From the monthly archives:

September 2008

Policy Resources

by Renee Corea on September 30, 2008

If you’ve never checked out the policy documents on our Resources page, you should. You’ll find the San Francisco bed bug regulations, the California guidelines, the WHO book on the public health significance of urban pests (like we’ve mentioned before, bed bugs are literally on the cover)…

We’ll set up a download area for our own documents at some point, but for now you should read other people’s.

I especially recommend the two documents which appeared in the special month of February 2008, the Cincinnati Department of Health report and the Toronto Medical Officer report.

You will know hope.

Yep, we’re going to keep talking about these efforts in other cities. We will discuss the Cincinnati/Hamilton County Strategic Plan next and we’ll take a peek at the wonderful work being done in Hamilton County.

Your support is so appreciated. Thank you for participating in our bed bug task force campaign.

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The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is resisting pressure to act in the city’s bed bug resurgence

by Renee Corea on September 29, 2008

in Bed Bug Task Force,Public Health

New York City Council Member Gale Brewer tells The New York Sun that the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

is ignoring the anxiety and mental health issues experienced by individuals whose homes are infested. “They will not take responsibility on the health front, period, end of discussion,” she said. “I’m told by the Commissioner of Health, ‘Gale, bed bugs don’t create any illness,’” she said. “They refuse to believe there is any physical harm from bed bugs.”

This is the second bed bug story reported by the New York Sun‘s E.B. Solomont, following a report last week on emerging landlord-tenant bed bug litigation in the city. We appreciate the headline of this story, New York Lags in Regulating Bed Bugs.

We have discussed the public health significance of bed bugs and the rationale for a substantive role for the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) before.

In a year when the World Health Organization has recommended that cities develop plans to address bed bug infestations and when there are several other public health departments in the United States already taking action, a reflexive and defensive “bed bugs don’t spread disease” policy is untenable.

The New York Sun‘s story confirms what we’ve known all along, but comes at the right time as, in preparing to highlight the Strategic Plan drafted by the Cincinnati/Hamilton County Joint Bed Bug Task Force, we were considering the references to the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene contained therein.

The following is an excerpt of the Cincinnati/Hamilton County Joint Bed Bug Task Force Strategic Plan, taken from a section containing information provided by Daniel Kass, DOHMH Assistant Commissioner for Environmental Surveillance and Policy, on bed bug policies in New York City:

The Health department has produced fact sheets about bed bugs. The Health Department will issue a commissioner’s order if more than 20% of units in a building are infested. They can take the case to the Board of Health tribunal, and they usually deal with about 10-15 buildings per year. There is a lot of pressure on the BOH from city council to do more inspections. However, the Health Department says that HPD already does inspections already. The Health Department is resisting pressure to do actual exterminations, and to develop protocols for pest management industry for prevention, inspection, response for homeless shelters, and single room occupancy hotels. The Health Department does run courses for exterminators on bed bug control.

[Emphasis added.]

Mr. Kass did not respond to a request for comment. Updated Monday: Mr. Kass states that the above mischaracterizes the Department’s activities.

We do note that the homeless shelter and group living facilities bed bug guidelines, produced by the New York State IPM Program, have been released.

New York vs Bed Bugs advocates the creation of a New York City bed bug task force to develop a comprehensive bed bug control plan for New York City.

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Where does it say…? 6 essential documents to survive an argument about bed bug dispersal

by Renee Corea on September 28, 2008

in Featured,Issues and Challenges

[At-large Jersey City Councilwoman Willie] Flood said she disagreed with the ordinance “unless it is scientific. None of us should be voting on this.”

The Jersey Journal, September 26, 2008

I’m not sure, what do you think? It seems to me that the Councilwoman is politely saying, where does it say? Where does it say that bed bugs will spread?

Show me.

Whether it’s your super or your landlord or your local council member and whether the subject is pesticide resistance or the need to inspect adjacent apartments or the fact that, yes, your bed bugs could be coming in through the bathroom, we think having a well-researched set of responses will help. (However, if you find yourself having to tell your own pest control guy what’s what, you have our sympathy and this may not be of help. Nothing may be of help. Except a new pest control guy.)

