Bed Bug Blog

BLACKFOOT, Idaho (AP) -- Officials with the Blackfoot Senior Citizens Center say bed bugs are infesting some apartments at the center-run Sunset Manor.
The apartments cater to low-income seniors and those with disabilities.
The Idaho State Journal reports that officials are now considering temporarily moving all the tenants to a hotel so the entire apartment complex can be treated. That could cost as much as $60,000.
Bed bugs are small, flat bugs that feed on blood and make bites similar to those caused by mosquitoes.

Author: ABC 6 BoiseTV

SECAUCUS - Nicole Gallo sought treatment at Straight & Narrow because of the program's reputation for helping patients overcome addiction.
But 15 days into her 28-day stay, she's checking out because of a bed bug infestation.
"I have a 15-month-old," Gallo said while standing outside the facility last week. "My sobriety is important to me, but my health is more."
A resident of the program, which rents space at Hudson County's Meadowview Psychiatric Hospital, called The Jersey Journal to report the bed bug infestation.
When a reporter and photographer visited Building 7, where the program is housed, they were not allowed in or permitted to speak with the resident.
Reached by phone, David Mactas, executive director of Straight & Narrow, said the building occasionally gets bed bugs, but an exterminator has a standing contract to visit the site as soon as a problem is reported.
"I'm not sure we'll ever have a month where we don't see a bed bug, we're doing the best we can. We always feel bad," Mactas said. "If we get a report, the exterminator is out right away."
Hudson County Spokesman James Kennelly said the county Department of Health and Human Services was unaware but will now investigate.
Gallo, of Hunterdon County, said exterminators have been out to the building and furniture has been replaced, but there is still a problem. She will likely throw away the clothing and belongings that she had there.

Author: MELISSA HAYES

Hudson County Sheriff's officers who showed up at a Jersey City home this morning looking for a weapon in connection with a domestic violence incident were greeted by an infestation of bed bugs, prompting a the fire department to set up a decontamination tent in the street.
Ten residents of the building - at Wilkinson and Ocean avenues - as well as five sheriff's officers were quarantined in the two-and-a-half story building while fire officials brought people out to scrub them down in a special shower set up at the scene.
Two men were taken out of the building in handcuffs shortly before noon, even as officers dressed in full hazmat gear with oxygen masks went into the home.
Jersey City Fire Director Armando Roman said sheriff's officers were immediately bitten by the bugs when they entered the home this morning; officers also found drug paraphernailia, he said.


Author: Jason Fink

The tenants at Grandview Terrace in Jersey City have done everything they can think of to deal with bedbugs that began infesting the building three years ago.
Kevin Geraghty steam-cleans and sprays pesticide constantly, encased his mattress in plastic to suffocate the critters, and keeps his lights on as much as possible.
Robert High pulls the covers over his head to keep from getting bites at night, and his caretaker, Debra Armstrong, will only sit on a metal folding chair when she comes over.
"No matter what I did they weren't going away," said William Dorrity, who finally hired an exterminator. "I'd sweep and mop. All the bedding I'd throw into hot water. I did that night and day, night and day. (Finally) I figured I had to bite the bullet."
The tenants of the seniors building at 3060 Kennedy Blvd. - where there have been nearly 50 cases of bedbugs in the 240-unit building over the past three years - are not alone. Over the past three years, bedbugs have been turning up across the country at a shocking rate.
"There's a very severe outbreak in the United States," said James Lashomb, a professor of entomology at Rutgers University.
Bedbugs used to be common in the United States, but the use of DDT and other chemicals nearly eliminated them in the U.S. by the 1960s, said Lashomb. But in the 1970s DDT was banned, and over the past decade, several other anti-bedbug chemicals have been too. And that, along with increased travel to Asia and Eastern Europe where the critters are common, has led to a "hundredfold" increase over in the last decade.
The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services doesn't keep statistics on bedbugs, said spokeswoman Patricia Cabrera, but the department has seen a "significant increase" in complaints over the past few years. Jersey City spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill says her municipality has seen a "sharp increase" as well.
Carlos M. Hernandez Sr., who has owned Pest-A-Side Exterminating Company in Bridgeton for 25 years, said he began getting calls on the bugs about five years ago. "They used to be sporadic," he said. "Now I'm getting calls several times a month."
Hernandez, who has accounts across the state, including several in Hudson County, said bedbug extermination accounts for 10 percent of his business.
The 1,400-unit Hoboken Housing Authority has treated at least eight units for the bugs since November, said its deputy director, Carmelo Garcia.
The bugs have also turned up at the West New York Housing Authority, Atlantic City hotels, college dorms, apartment buildings, nursing homes, schools and private homes across the state.
They're more difficult to get rid of than other insects, they can hide out in the walls until conditions are right to come out, said Lashomb.
"I'd rather kill roaches and fleas and ticks than have to kill bedbugs," agreed Hernandez. "They are the hardest enemy I have ever come across."
Geraghty, the Grandview Terrace resident, said the bugs have gotten so bad that his daughter once counted 26 bites at one time.
"I'm always looking on the couch, looking on the walls to see if they're anywhere," he said. "But it's gotten to the point where you just have to laugh at it."

Author: Amy Sara Clark

A Jersey City public school sprayed for bedbugs yesterday after discovering a bedbug on a student last week, a school official confirmed today..
A teacher at School 14, the Ollie Culbreth Jr. School, found an insect on a preschool student, and the school nurse confirmed that it was a bedbug, said Paula Christen, a spokeswoman for the Jersey City Public Schools.
No other bed bugs have been seen at the school, but officials decided to spray the building's first floor, the only floor the child was on, as a precaution, Christen said.
Asked whether other schools have sprayed for bedbugs, Christen said "not to my knowledge at this point."
She said school officials haven't been warned to be on the lookout for the bugs, but that she wouldn't be surprised if they were, since "they're rampant all over the place."

Author: Amy Sara Clark

You check into a hotel for a good night’s sleep, never suspecting that you might become room service dinner for a crawly critter, an insect waiting to drink your blood.
Nancy Duke: I had welts and they were all over my legs, my arms.
That’s what happened to two women just months ago, in decent American hotels: They were the smorgasboard for bed bugs.

Author: Dennis Murphy

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.
Out of concern for the environment and the effects on public health, the EPA has banned 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 and $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."

Author: Pzicari