September 1, 2011 Thursday

The following information was released by the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts:

A former Everett man was convicted today in federal court of the improper use of pesticides and making false statements to federal agents.

JOSIMAR FERREIRA, an illegal alien from Brazil, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Joseph L. Tauro to sixteen counts of violating the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act and one count of making false statements.

Had the case proceeded to trial the government’s evidence would have proven that during the period of 2007 through 2010, Ferreira operated TVF Pest Control, Inc., a pest extermination company located in Everett. The defendant told his clients that he could eradicate bed bugs from their homes with his use of a “special” mixture, supposedly approved for indoor application. In fact, Ferreira was applying a pesticide containing the insecticide Malathion, a pesticide registered with the Environmental Protection Agency. Malathion is not approved for indoor use and its label does not permit indoor application. Ferreira applied the Malathion to indoor living spaces including a baby crib, mattresses, bed frames, baseboards, closets and furniture.

United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz said, “It is common knowledge that exposure to pesticides can have horrific effects on humans. To use them in such a reckless manner is unacceptable and will not be tolerated in this jurisdiction.”

Special Agent in Charge Michael E. Hubbard of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Criminal Investigation Division in Boston said, “The EPA Criminal Investigation Division will aggressively investigate and pursue anyone who puts the American public and its children at risk by using dangerous chemicals illegally.”

Judge Tauro scheduled sentencing for November 22. Ferreira faces up to five years in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine.

U.S. Attorney Ortiz and Special Agent in Charge Hubbard made the announcement today. The case was investigated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Criminal Investigation Division with assistance from the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources. It is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Lori J. Holik and Anton Geidt, and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Kenyon.

Source:
http://thebedbugresource.com/?feed=rss2

(Reuters) – Researchers in Canada have found bedbugs carrying antibiotic-resistant superbugs, a surprise finding because scientists had thought the pests were not capable of spreading infections.

The study was done by a team in a poor corner of Vancouver, where both bedbug infestations and strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria are increasing.

Dr. Marc Romney, a medical microbiologist at St. Paul’s Hospital/Providence Health Care in Vancouver, decided to see if the two were related.

Romney and colleagues removed five of the pests from the clothes and skin of infested patients and tested them.

They found bedbugs carrying two types of drug-resistant bacteria, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and vancomycin-resistant enterococci.

“I was a little surprised. Historically, bedbugs have not been associated with infections,” Romney said in a telephone interview.

He said scientists have tested bedbugs to see if they carry blood-borne diseases, such as hepatitis or HIV. But so far, they have not been reported to carry infection.

Infestations of the bloodsucking bugs, which can cause severe itching, have made a comeback in cities such as Paris and New York in recent years.

Romney said the strain of MRSA they found requires skin to be somewhat compromised, and he thinks the bedbugs are providing that as people scratch their bites.

“Maybe the bedbug’s bite is breaking down the patient’s skin,” he said.

He said that some of these pests may be carrying MRSA and going from individual to individual.

“The data are preliminary, but it suggests maybe there is an association,” Romney said.

“Even though they can’t carry hepatitis B and HIV, maybe they can carry resistant bacteria.”

“Maybe it is yet another factor that could be responsible for this large increase in resistant bacteria in inner cities in North America,” he said.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

New York, New York – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today it has awarded Rutgers University nearly $100,000 to implement a bed bug education educational outreach program in at least 50 low income communities in New Jersey. Rutgers will also use the grant to set up a model Integrated Pest Management program at an affordable housing community in Jersey City. This model will focus on community participation, early detection, and non-chemical control practices, and will use of low-toxicity insecticides to manage bed bug infestations.

“Projects such as this are an important component of our fight against bed bugs,” said EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck. “Bed bugs are a problem that hits all communities and they are a particular problem in New Jersey, where we have the highest population density in the country. The best way to fight bed bugs is to be educated on what does and doesn’t work and to find practical, lower cost ways of reducing infestations.”

A February 2010 survey conducted by Rutgers found that five out of eight surveyed communities experienced increased bed bug control costs from 2008 to 2009. Only three out of 14 surveyed management teams said they could afford bed bug control.

To help combat bed bug infestations that have spread throughout the United States in recent years, EPA has been working with various federal agencies and communities to develop techniques for combating the pests. In addition to Rutgers, four other organizations throughout the nation have been awarded grants to implement new approaches in managing bed bug programs. Lessons learned from these grants will be made available by EPA to other communities.