On the spread of bed bugs to adjacent apartments and floors

1. Public Health Significance of Urban Pests, World Health Organization, p. 141:

Large multi-unit buildings common to poor areas can be very hard to rid of bedbugs. Once bedbugs become established, any control effort that does not include checking the whole building at nearly the same time, along with a coordinated occupant education and treatment effort (as needed), will usually fail, because the bugs will frequently move away from any partially treated and potentially repellent active sites into adjacent rooms. Their movements are generally unencumbered, because they readily move through wall voids and along utility lines, heating ducts, elevator shafts, and laundry and mail chutes.

2. A Code of Practice for the Control of Bed Bug Infestations in Australia, Stephen L. Doggett, Institute of Clinical Pathology and Medical Research and Australian Environmental Pest Managers Association, p. 23:

In any infestation, adjoining rooms and spaces, both either side and above and below, should be inspected.

3. Richard Cooper, entomologist:

Bed bugs will readily move between units in multi-occupancy settings such as hotels, apartments, hospitals, dormitories etc. As a result, bed bug management efforts in multi-occupancy structures should that are limited to the infested unit only are often prone to failure. Often property or facility managers are reluctant to expand the bed bug management effort to other units whose occupants have not yet complained about bed bugs. By notifying other occupants of the facility there is the risk of creating alarm and panic among residents not to mention the damage that could be caused to the reputation of the facility. Notifying occupants of surrounding units is a sensitive and sometimes difficult proposition however; the reality is that failure to do so end up being very costly in the long run.

4. Guidelines for the Control and Prevention of Bed Bug Infestations in California (PDF), California Department of Public Health, p. 3:

Building owners and operators should:

[...]

6. Notify tenants adjacent (next door, above, and below the infestation) to bed bug infested properties. Such notification should specify the presence of bed bugs in adjacent properties, and the need to prepare their properties for inspection and treatment, if necessary, for bed bugs.

7. Instruct the PCO to inspect all rooms and properties adjacent to bed bug infested rooms and properties, including rooms and properties where tenants were relocated.

5. City of Boston Inspectional Services Department, Housing Division, Bed Bugs:

Our Standard bed bug notice of violation also requires that owners inspect all units in the dwelling, and they must treat all horizontally and vertically adjacent units to the infested unit(s).

6. And of course, our own interview with Clive Boase:

Regarding spread of bedbugs within buildings, I now regard this as the norm. An isolated complaint of bedbug infestation from a unit (i.e., apartment, or hotel room) within a building will often turn out be part of a cluster of infested units within that building. We would now say that when inspecting/investigating a complaint of bedbug infestation, that several units to the left and right of the complainant should automatically be inspected, if access is possible.

The dispersion routes seem to vary from building to building, depending on construction. For example, we see some evidence of dispersion from one floor to another mainly in older buildings, where the barrier between floors is not so good. In buildings constructed in recent decades, then the fire-barrier between floors appears good at preventing vertical bedbug movement. However, lateral/horizontal movement between rooms is common, especially where plumbing or other services run from room to room.

Memorably, Clive Boase also observed, in an article in Biologist (PDF) in 2004:

Local dispersion of infestations can occur through the active movement of individual bugs. In one housing block, infestations spread from room to adjoining room at a rate of about one room per seven weeks, with dispersion taking place primarily along plumbing runs.

And then there’s simply what pest control companies do in order to be effective in treating a bed bug infestation. There’s evidence that they not only inspect but also treat adjoining rooms and apartments as a matter of course. In a recent Pest Management Professional series on bed bug management, Bed Bugs: What’s Really Working, the following quotes were especially resonant (from part 2):

“We need 100-percent cooperation of building management,” affirms Scott McNeely of McNeely Pest Control, Winston-Salem, N.C. “When an apartment unit has bed bugs, we always inspect and treat all of the surrounding units. That takes good communication, with and full cooperation of, building management.”

“We’re concerned about all the reports we read regarding product efficacy and bed bug resistance,” adds Stephen Gates, director of technical services at Cook’s Pest Control in Decatur, Ala. “Because of this, we make sure we treat surrounding units of multi-family housing and hotel accounts before we treat the infested units. We don’t want to chase bed bugs from infested units into untreated ones.”

