an upcoming event in Victoria. The National, Canadian, and BC Pest Associations have arranged a Bed Bug Symposium Thursday Nov 4th, 2010.
It is specifically designed for property managers, owners, care home mangers and other related management staff that may potentially need to battle these bugs.
Bed Bugs, unfortunately, are becoming more and more of an issue and are not the easiest bugs to get rid of. Precautionary measures and the knowledge of what to do if you encounter them in your establishment, is valuable information that can help make the problem easier and less costly to deal with if you need to.
Early Bird Registration discount ends Oct 12.
Here is a link to the conference brochure and Registration.
Please pass this information on to any property managers or building owners you think may benefit.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Do it Yoursef Bed Bug Detector
We thought this article was
of interest but it comes with
CAUTIONS!
At our recent Pest Conference this method was commented on by one of our visiting speakers, an entomologist who specializes in bed bugs. After further testing it was found to be highly effective compared to commercial detectors but also comes with some serious risks that you should be aware of.
As a company we are in no way advocating the use of this method, we simply posted it as an article of interest.
Dry ice is the key ingredient in this home made detector.
- Dry ice if not handled correctedly could cause serious frost burns to skin.
- Dry ice gives off large quantities of carbon dioxide gas, which is what makes this detector effective, but also could displace oxygen in the air and pose a danger of asphixiation.
- If ingested accidently by a pet or child it could cause severe internal injuries.
Please see the following website for proper handling of dry ice.
http://www.praxair.com/praxair.nsf/allcontent/6aef77aec129fa0b85256c72006a4dd7?opendocument&urlmenubranch=8e0340f7cb2710a18525706f005112a9
Do-it-yourself bed-bug detector
With bed-bug numbers on the rise in North America, researchers test homemade bug finders
From Science News
By Susan Milius
Web edition : Friday, December 18th, 2009
INDIANAPOLIS — After trying some 50 arrangements of household objects, researchers have come up with a new low-cost, homemade bed-bug detector.
To lure the bugs out of hiding, Wan-Tien Tsai of Rutgers University in New Brunswick put dry ice into an insulated, one-third-gallon jug, the kind available at sports or camping stores. Adding 2.5 pounds of dry ice pellets and not quite closing the pour hole allowed carbon dioxide to leak out at a bug-teasing rate for some 11 hours at room temperature, she said.
She stood the jug in a plastic cat food dish with a piece of paper taped on the outside of the dish as a ramp up to the rim. The bowl’s steep, slippery inside, with an added dusting of talcum powder, kept bugs from crawling out again.
In tests in real apartments, the homemade setup detected bed bugs as well, or better, than did two brands of professional exterminating equipment, Tsai said December 16 at the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America.
The parts, including the dry ice, cost $15 and don’t require any special skills for assembly. “Everyone can do it,” she said.
These days a growing number of people might want to. The tiny, night-crawling bugs that draw blood and can leave itching welts had dwindled to rarity in North America during most of the last century. But since the 1990s, outbreaks have surged. The bugs flatten themselves into crevices in furniture, fabric and even electrical devices, and can prove difficult to eradicate. Many of today’s bed bugs are resistant to pyrethroid insecticides, which account for much of indoor pest treatments.
Tsai worked with Changlu Wang, also at Rutgers, for six months on designing homemade devices that lure bed bugs out into a trap so residents can tell whether a home is infested. Like many insects that search for blood, bed bugs are attracted to plumes of concentrated carbon dioxide, good clues that an animal filled with liquid dinner is breathing somewhere nearby. In lab tests, carbon dioxide beat heat and several chemical attractants in drawing the bugs out of hiding, Wang reported at the meeting.
He has published on low-tech ways to attract bed bugs with carbon dioxide. For example, setting out dry ice in insulated travel mugs can work. Apartment dwellers don’t need research supply companies for dry ice. Beverage companies, for example, may sell it by the pound.
To design a new low-tech detection system, Tsai experimented with various setups but says her breakthrough came when she discovered the one-third-gallon insulated jugs. They performed well in lab tests, so she decided to test them in apartments that had low levels of bed-bug infestation. She searched for bed bugs herself to confirm that apartments were suitable. Then she set either her homemade detector or a commercial one in each apartment near a typical bug haven, such as the sofa.
Designing and testing a low-cost detector is a substantial contribution to the field, comments entomologist Stephen Kells of the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. During decades of low bed-bug infestations, scientists didn’t study them much. "We have literally skipped a generation of knowledge with this pest," he says.