The Rutgers grant will provide the school with $99,688 over the program’s 19 month duration.

Burnside and Bayers Lake

Increasing reports of bedbug infestations, both in Nova Scotia and across the country, have prompted Simmons Mattress Gallery to announce it’s discontinuing its Comfort Exchange Program.

Under the program, customers were guaranteed the ability to exchange a mattress purchased from Simmons for another if they found it wasn’t exactly what they expected it to be. Jordanna Caine, president of Simmons Mattress Gallery, says if the consumer is sold the right bed in the first place, offering such guarantees shouldn’t be necessary.

“We think our customers deserve peace of mind that a mattress coming out of our warehouse has not been put at risk in any way. We hope that other stores also change their practices,” Caine says.

In addition, Simmons will also no longer remove old mattresses from people’s homes as it doesn’t want any of its factory new mattresses and foundations coming into contact with any possible contaminants. This includes not only bed bugs, but also dust mites, smoke, pet dander, mould spores and other allergens.

“We find more and more people talking about allergies and sensitivities, so bed bugs aren’t the only issue for most people,” Caine says. “Although the bed bug scare and reality of how easily they can spread was the catalyst for making the change, we also firmly believe the customer needs to be educated on sleep and to go through the selection process with a trained sales associate with a full range of comfort levels across a wide range of price points to match people with the right mattress.”

To address this perceived need, Caine says the company is launching a series of Sleep Talks to help educate people on better sleep and the elements that can affect sleep.

“We like to think we don’t just sell a product – but better sleep and peace of mind. While a quality mattress with the right comfort and support is vital to a good night’s sleep, it’s certainly not the only key. The more aware we are of what elements contribute to the quality of our sleep and how we can control them, the better chance we all have of getting better sleep,” Caine says.

The Sleep Talks will alternate between Simmons Mattress Gallery’s two locations, in Bayers Lake and Burnside, starting on March 15 and running through until July 5. Each event features a guest speaker presenting on different aspects of health and proper sleep techniques. The complete schedule is as follows:

I am writing from Optomen Productions a documentary production company based in New York. We create programming for National Geographic, PBS, Discovery Channel and many others. Animal Planet has recently commissioned us to create a one hour project all about Bed Bugs.

The aim of this program is to investigate the current resurgence in the bed bug population all over the United States. Obviously these bugs have caused quite a stir in the in the media over the last few years. We intend to examine the situation across the country by talking to scientists, pest control experts and sufferers about how bad is it, why this has happened and what to do. To underscore how disruptive bed bugs can be, we want to anchor the hour in personal narratives. We want to hear from people who’s lives have been turned upside down by these bugs. I know people are often reluctant to talk about their bed bug problems.  But hopefully there are some sufferers who see the benefits of talking about the issue. Those are the people we’d love to talk to. The more the public understands how devastating an infestation could be, perhaps the more focused everyone will become on prevention and solutions.

I am writing to see if we might be able to speak about the project.  Your site is quite informative and you clearly have worked very hard to stay on top of this emerging outbreak. A couple people I’ve spoken to already suggested I contact you. I am wondering if you’d be willing to post something about our show on your site.

Many thanks,

Alexis

If you would like to participate in helping Animal Planet please email me:  bedbug@telus.net

Schools reported 1,700 confirmed bedbug cases in first five months of school year

Bedbugs are plaguing New York City public schools like never before, according to the latest stats from the Department of Education.

City schools reported 1,700 confirmed bedbug cases in just the first five months of the school year –  a rate that’s on pace to triple last year’s total of 1,019 cases.

The parasitic pests have thrived in the winter season, it appears, with 80 percent of cases having been reported during November, December and January.

“It’s just an outbreak and I don’t know how they can stop it,” said Wendy Tatum, a mother at PS 54 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, one of hundreds of schools to have had at least one confirmed case.

The Dept. of Ed is required to record any incidents where an infestation is found, but spokesperson Marge Feinberg said this uptick in cases is fueled not by infestations but by individual students who come to school with bedbugs.

“It is important to know that schools are not hospitable places for bedbugs,” Feinberg said. “They are brought into schools from the clothing.”

Last year, city officials acknowledged the bedbug resurgence reached “an unprecedented rate of spread” and pledged to combat the crisis with $500,000 to raise public awareness.

In schools, that meant a new four-step protocol for dealing with cases and increased communication between schools and parents. But those efforts have been futile because so many homes are already infested.