Okay, that was more like eight.

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Bugged Out gives me a good talking (down) to

by Renee Corea on September 27, 2008

in New York vs Bed Bugs

Bugged Out has left us another comment. Are we especially blessed?

Did some of his poisoned arrows hit their marks? I’m not sure. I think some of them did.

His original comment has all kinds of well-placed bolded statements, but I’m not going to reproduce them here. My fidelity to certain principles apparently only goes so far.

Renee,

My comments shouldn’t disappoint or discourage you. If anything, I admire your passion and desire for a bed bug task force to be created. It’s your belief that the city government should start it that is unrealistic to me.

What don’t you understand about City Hall not being interested in protecting its citizens from bed bug infestations? Yes, Renee, your goal is most certainly pie-in-the-sky, and the details of your own posts are proof of how unrealistic your goal actually is.

You admit that you have no experience in city politics. That I wholeheartedly believe, because if you did you wouldn’t be screaming for City Hall to establish a bed bug task force. I’ve worked as a reporter and editor in several local newspapers in Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan for seven years, much of that time covering city politics. As a reporter, I’ve interviewed dozens of Council legislative directors, agency bureaucrats and of course, Councilmembers. I’ve worked on several Council and State Assembly campaigns and I’ve worked for one Councilmember. So unlike you, I do understand how this city works.

That being said, considering how much you repeat (ad nauseum) about how Cincinnati and Toronto and countless other cities’ lawmakers are addressing the issue of bed bugs while our hometown, I would think by now that you’d take the hint and notice the elephant in the room: that New York is not capable of accomplishing things that have been done by smaller cities with less money.

The sad, sad truth is that for all our big city sophistication, culture and cosmopolitan charm, the government of New York City is probably as corrupt as the government of any backwater country you can think of. I’d go as far to say that New York is one of the most corrupt, if not the most corrupt, cities in the United States.

Let’s take a look at Cincinnatti, one of the two cities you gush about so much. Their nine Councilmembers are paid $58,000 a year. In New York we have 51 Councilmembers that are each paid a starting salary of $112,000, and that’s only for newly elected Councilmembers (only one new Councilmember was elected last year, Eugene Mathieu of Brooklyn). How about Toronto? Each Councilmember is paid $96,000 (US$90,000) each year. Long story short, their Councilmembers are paid less than ours, yet those cities’ residents dealing with bed bugs get better government.

Those “small-town rubes” must be laughing their asses off at New York. I have “bed bugs and New York City” on Google Alerts, and maybe twice a week I recieve a news headline from a newspaper outside of New York City making fun of us…labeling our city as a haven for bed bugs.

Don’t you think I want my City Council to step up and do what’s right? When I first started my blog, I was a lot like you, even encouraging readers to write to their repsective Councilmember. I don’t even remember how many Councilmembers I wrote to, urging them to support Gale Brewer’s bed bug bill, I wrote so many. I’m sure those Councilmembers’ interns promptly deleted every e-mail I sent.

I have come up with two possible scenarios (and one nearly impossible one) in which a bed bug task force could be established in New York City:

1) Go Brooklyn: Since Brooklyn appears to be the epicenter of the City’s bed bug epidemic, an alternative would be for Brooklyn residents to petition their Borough President to establish a bed bug task force for that borough. It wouldn’t serve anyone who doesn’t ive in Brooklyn, but the city’s most populous borough would have a bed bug task force. If infestation reports were to decrease in Brooklyn as a result of a boroughwide task force, the other Borough Presidents might be more willing to copy Brooklyn’s model, especially in the year in which their position is up for grabs. What’s more, if a Brooklyn bed bug task force were successful, the Council may actually establish a citywide bed bug task force. Whether it would actually do anything to help New Yorkers is another question.

2) Play the Waiting Game: Wait five years or so or until the bed bug epidemic is so widespread that at least four or five million New Yorkers live with bed bugs, in which case the problem will be too huge for the Council to ignore. At this point, depending on how many millions of New Yorkers will have bed bugs by then, the Council may even go so far as to not only establish a bed bug task force, but also a bed bug Council Select Committee, a Council Subcommittee, or a full-fledged Council Committee, all of which will have much more money and power than a mere task force.