Studies from early in the last century may not describe today’s bed-bugs well, says entomologist Andrea Polanco-Pinzón of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. Older generations of bed bugs weren’t resistant to pesticides and lived in tougher environments: houses without central heating.
On the bright side though, Polanco-Pinzón reported at the meeting that her survival tests found that a pesticide-resistant strain she collected from Richmond, Va., lived at most two months without feeding. That record, set by the fifth stage of the immature bugs, falls far short of the year and a half reported in the old literature.
of interest but it comes with
CAUTIONS!
At our recent Pest Conference this method was commented on by one of our visiting speakers, an entomologist who specializes in bed bugs. After further testing it was found to be highly effective compared to commercial detectors but also comes with some serious risks that you should be aware of.
As a company we are in no way advocating the use of this method, we simply posted it as an article of interest.
Dry ice is the key ingredient in this home made detector.
- Dry ice if not handled correctedly could cause serious frost burns to skin.
- Dry ice gives off large quantities of carbon dioxide gas, which is what makes this detector effective, but also could displace oxygen in the air and pose a danger of asphixiation.
- If ingested accidently by a pet or child it could cause severe internal injuries.
Please see the following website for proper handling of dry ice.
http://www.praxair.com/praxair.nsf/allcontent/6aef77aec129fa0b85256c72006a4dd7?opendocument&urlmenubranch=8e0340f7cb2710a18525706f005112a9
Do-it-yourself bed-bug detector
With bed-bug numbers on the rise in North America, researchers test homemade bug finders
From Science News
By Susan Milius
Web edition : Friday, December 18th, 2009
INDIANAPOLIS — After trying some 50 arrangements of household objects, researchers have come up with a new low-cost, homemade bed-bug detector.
To lure the bugs out of hiding, Wan-Tien Tsai of Rutgers University in New Brunswick put dry ice into an insulated, one-third-gallon jug, the kind available at sports or camping stores. Adding 2.5 pounds of dry ice pellets and not quite closing the pour hole allowed carbon dioxide to leak out at a bug-teasing rate for some 11 hours at room temperature, she said.
She stood the jug in a plastic cat food dish with a piece of paper taped on the outside of the dish as a ramp up to the rim. The bowl’s steep, slippery inside, with an added dusting of talcum powder, kept bugs from crawling out again.
In tests in real apartments, the homemade setup detected bed bugs as well, or better, than did two brands of professional exterminating equipment, Tsai said December 16 at the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America.
The parts, including the dry ice, cost $15 and don’t require any special skills for assembly. “Everyone can do it,” she said.
These days a growing number of people might want to. The tiny, night-crawling bugs that draw blood and can leave itching welts had dwindled to rarity in North America during most of the last century. But since the 1990s, outbreaks have surged. The bugs flatten themselves into crevices in furniture, fabric and even electrical devices, and can prove difficult to eradicate. Many of today’s bed bugs are resistant to pyrethroid insecticides, which account for much of indoor pest treatments.
Tsai worked with Changlu Wang, also at Rutgers, for six months on designing homemade devices that lure bed bugs out into a trap so residents can tell whether a home is infested. Like many insects that search for blood, bed bugs are attracted to plumes of concentrated carbon dioxide, good clues that an animal filled with liquid dinner is breathing somewhere nearby. In lab tests, carbon dioxide beat heat and several chemical attractants in drawing the bugs out of hiding, Wang reported at the meeting.
He has published on low-tech ways to attract bed bugs with carbon dioxide. For example, setting out dry ice in insulated travel mugs can work. Apartment dwellers don’t need research supply companies for dry ice. Beverage companies, for example, may sell it by the pound.
To design a new low-tech detection system, Tsai experimented with various setups but says her breakthrough came when she discovered the one-third-gallon insulated jugs. They performed well in lab tests, so she decided to test them in apartments that had low levels of bed-bug infestation. She searched for bed bugs herself to confirm that apartments were suitable. Then she set either her homemade detector or a commercial one in each apartment near a typical bug haven, such as the sofa.
Designing and testing a low-cost detector is a substantial contribution to the field, comments entomologist Stephen Kells of the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. During decades of low bed-bug infestations, scientists didn’t study them much. "We have literally skipped a generation of knowledge with this pest," he says.