And while private homes continue to be the source of most infestations, bedbugs hitchhike on the clothes and bags of their hosts to spead elsewhere, experts say.

“Bedbugs need to be where people are,” said Missy Henrickson, of the National Pest Management Association. “So when you have homes infested with bedbugs, (students) who live there are carrying the bedbugs on them and bringing them into schools.”

With 1.1 million students and 100,000 teachers, New York’s schools serve as a major transportation hub for bedbugs and present an enormous challenge for pest control professionals trying reduce the citywide spread.

In winter months, when students come to school with more personal belongings, like gloves, hats and coats, the problem is even worse.

“Schools are a major transfer point from one place to another,” said Elio Chiavola, owner of Metro Bed Bug Dogs, a Brooklyn-based company that specializes in treating private residences for bed bugs. “It’s been a huge problem for schools.”

A more nuanced explanation for the surge might be that people are more aware of the epidemic and better equipped to look for and identify the crumb-sized insects.

Feinberg declined to name specific schools. A bedbug advisory report last year noted that bedbugs were found in 243 schools in 541 cases from the 2008-2009 school year, suggesting that that number could be much higher for this year’s total.

First Published: Feb 7, 2011 5:46 PM EST

BEFORE you press the bed bug panic button please do a thorough search of the mattress seams, box spring, and headboard for signs of bed bugs.  If in doubt, hire a reputable pest control company to do the inspection for you.

~Sean

Orkin Pest Control and Terminix [the two largest pest control companies in the US] released a list of the top bed bug infested cities in the US:

Orkin Press Release

Terminix Press Release

Union Township firefighters responded to an apartment complex in Mt. Carmel this weekend after a tenant tried to kill bedbugs with rubbing alcohol.

The call came at around 5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 21, from 505 Old Ohio 74.

“The occupant was trying to self-exterminate bed bugs and was spraying the couch with rubbing alcohol while smoking a cigarette,” Fire Chief Stan Deimling said.

Deimling said the occupant, who is not being named at this time, caught the couch on fire – destroying the couch and damaging the carpet. Firefighters also had to ventilate the fire through the window.

Deimling said the damage will probably cost about $600.

The occupant was transported to University Hospital for burns on his hands.

“As far as we’re concerned, this is an accidental fire. The damage will be between the tenant and the landlord,” Deimling said.

Source: Rue Frontenac

A once fed 1st instar nymph could survive for 275 days (at 10C) and a once fed 5th instar nymph could survive for 485 days (at 10C).

A once fed 1st instar nymph could survive for 113 days (at 18C) and a once fed adult female could survive for 277 days (at 18C).

This means that a bed bug that is getting nourishment on a fairly consistent basis within the average house (18-20C) can survive in excess of one year.

Click on the picture below for a full size scan of the Table.

Firefighters were called to the home on 403 Westerfield Way in Lexington after they say a woman tried to take a problem into her own hands.

“They are the most pain in the butt bug I’ve ever met in my life,” says the homeowner, who wants to go by Carol.

Carol says she and her mother have been fighting in their home for months.

“I’m going to ask God one day why he created it, because I don’t understand it,” says Carol.

Carol says they’ve called exterminators in before to no avail. So frustrated, Carol says her mother took action, but it sparked an unexpected problem that required firefighters to the rescue.

“We found the fire in the bedroom, and then upon investigation we found that the occupant was trying to get rid of bed bugs by heating the room up to 95 degrees,” says Lexington Fire Department Major Shaun Brown.

Fire officials says a camping grill was used to heat the room, essentially trying to create a sauna like feel.

An idea Carol says came from advice on the internet, but one that clearly backfired.

Firefighters say fortunately the damage was limited. The owner says the bed bugs are still a problem, and she doesn’t know what she will try next.

Fire officials say the fire was confined to one bedroom. The footboard of the bed and part of the hardwood floor were damaged.

Info on the VANCOUVER symposium.

Info on the VICTORIA symposium.

Registration should be up and running by the end of this week.

WASHINGTON — The federal building that houses the U.S. Agency for International Development in Washington is heavily secured — but officials couldn’t keep the bedbugs out.

USAID officials told employees this week that juvenile bedbugs were found in a single office at the agency’s tower in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. There were no signs of the bugs elsewhere in the building.

Officials said that a pest control service would inspect offices and that any infected areas would be treated over the weekend. They also said USAID and the General Services Administration will continue to be proactive to prevent any future bedbug activity.

The blood-feeder bugs are not known to transmit any diseases. But their bites can cause infections and allergic reactions in some people.