3) Play Ball: Since those of us living with bed bugs are a minority among New Yorkers, technically we are a special interest group. We can form a political action committee (PAC) and raise money to buy candidates. When I say buy, I mean our PAC officially endorse a City Council candidate and donate at least $10,000 to his or her campaign. I say $10,000 because that amount is too large for any Council candidate, even an incumbent, to turn away from. If they are elected, they will vote any way we tell them to. The more we donate, the more influence we will have on them. Once elected or reelected, we guide our newly purchased politician, urging City leaders to place “our guy” on all the right committees that will empower him to do what we want him to do. PACs that cannot afford to contribute that much money to a political campaign can endorse a candidate by offering free campaign labor, with about 50 members of this hypothetical bed bug PAC each willing to commit about four to eight hours a week to pass out campaign literature, put up posters, make phone calls, whatever the candidate needs for their campaign. If possible a bed bug PAC can contribute both free labor and big fat campaign donations. Needless to say, a bed bug PAC will bluntly let the candidate know what we want in exchange for our generous donations. If this sounds strange to you or even slightly illegal, I’ll have you no this is how the labor unions have the Democratic Party wrapped around their fingers, and how the real estate and finance industries have the Republicans under their control.

Pledging votes only works if we have a lot of PAC members living in the candidate’s Council district, or if a sizeable number of our members are willing to falsely register themselves as residents of that Council district. If our “endorsed” candidate doesn’t give us what we want and we feel they didn’t work hard enough, we simply endorse that politician’s opponent in the next election. If our endorsed politician doesn’t establish a bed bug task force because too many more powerful Councilmembers kept him down, the PAC may have to purchase more than one politician. We can also “endorse” a Councilmember that already serves on a committee that can help us, like Consumer Affairs or Buildings, but this will cost the PAC a bit more.

This is all incredibly expensive to accomplish, and political action committees are legal organizations that must follow strict legal guidelines so we will need a legal team to make sure we don’t do anything that lands ourselves in jail.

I think we’ve all done the letter-writing deal, we’ve all called and complained to 311, we’ve done all that, and with few results. In my view, petitioning the Brooklyn Borough president and the local Community Boards in Brooklyn to establish a bed bug task force sounds like the most realistic solution if you really want a task force established somewhere in NYC by 2009.

You said, “So our city and state politics are dysfunctional? Money is scarce? Political will hard to find? We cannot concern ourselves with such persistent problems. We just want New Yorkers to live free of bed bugs.” That’s like saying, “Who cares if I don’t have gasoline in my tank, I’m all out of brake fluid and all four of my tires are punctured? I just want to drive to work!” Not gonna happen.

Without a City Council that is highly accountable to its constituents, and with no political will from those who do have the power to do so, your goal is absolutely unattainable. What is it that you do not understand about New York City?

You keep telling people to “take action” in the form of letter writing campaigns. E-mails to Council members who obviously couldn’t give two shits about our situation. E-mails which are probably deleted as quickly as if they were spam. How about some real action?

I would very much like to start a nonprofit organization that would act as a bed bug task force in New York City. We wouldn’t be reinventing the wheel here, as we would simply mimic what other cities as Toronto and Cincinnati have already accomplished. We could solicit small donations on our blogs via PayPal. If the Council wishes to take credit, they can allocate Council funding for our organization. What’s more important, we can actually give New Yorkers the support they’re not getting from the government.

Unfortunately, state and federal regulations prohibit me from starting a charitable organization with fewer than three people. I truly admire your passion, and I’d love for you to join me and translate that passion into results through a nonprofit bed bug task force for this city.

As you’ve documented quite well on your blog, there are local experts in the private sector who could guide a nonprofit bed bug task force in the right direction. We could even ask the task forces of other cities for advice. Unlike your campaign to get the City Council to establish a bed bug task force, a nonprofit task force is quite doable.