Studies from early in the last century may not describe today’s bed-bugs well, says entomologist Andrea Polanco-Pinzón of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. Older generations of bed bugs weren’t resistant to pesticides and lived in tougher environments: houses without central heating.
On the bright side though, Polanco-Pinzón reported at the meeting that her survival tests found that a pesticide-resistant strain she collected from Richmond, Va., lived at most two months without feeding. That record, set by the fifth stage of the immature bugs, falls far short of the year and a half reported in the old literature.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
A dogged pursuit of bedbugs
Rich Wilbert searches for bed bugs with his dog, Sara. Dogs are trained to sniff along baseboards, beds and furniture for the pheromones, the faint chemical odor that the insects emit to signal one another. (Michael Nagle / For The Times)
Signs of bed bugs(Michael Nagle / For The Times)
Rich Wilbert points out evidence of bed bugs in an apartment in Jersey City, N.J.
A Dogged Pursuit of Bedbugs
October 21, 2009
By Bob Drogin
(This artice isn't local but a very good synopsis of Bed bugs and Bed bug dogs)
There's high demand for dogs trained to track down the tiny, bloodsucking parasites that have invaded cities in the last four years.
"It can be a very valuable tool," said Richard Cooper, coauthor of the 266-page "Bed Bug Handbook" and a member of New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's new Bed Bug Advisory Board. "You can work your way through a hotel or a college dorm or a movie theater much more quickly with dogs than just relying on a visual inspection."
But Gary Alpert, an entomologist at Harvard University who specializes in bedbugs, cautions that some pest control companies use dogs as a gimmick to exploit people's fears and to charge more money.
"There are a lot of scams out there," he said.
Because dogs are given a reward if they "alert" for a bedbug, for example, they may alert just to get the food. An unscrupulous or inexperienced handler could easily use the false alarms to charge for unnecessary treatments.
"You can waste a lot of money very quickly," Alpert said. "Some handlers have no idea what a bedbug looks like."
At Bed Bug Solutions Inc. in Des Plaines, Ill., Linda DeVelasco has filled her calendar with appointments for Scooby, her beagle mutt. To avoid a conflict of interest, she sells Scooby's services independently of local exterminators who actually kill the bugs.
"Otherwise I would find bugs every place I go into," she said.
No one knows why bedbugs are back. Scientists theorize that the wingless insects hitched a ride on visitors or cargo from abroad, or that they resist pesticide better than their forebears, or even that a new, super-strong strain of household pests has evolved.
What's clear is they are hard to eradicate. Bedbugs may survive a year without feeding, and unlike termites and other insects that cluster in colonies, they can create havoc in small numbers. A single female may lay enough eggs to infest an apartment -- and then crawl 100 feet a day to bite neighbors down the hall.
In Washington, the Environmental Protection Agency convened the first National Bed Bug Summit in April. The two-day conference brought together the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Pentagon, state and federal housing officials, experts and exterminators to help fight the invasion.
"A year ago, I thought bedbugs were a thing from a couple of centuries ago or maybe in a children's nursery rhyme," New Jersey state Assemblywoman Joan Quigley told the summit. "I had no idea they were a modern scourge."
Quigley successfully sponsored a bill in the New Jersey Assembly, apparently the nation's first, that would require landlords to pay for bedbug eradication in most cases or face a fine. The state Senate has not yet taken up the measure.
On a recent sunny morning at Laurel House in Asbury Park, a once-grand seaside resort, Sara went room to room in a former boarding house now used to house 28 homeless people a block or so from the boardwalk.
"I've done public housing for 20 years and never heard of bedbugs until four years ago," Steve Heisman, who heads the social service agency that runs the facility, said as he followed Sara. "Now they're public enemy No. 1."
Heisman requires residents to remove pictures from their walls and to keep their clothes and clutter to a minimum to eliminate places where bugs can hide. But he still calls exterminators back "three times a year, and that's if I'm lucky," for $10,000 treatments.
That afternoon, Sara was about 50 miles north in a working-class neighborhood of Jersey City. Wilbert took her to see whether bedbugs had returned to a recently treated three-story apartment building. Out back, someone had painted "Bedbug!" in red on a discarded mattress and crib.
"We had to throw everything out," said Saroj Bala, one of the tenants. "It was an utter nightmare. I was being bitten every night.
"She anxiously watched as Sara sniffed through her living room and bedroom. Bala smiled with relief when the dog left without finding any new bugs.