OTTAWA – In the war on bedbugs, pesticides aren’t always the answer.

As the population of the tiny creepy crawlers grows, not every hotel and home can stay vacated, sometimes for days, while chemicals to the job.

Lawrence Chadnik thinks he has the answer. The owner of Rest Assured MC says Cryonite kills the pests effectively without the use of harmful chemicals. Cryonite is carbon dioxide snow that is pressurized. When it’s applied it kills bedbugs by freezing them to death instantly.

It took Chadnik two long years to get Health Canada approval, but all systems are go — and not a moment too soon.

“Bedbugs are such a huge problem,” he said. “They were a problem two years ago and they’re twice the problem now.”

He said no one is immune because bedbugs can be picked up anywhere and brought home. Their eggs are extremely sticky and can survive in all sorts of conditions.

“There are a lot of different reasons people have them. One of them is travelling and picking up bedbugs in hotels. You can get them in movie theatres and anywhere. They’re hitchhikers, so if somebody has bedbug eggs on their pants and they go to a movie theatre the next one in picks them up and brings them home. You don’t know you have them for a month, but then you do.”

Once he convinced the government that a strong, green counterattack could be mounted, he set his sights on marketing the system.

“The product is going to be marketed to pest-control companies, hotels, hospitals, anywhere there are beds. They can use this green treatment to get rid of them and someone can go into the room right after without fear of toxins,” he said. “A hotel can go and treat a room and somebody can sleep in this room without sleeping with chemicals to breathe in.”

New Jersey-based Stern Environmental Group owner Douglas Stern said the need for a more environmentally friendly method has multiplied as the pests have. He said that while no one has seen them yet, it’s believed bedbugs are now in mass transit.

“We know they’re there, even if we haven’t seen them, and that means everyone can pick them up.”

But the Cryonite works, he said, because of the sudden change in temperature.

“You can’t do it slowly. Put them in a freezer and take them out in six months and they’ll still be alive.”

This morning has started slow. We all went to breakfast where i discovered that Jen’s hotel room is infested with bed bugs, she looks like she is 5 and has the chicken pox! they looked up bed bugs online and hopped over to the pharmacists for conformation. so she is getting a whole new room and has to get a new luggage and everything!

I cant believe i only have 2 days left on this trip! it went by so fast, and it was mostly amazing! i just wish my husband has been there with me all they way. I know that someday he and i will get the chance to travel Europe, at least i hope so. we are getting ready to meet together for one last group discussion on the history of photo and a crit before we go to a photo gallery.
well the gallery was neat. its was sort of a life’s work of Sally Mann. very interesting stuff, then we went to a showing off liver pool street. it was an exhibition of a local art schools, basically a mass aBFA show called Raw 9, it all was very interesting. i bought the exhibition book that had artist’s statements in it, which i have very much enjoyed reading. after the showing i walked solo to the hotel ran in to armon on the subway, kind crazy lol. anyway i got back to earl’s court and decided to go to the gourmet burger company for my dinner and man it was yummy! now time for me to pack a bit and get to bed tomorrow is the last day and i want to walk around some more

Was it when, for four nights running, our eight-year-old daughter kept us awake with her star-shaped sleeping position, because she was too afraid to sleep in her own bed after having awoken to see a pair of bedbugs lazing on her pillow?

Or was it when, a fortnight after we’d had the house chemically treated, I laboriously took apart the wooden frame of her bunk bed? I had spread white sheets across the floor, so I could see what fell out of the nooks and crannies of the frame, and by the end of the process the sheets were streaked red with blood from the 40 or so live and well-fed bugs I had squashed. My daughter marvelled at how much blood came out of each bug. I didn’t have the heart to tell her where the blood had come from.

At this point, you’re probably thinking that our house must be a vile hovel. You’re probably right. It has all seemed a bit 14th century this past month, what with the bedbugs, the mice and the clothes moths. But be warned: we are not unusual. Bedbugs are on their way back, despite having been all but eradicated in the developed world by the 1980s.

In the US, in the postwar years, DDT was used to kill them off. In this country – what an English solution – the authorities shamed the population into seeking their own treatment, by drawing a link between infestation and slovenliness, thus establishing a stigma that survives today. In fact, your cleanliness or otherwise makes no difference to whether bedbugs set up home with you. All they’re interested in is your blood. If you encounter them, there’s a decent chance they’re coming home with you. And you stand a decent chance of encountering them.

Stuart Hine, an entomologist at the Natural History Museum in London, estimates that there has been a threefold increase in London’s bedbug population this decade. That figure is backed by the research of Bedbugs Limited, an extermination company founded by microbiologist David Cain after he became obsessed with the creatures.

No one is exactly sure how prevalent bedbugs are, though. There is no requirement to report infestations, and though many people do call their council’s pest control department when they find them, different councils record reports in different ways. Cain used the Freedom of Information Act to request London borough council records of bedbugs. At the broadest level – borough by borough – the data offers little help. It’s only when broken down almost street by street that patterns emerge: a corridor of bedbug infestation running from Elephant and Castle to Lewisham in south London, or corridors running from Gatwick and Heathrow to central London.

So why are the bedbugs biting? What brought them back to Britain? The simplest explanation is globalisation. Bedbugs are hugely effective hitchhikers: if you sleep in an infested room, they may climb into your luggage, or into your clothes. When you get home, they disembark and set up home in the darkest nooks of your bedroom, coming out in the hours before dawn to suck blood from your slumbering body. With more and more of us travelling abroad to regions where bedbugs were never eradicated, more and more of us are likely to bring them back. They thrive in homes inhabited by large numbers of people, where they are able to feed and breed freely.

We realised we had a bedbug problem just after Christmas. My wife came downstairs with a small insect – rust coloured, with a flat, oval body, a few millimetres in length – in a bowl. “This bug was crawling about on the bunk beds,” she said. “What do you think it is?” Within 20 seconds, Google Images had supplied the answer.

In fact, the warning signs had been apparent for a while, we just hadn’t seen them. Before Christmas our son had a perplexing rash on his leg that wouldn’t clear up and the doctor had suggested it was an allergy. His room turned out to have relatively few bugs, while our daughter’s had a much more severe infestation – yet we never saw a mark on her skin. Many people, it transpires, don’t react to bites and so don’t realise they have a problem until they find a live bug. The real eye-opener, though, was what the exterminator pointed out when he came round. At virtually all the joins in the wooden frame of the bunk beds were little black dots, as if the tips ballpoint pens had been tapped against the wood. Those black marks turned out to be bedbug faeces.

Where did we get our bugs? The exterminator estimated our house had been occupied for five months, which – to my mind – suggested we’d picked them up from a holiday house in France in the summer. Certainly, I remembered being bitten one night there, when I had been certain there was no mosquito in the room. But the exterminator reckoned we’d got them from public transport. That, he told us, is where most people pick up bedbugs. It’s simple logic really: a vast number of people, including plenty who have returned from abroad (think about those corridors of infestation from the London airports into the city), offering bedbugs an array of hosts. But the transport companies are hardly at fault. Do we expect them to frisk every traveller for bedbugs? Could they check every bus and every train every night for bedbugs? That is what it would take to get the transport system clear. In the meantime, David Cain has a piece of advice for commuters: “Don’t sit down on public transport.”

When the exterminator had treated our kids’ rooms, he left us with a lengthy manual of instructions. The kids needed to stay in their rooms because if the bugs’ food source was removed, they would just infest new rooms. We were to examine the beds every day for living and dead bugs, and after two weeks we were to “deep clean” their rooms in the hope of eradicating the last stragglers. That fortnight seemed to last for ever. It was during that time that our son’s teacher made the call that shamed us. It was on the last day of the fortnight that I took apart the bunk beds to find them crawling with living bugs. Even after the deep clean – performed by a woman who advised us that, in addition to never sitting down on public transport, we should always remove our clothes before entering a bedroom – we still needed another chemical treatment. That took place last week. We are praying that by next week we are clear – so we can get back to killing the mice.

So does no one have a good word for the bedbug? Even Stuart Hine, who – being an entomologist – says he can appreciate the beauty of every insect, can find nothing to admire. David Cain expresses grudging respect for their ability to thrive alongside humans for thousands of years, despite our best efforts. But I will stick up for these banes of my life. Among the things I have discovered is that the bedbug has a unique style of mating, known as traumatic insemination, in which the male simply stabs his sperm into the female’s body cavity, bypassing her genitals. Professor Mike Siva-Jothy of Sheffield University has discovered that there is a “25% reduction in female lifespan” as a result – a surprisingly low figure. Siva-Jothy believes a unique organ, the spermalege, which protects the females, could in future help scientists produce a drug that reduces the transmission of diseases. There’s more: what does a well-fed bedbug contain? Human blood. Some criminologists believe that scouring crime scenes for live bedbugs could provide investigators with a source of DNA. I’m not saying I won’t be glad when ours are gone. But I have a little more sympathy for them than I did a month ago.
How to spot an infestation

• Look for unexplained rashes, although one in 10 people doesn’t respond to bites. If you react badly, use antihistamines.