"Wonderful," she said.
bob.drogin@latimes.com
The Los Angeles Times
(This artice isn't local but a very good synopsis of Bed bugs and Bed bug dogs)
There's high demand for dogs trained to track down the tiny, bloodsucking parasites that have invaded cities in the last four years.
"It can be a very valuable tool," said Richard Cooper, coauthor of the 266-page "Bed Bug Handbook" and a member of New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's new Bed Bug Advisory Board. "You can work your way through a hotel or a college dorm or a movie theater much more quickly with dogs than just relying on a visual inspection."
But Gary Alpert, an entomologist at Harvard University who specializes in bedbugs, cautions that some pest control companies use dogs as a gimmick to exploit people's fears and to charge more money.
"There are a lot of scams out there," he said.
Because dogs are given a reward if they "alert" for a bedbug, for example, they may alert just to get the food. An unscrupulous or inexperienced handler could easily use the false alarms to charge for unnecessary treatments.
"You can waste a lot of money very quickly," Alpert said. "Some handlers have no idea what a bedbug looks like."
At Bed Bug Solutions Inc. in Des Plaines, Ill., Linda DeVelasco has filled her calendar with appointments for Scooby, her beagle mutt. To avoid a conflict of interest, she sells Scooby's services independently of local exterminators who actually kill the bugs.
"Otherwise I would find bugs every place I go into," she said.
No one knows why bedbugs are back. Scientists theorize that the wingless insects hitched a ride on visitors or cargo from abroad, or that they resist pesticide better than their forebears, or even that a new, super-strong strain of household pests has evolved.
What's clear is they are hard to eradicate. Bedbugs may survive a year without feeding, and unlike termites and other insects that cluster in colonies, they can create havoc in small numbers. A single female may lay enough eggs to infest an apartment -- and then crawl 100 feet a day to bite neighbors down the hall.
In Washington, the Environmental Protection Agency convened the first National Bed Bug Summit in April. The two-day conference brought together the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Pentagon, state and federal housing officials, experts and exterminators to help fight the invasion.
"A year ago, I thought bedbugs were a thing from a couple of centuries ago or maybe in a children's nursery rhyme," New Jersey state Assemblywoman Joan Quigley told the summit. "I had no idea they were a modern scourge."
Quigley successfully sponsored a bill in the New Jersey Assembly, apparently the nation's first, that would require landlords to pay for bedbug eradication in most cases or face a fine. The state Senate has not yet taken up the measure.
On a recent sunny morning at Laurel House in Asbury Park, a once-grand seaside resort, Sara went room to room in a former boarding house now used to house 28 homeless people a block or so from the boardwalk.
"I've done public housing for 20 years and never heard of bedbugs until four years ago," Steve Heisman, who heads the social service agency that runs the facility, said as he followed Sara. "Now they're public enemy No. 1."
Heisman requires residents to remove pictures from their walls and to keep their clothes and clutter to a minimum to eliminate places where bugs can hide. But he still calls exterminators back "three times a year, and that's if I'm lucky," for $10,000 treatments.
That afternoon, Sara was about 50 miles north in a working-class neighborhood of Jersey City. Wilbert took her to see whether bedbugs had returned to a recently treated three-story apartment building. Out back, someone had painted "Bedbug!" in red on a discarded mattress and crib.
"We had to throw everything out," said Saroj Bala, one of the tenants. "It was an utter nightmare. I was being bitten every night.
"She anxiously watched as Sara sniffed through her living room and bedroom. Bala smiled with relief when the dog left without finding any new bugs.
"Wonderful," she said.
bob.drogin@latimes.com
The Los Angeles Times
Friday, April 17, 2009
NATIONAL Bed Bug Summit in US !!! Will Canada Follow? We have even fewer pesticides to work with than the US.
EPA Hopes to Stop Bedbugs From Biting
Government Holds First-Ever BedbugSummit in Va.
Last Edited: Wednesday, 15 Apr 2009,
ARLINGTON, Va. - "Don't let the bedbugs bite." Doesn't seem so bad in a cheerful bedtime rhyme, but it's becoming a really big problem now that the nasty critters are invading hospitals, college dorms and even swanky hotels.
With the most effective pesticides banned, the government is trying to figure out how to respond to the biggest bedbug outbreak since World War II.
Bedbugs live in the crevices and folds of mattresses, sofas and sheets. Then, most often before dawn, they emerge to feed on human blood.