• Check your bedframe, or the joints of furniture, for black dots of between 0.5mm and 1mm – bedbug faeces. Contrary to myth, bedbugs do not live in your mattress, although they may be found in the seams.

• Check your sheets for bloodstains: you may have rolled over and crushed a bug after it has fed on you.

• If you have a severe infestation, you might notice a sweet, musty smell around your bedframe.
What to do if you’re infested

• Call a professional extermination firm, and check its credentials. Many pest-control companies have diversified into bedbug control without any expertise. Following the advice of one company’s website, we put grease-lined tins around our bed legs (to prevent bugs crawling up them). The exterminator guffawed at our stupidity. Don’t try to kill the bugs yourself: last year an American woman blew up her home by lighting several insecticide “foggers” simultaneously: the propellant caused her gas supply to ignite. Don’t use an aerosol-based insecticide, either: you’ll kill some, but the fit ones will simply flee to another room.

• Don’t throw away your furniture. The chances are that you will spread the bugs through your home.

• Don’t flee the infested room. The bedbugs want food and warmth: if you go, they’ll follow.

• Talk to your neighbours. It’s possible your bugs have come from them, or that you have given them yours. One of David Cain’s customers reported a recurring infestation. He was being reinfested by a neighbour, whose property was home to an estimated 150,000 bedbugs (the average infestation is around 100).

• Don’t panic. Bedbugs don’t carry diseases, and their presence does not make you unclean.

But even though those solutions are generally effective, that does not mean that a mere application of them will get bed bugs annihilated. You basically can’t just leave all the work to the product as it sure will need your aide to effectively work. Your effective fulfillment of your part is a major element of getting the method’s success. That part that you have to get done generally refers to how you will use the product. Sure, it is easy to use formula or pesticides as you can just apply them directly to the damaged surface, cracks or crevices. Usually, you can just spray them. Nevertheless, apart from spraying there are still other steps that must be implemented before they can be effective. Here are the effective ways of how you should use pesticides to really kill bed bugs. Read the instructions, before you go and start using the solution, you should read first the instructions. Going over it will give you clear idea of how you will use. If you don’t understand any of the instructions, you can search or ask someone to make the application proper. More than that, reading the instructions will also help you prepare all the materials you will need. Use just the right amount, if you are using an organic pesticide, you don’t have to worry about over treatment. However, if you are utilizing a chemical-based solution more than the recommended amount, over treatment will most likely happen. And that can negatively affect the items or surfaces where you are trying to get bed bugs off. Nonetheless, even if you are opting for organic solutions, you should use just the right amount. Doing so will make your product last longer which means you don’t have to buy another so soon. Make sure that bed bugs are targeted, this means that you should confirm bed bugs infestation first before you start spraying. In a general sense, this prevents the waste of solution and also money.

But even though those solutions are generally effective, that does not mean that a mere application of them will get bed bugs annihilated. You basically can’t just leave all the work to the product as it sure will need your aide to effectively work. Your effective fulfillment of your part is a major element of getting the method’s success.

That part that you have to get done generally refers to how you will use the product. Sure, it is easy to use formula or pesticides as you can just apply them directly to the damaged surface, cracks or crevices. Usually, you can just spray them. Nevertheless, apart from spraying there are still other steps that must be implemented before they can be effective.

Here are the effective ways of how you should use pesticides to really kill bed bugs.

Read the instructions, before you go and start using the solution, you should read first the instructions. Going over it will give you clear idea of how you will use. If you don’t understand any of the instructions, you can search or ask someone to make the application proper. More than that, reading the instructions will also help you prepare all the materials you will need.

Use just the right amount, if you are using an organic pesticide, you don’t have to worry about over treatment. However, if you are utilizing a chemical-based solution more than the recommended amount, over treatment will most likely happen. And that can negatively affect the items or surfaces where you are trying to get bed bugs off. Nonetheless, even if you are opting for organic solutions, you should use just the right amount. Doing so will make your product last longer which means you don’t have to buy another so soon.

Make sure that bed bugs are targeted, this means that you should confirm bed bugs infestation first before you start spraying. In a general sense, this prevents the waste of solution and also money. Read more about our Bed Bug Products.