Faced with rising numbers of complaints to city information lines and increasingly frustrated landlords, hotel chains and housing authorities, the Environmental Protection Agency hosted its first-ever bedbug summit Tuesday.
Organized by one of the agency's advisory committees, the two-day conference drew about 300 participants to a hotel in Arlington, just across the Potomac River from Washington. An Internet site notes that the hotel in question has had no reports of bedbugs.
One of the problems with controlling the reddish-brown insects, according to researchers and the pest control industry, is that there are few chemicals on the market approved for use on mattresses and other household items that are effective at controlling bedbug infestations.
Unlike roaches and ants, bedbugs are blood feeders and can't be lured by bait. It's also difficult for pesticides to reach them in every crack and crevice they hide out in.
"It is a question of reaching them, finding them," said Harold Harlan, an entomologist who has been raising bedbugs for 36 years, feeding them with his own blood. He has the bites to prove it.
The EPA, out of concern for the environment and the effects on public health, has pulled many of the chemicals that were most effective in eradicating the bugs in the U.S. At the same time, the appleseed-sized critters have developed a pesticide resistance because those chemicals are still in use in other countries.
Increasing international travel has also helped them to hitchhike into the U.S.
"One of our roles would be to learn of new products or safer products. ... What we are concerned about is that if people take things into their own hands and start using pesticides on their mattresses that aren't really registered for that, that's a problem," said Lois Rossi, director of the registration division in the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs.
The EPA is not alone in trying to deal with the problem. An aide to Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., says the congressman plans to reintroduce legislation next week to expand grant programs to help public housing authorities cope with infestations.
The bill will be called the "Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite Act." "It was clear something needed to be done," said Saul Hernandez, Butterfield's legislative assistant.
Bedbugs are not known to transmit any diseases. But their bites can cause infections and allergic reactions in some people. The insects release an anticoagulant to get blood flowing, and they also excrete a numbing agent so their bites don't often wake their victims.
Those often hardest hit are the urban poor, who cannot afford to throw out all their belongings or take other drastic measures. Extermination can cost between $400-$900.
So bedbug problems increase, said Dini Miller, an entomologist and bedbug expert at Virginia Tech, who until 2001 saw bedbugs only on microscope slides dating from the 1950s. Now she gets calls and e-mails several times a day from people at their wits' end.
"I can't tell you how many people have spent the night in their bathtubs because they are so freaked out by bedbugs," Miller said. "I get these people over the phone that have lost their marbles."
Because the registration of new pesticides takes so long, one thing the EPA could do is to approve some pesticides for emergency use, Miller said. Another tactic would be to screen pesticides allowed for use by farmers to see if they are safe in household settings.
Representatives of the pest control industry will be pushing for federal funding for research into alternative solutions, such as heating, freezing or steaming the bugs out of bedrooms. "We need to have better tools," said Greg Baumann, a senior scientist at the National Pest Management Association. "We need EPA to consider all the options for us."
Government Holds First-Ever BedbugSummit in Va.
Last Edited: Wednesday, 15 Apr 2009,
ARLINGTON, Va. - "Don't let the bedbugs bite." Doesn't seem so bad in a cheerful bedtime rhyme, but it's becoming a really big problem now that the nasty critters are invading hospitals, college dorms and even swanky hotels.
With the most effective pesticides banned, the government is trying to figure out how to respond to the biggest bedbug outbreak since World War II.
Bedbugs live in the crevices and folds of mattresses, sofas and sheets. Then, most often before dawn, they emerge to feed on human blood.
Faced with rising numbers of complaints to city information lines and increasingly frustrated landlords, hotel chains and housing authorities, the Environmental Protection Agency hosted its first-ever bedbug summit Tuesday.
Organized by one of the agency's advisory committees, the two-day conference drew about 300 participants to a hotel in Arlington, just across the Potomac River from Washington. An Internet site notes that the hotel in question has had no reports of bedbugs.
One of the problems with controlling the reddish-brown insects, according to researchers and the pest control industry, is that there are few chemicals on the market approved for use on mattresses and other household items that are effective at controlling bedbug infestations.
Unlike roaches and ants, bedbugs are blood feeders and can't be lured by bait. It's also difficult for pesticides to reach them in every crack and crevice they hide out in.
"It is a question of reaching them, finding them," said Harold Harlan, an entomologist who has been raising bedbugs for 36 years, feeding them with his own blood. He has the bites to prove it.