* Natural remedies don’t’ work. Don’t even bother researching neem or lavender. If there were a natural remedy that really worked, it would be easy to get and well advertised.
* Steaming is a lot of work and doesn’t get bugs that hide in the walls, so steaming the mattress once a week will help but it won’t take care of the whole problem. If you get bugs, you WILL need to use chemicals.
* Don’t hire a pco who wants to spray your entire floor boards. It doesn’t work anyway, and you and your pets will be exposed to unnecessary chemicals.
* Phantom is the chemical of choice these days. The PCO should spray it around the baseboards and maybe on the walls where they meet the ceiling.
* Your animals will need to be boarded during the treatment for usually about 5 hours, but ask your PCO what they think.
* I was instructed to mop up any excess before bringing the animals back in.
* My cat, upon returning from the catsitter’s, immediately ran and hid—right on top of a poison-treated area. For hours. And he was fine. No illness whatsoever. Not even any skin or eye irritation.
* I used UMG Pest Control and they were very good. I didn’t let them spray my mattress. I steamed it myself once a week and the chemicals did the rest.
* Go to bedbugger.com for more information about preparation, washing, bagging, etc.

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite” is easier said than done for many New Yorkers.

One state Assembly member is pushing legislation that would require landlords to divulge any history of bedbug infestation to potential renters and another that would offer compensation for expenses accrued from dealing with infestations.

Linda B. Rosenthal, who represents the Upper West Side and parts of Hell’s Kitchen, introduced the two-bill legislation in mid-March as an effort to combat New York’s growing bedbug problem.

“As the scourge of bedbugs continues in New York, I am committed to giving my constituents the tools to protect themselves both epidemiologically and financially from this plague,” Rosenthal said in a statement.

The first bill would require the disclosure of any instance of bedbug infestation dating back five years. A memo in the bill states that the justification for the legislation is that “prospective tenants have a right to access relevant documentation regarding the history of bedbugs within their new living spaces” because the information is essential to making an informed decision.

“People who have gone through the plague of bedbugs are happy that I’m trying to address some the issues they’ve had to deal with — people who are long-time tenets who somehow get bedbugs or new tenets who move in to discover an infestation and have to deal with it,” Rosenthal told NBCNewYork.

After the bill was referred to the housing committee, it was amended and recommitted on April 20. The bill originally included the more complicated issue of apartment sales as well, so was amended to make the bill easier to pass. Rosenthal does support the protection of homebuyers and seeks to advance it in the future.

“Bedbugs are an enormous expense, and there is no mechanism right now to get that money back,” Rosenthal said. “I thought the state has responsibility to try and deal with it in some way.”

The second bill provides a tax credit of up to $750 to help with the cost of replacing property lost due to bedbug infestations. This property includes furniture, bedding, clothing, and any other belonging discarded during the extermination process. Since most renters or homeowners insurance does not cover bedbug infestation, the bill seeks to assist affected New Yorkers by offering a “modest tax credit.”

“If the state were in better economic condition perhaps the tax credit could be higher,” said Rosenthal. “But we’re in a precarious economic state, so offering high tax credit was impossible. We think what we came up with is more feasible.”

However, it is not clear when the two bills will be voted on in Albany.

The U.S. EPA has rejected Ohio’s request to use an industrial and agricultural pesticide to fight bedbugs in homes.

The risk of exposing children to the pesticide, called Propoxur, outweighs the potential good it could do by quickly wiping out an infestation, Lisa Jackson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, told Gov. Ted Strickland in a letter this month.

“The agency’s health review for its use on bedbugs suggests that children entering and using rooms that have been treated may be at risk of experiencing nervous system effects,” she wrote.

The federal agency could reconsider the state’s request after reviewing more information, said Kaleigh Frasier, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Agriculture.
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“We’re disappointed with the outcome, but we’ll stay in contact with the EPA,” Frasier said.

The Agriculture Department asked the EPA for permission to use the insecticide inside homes after declaring that the growing number of bedbug infestations in the state had become an emergency.

Bedbugs have made a real comeback in Ohio. From almost no reports a few years ago, the Franklin County Board of Health recorded more than 4,000 in 2009. Treatment can be expensive and take many applications of the pesticides currently approved for use in homes.

Not being able to bring Propoxur to the fight is a setback, said Susan Jones, an Ohio State University entomologist and a member of the Central Ohio Bedbug Task Force.