The EPA, out of concern for the environment and the effects on public health, has pulled many of the chemicals that were most effective in eradicating the bugs in the U.S. At the same time, the appleseed-sized critters have developed a pesticide resistance because those chemicals are still in use in other countries.
Increasing international travel has also helped them to hitchhike into the U.S.
"One of our roles would be to learn of new products or safer products. ... What we are concerned about is that if people take things into their own hands and start using pesticides on their mattresses that aren't really registered for that, that's a problem," said Lois Rossi, director of the registration division in the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs.
The EPA is not alone in trying to deal with the problem. An aide to Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., says the congressman plans to reintroduce legislation next week to expand grant programs to help public housing authorities cope with infestations.
The bill will be called the "Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite Act." "It was clear something needed to be done," said Saul Hernandez, Butterfield's legislative assistant.
Bedbugs are not known to transmit any diseases. But their bites can cause infections and allergic reactions in some people. The insects release an anticoagulant to get blood flowing, and they also excrete a numbing agent so their bites don't often wake their victims.
Those often hardest hit are the urban poor, who cannot afford to throw out all their belongings or take other drastic measures. Extermination can cost between $400-$900.
So bedbug problems increase, said Dini Miller, an entomologist and bedbug expert at Virginia Tech, who until 2001 saw bedbugs only on microscope slides dating from the 1950s. Now she gets calls and e-mails several times a day from people at their wits' end.
"I can't tell you how many people have spent the night in their bathtubs because they are so freaked out by bedbugs," Miller said. "I get these people over the phone that have lost their marbles."
Because the registration of new pesticides takes so long, one thing the EPA could do is to approve some pesticides for emergency use, Miller said. Another tactic would be to screen pesticides allowed for use by farmers to see if they are safe in household settings.
Representatives of the pest control industry will be pushing for federal funding for research into alternative solutions, such as heating, freezing or steaming the bugs out of bedrooms. "We need to have better tools," said Greg Baumann, a senior scientist at the National Pest Management Association. "We need EPA to consider all the options for us."
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Just a Reminder
Bedbugs are on the prowl again
The bedbug, virtually eliminated decades ago, is taking a fierce new bite out of Victoria, with experts reporting an exponential increase in outbreaks in homes, apartments and hotels.
By Times Colonist (Victoria) August 29, 2008
The bedbug, virtually eliminated decades ago, is taking a fierce new bite out of Victoria, with experts reporting an exponential increase in outbreaks in homes, apartments and hotels.
"Since 2003 there have been huge increases year upon year," says Blair Dooley, owner of Old Island Pest Control.
"All the data I get from associations in the U.S., companies are reporting between 300 and 500 per cent increases yearly," he says, explaining that the situation is the same here.
“A lot of people are under the impression that bedbugs are invisible or that they don’t exist,” said Sean Rollo, creator of the Bed Bug Resource website and a pest-control operator in Vancouver.
“I’m amazed at the seminars I do where there’s over half the people in the room who have never heard of bedbugs.”
Nemeth, however, managed to rid himself of the bugs using diatomaceous earth, a fossil shell powder that dehydrates and kills the bugs, and some sticky tape in a roll around the bed. He's been bedbug-free for a year now, a rare occurrence for those who deal with the bugs on their own. Most infestations are only eliminated after several pesticide treatments by pest control companies. The bugs, which live by feeding on the blood of humans and other warm-blooded hosts, were largely believed to have been eradicated 40 years ago due to the widespread use of pesticides like DDT.
But the 21st century has seen a marked increase in infestations -- which Rollo and Dooley attribute to a change in cockroach control methods. Cockroaches used to be killed with residual pesticides, which would kill any bedbugs at the same time, but they are now killed with gel traps. As well, preventive pesticide sprayings in homes and hotels are no longer allowed under new pest control laws.
"So now if someone does bring a bedbug into a hotel room, there's nothing there to control them," says Rollo. "They could be sitting there for months before we even know."
Rollo and Dooley also blame an increase in travel and more people bringing used upholstered furniture into their homes.
The bugs can live anywhere, regardless of cleanliness -- behind baseboards, in box springs, mattresses, or small cracks in furniture. While they usually feed every five to 10 days, they are able to go without feeding for up to 18 months, which makes them extremely hard to eliminate.
All it takes is a few bugs on clothing or furniture to cause a problem, says Dooley.
In one week in July, he sprayed a house and a townhouse, as well as multiple units in two hotels and two apartment buildings. The bugs are only eliminated after multiple treatments.
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