“It is very much a blow, because we don’t really have products that are knocking down the bedbugs very well,” Jones said.

“I guess we’re not surprised, because EPA tends to be reticent once something’s been taken off the market and they don’t tend to be responsive.”

Propoxur was introduced in 1959, but it was removed from home use in the 1990s under a law that sought to reduce people’s exposure to insecticides.

The EPA likely overestimated the exposure to children, Jones said.

She said a group representing pest-control businesses is working with the University of Florida to provide more information to federal officials about how much of the pesticide would become airborne.

In tests at the University of Kentucky, Propoxur killed all of the bedbugs exposed to it within 24 hours and kept on killing after eggs hatched. That’s compared with a 16 percent kill rate after 72 hours for a commonly used household insecticide against a strain found in Cincinnati, and a 40 percent rate against another strain.

Even in our technologically advanced society no piece of equipment can come close to the amazing bed bud detection abilities of highly trained bed bud detection dogs. With their outstanding sense of smell they can detect bed bugs wherever they are hiding. Bed bug sniffing dogs can even smell the difference between live bed bugs and dead bed bugs. They can also detect their eggs with their astonishing sense of smell. It is important to find the eggs. They become bed bugs in about 10 days. The babies need approximately 5 blood meals to become full grown adults.

Bed bug detection dogs are becoming increasingly popular in all major cities and with residents and people living in other parts of the nation. These knights in shiny fur are experts at finding the odious critters.

The most important part of this MacGyverized contraption is an insulated one-third-gallon jug — like the kind sold in camping-supply stores — filled with 2½ lb. of frozen carbon dioxide, which costs about $1 per lb. (and should be handled only with gloves). As the dry-ice pellets slowly evaporate, the open thermos spout lets the CO2 — which falsely signals bedbugs that a breathing, blood-filled meal is nearby — seep out overnight. That’s usually enough time to entice the nocturnal insects into the other key component of the trap: the overturned food-and-water dish on which the thermos sits. The bugs climb the outer surface of the dish, which can be scuffed with sandpaper for better traction, and get stuck in its moat, made slippery-smooth with a dusting of talcum powder.

This trap was designed to give consumers a cheap way to determine if they have — or, in many cases, still have — a bedbug problem that requires a proper extermination. Bedbugs have made a serious comeback in North America over the past few years, especially in big cities like Toronto and San Francisco. And they are notoriously hard to get rid of. As evidence, amid the enthusiastic talk on Bedbugger.com about the Rutgers invention, one commenter noted, “Dude, I am so going to try this once a month or so.”

If you do bed bug treatments, you may have heard or will hear about an article published in Time Magazine recently, How to Build Your Own Bed Bug Detector at Home. The article references a Rutgers University study to see if heat, pheromone cues from the host, or carbon dioxide is the best attractant for bed bugs. The study concluded that dry ice was the best attractant. Dry ice produces carbon dioxide as it melts. Bed bugs are attracted to carbon dioxide, which humans exhale, and that is believed to be the method bed bugs use to find humans to feed on.  So it makes sense, but are these safe?

A customer called us who believed her 18-month-old son was getting bed bug bites. She read the Time Magazine article and wanted to place a dry ice pitfall trap under her sons crib. My first question with new products is always-how safe are they? So, I checked the MSDS for dry ice. Below are some of the statements from the MSDS that caused me to be concerned:

Signal Word: Danger!
Acute Health Hazard-Severe: X

Special Hazard Precautions: Concentration in excess of 1.5% carbon dioxide may cause death. At higher concentrations, displaces oxygen in air below levels necessary to support life.
Target organs: Respiratory system, skin

Carcinogen: Formaldehyde

In my opinion, the use of homemade dry ice traps by consumers may be dangerous, as indicated by the signal word “Danger.” According to the New York State Health Department Website, “Dry ice can be a very serious hazard in a small space that isn’t well-ventilated. As dry ice melts, it turns into carbon dioxide gas. In a small space, this gas can build up. If enough carbon dioxide gas is present, a person can become unconscious, and in some cases, die.” “Symptoms of overexposure to carbon dioxide include headache and difficulty breathing, and with greater exposure, nausea and vomiting.”

As pest control professionals, customers depend on us to provide information regarding responsible control of pests in their homes and businesses. In my opinion, everyone who may discuss bed bugs with customers need to aware of the dangers of dry ice.  I have e-mailed Time Magazine regarding their article, I have not heard back as of this time.