I almost can’t blame the City Council for not caring. For anyone who rakes in a six-figure income, paying a bed bug exterminator $300 a room is no big deal. Neither is throwing out their infested furniture and buying brand new furniture and fancy mattresses. But what about the New Yorker struggling to make ends meet, living on an air mattress and a bunch of stolen milk crates for furniture? That’s who a bed bug task force can really help, cinluding those who do not have Internet access.

So Renee, do you want to take real action and join me in forming a nonprofit bed bug task force, or do you want to keep telling people to ignore my logic and instead spend two minutes on a bullshit letter-writing campaign to city and state officials who couldn’t care less about our problems? In the meantime, you can depress us further with more and more news of cities who are actually accountable to their citizens, and the rest of the country can continue making fun of us New Yorkers.

Look, we gave our city two years to do something about the bed bug infestation, and all they’ve done is publish a pamphlet. It’s not like we never gave them a chance to take action. I can’t wait another two years for the City to stand around and do nothing, and neither can the New Yorkers who read our blogs.

If you’re really interested in taking real action, you know how to reach me.

For the record, the one filed under N for needless to say—or maybe for never gonna happen—New York vs Bed Bugs is not going to be involved in the setting up of a “private” bed bug task force funded via solicited “small donations.”

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Technical difficulties

by Renee Corea on September 25, 2008

in New York vs Bed Bugs

If you’ve had difficulty accessing the site recently, we’re aware of the problem. I’m told it should be resolved soon. Thanks for your patience.

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The devil’s advocate corner

by Renee Corea on September 22, 2008

in Issues and Challenges

Jersey City Council Member Steven Fulop’s editorial in the Jersey Journal makes the case for his City Council ordinance introduction which would assign responsibility for the eradication of bed bugs to property owners. Our previous discussion is here.

Council Member Fulop clarifies the issue with regard to tenants who can’t afford pest control:

First, the issue with making tenants pay is that when poorer tenants think they will have additional fees for pointing out bedbugs in the building, history has shown that they will not report the insects to the landlord. The end result is that the insects spread rapidly to other apartments in the building, leading to larger-scale infestations, which will require more frequent and costly control efforts later.

That’s an accurate assessment.

Fulop mentions New York City and our laws assigning responsibility to landlords.

Since we still have bed bugs, perhaps we may as well point out the following.

When poor landlords have to pay for bed bug eradication, history has shown that they will:

treat infestations serially (treating only the apartments of residents who complain about bites, when they complain), failing to inspect and treat as necessary additional apartments that are at risk for exposure or already infested;
hire inexperienced pest control companies that are unable to eradicate the infestation; and
lack the resources and the knowledge to educate their tenants about the prevention and management of bed bug infestations.

All of which will lead to “larger-scale infestations, which will require more frequent and costly control efforts later.”

Did I lose you at “poor landlords”? I hope not. How about cash-strapped, small landlords? There is no doubt that there are small landlords who are utterly squeezed and literally cannot afford a major pest control expense like this one.

And yet, from a control perspective, there is no escaping the essential rationale for making landlords responsible: that they are uniquely positioned to inspect and treat a building-wide infestation. Only such a coordinated effort stands a chance of actually eradicating the infestation.

Similarly, the rationale for municipal and state governments to roll out public education and prevention campaigns is that they are uniquely positioned to educate citizens about an emerging public health concern like this one. Only a coordinated education and prevention effort stands a chance of eradicating bed bugs from our cities.

Intellectual honesty demands that we acknowledge the complexity of the problem. The only way out of this mess will be a combined effort of cooperation and shared responsibilities.

UPDATE: September 25, 2008

According to the Jersey Journal, the Jersey City City Council passed Fulop’s ordinance, making landlords responsible for one treatment and one follow-up.

But if the problem persists, the law allows landlords to charge a tenant. The law applies to buildings with two or more units.

Sounds like a recipe for a mess to us. Score one for the bed bugs.

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Coming soon…

by Renee Corea on September 18, 2008

in Cincinnati

In the next few days we’re going to take a very close look at the Cincinnati/Hamilton County Joint Bed Bug Task Force Strategic Plan.

Yesss, we finally scored a copy!

Alas, it won’t all be fun. As New Yorkers, there’ll be one not-so-small matter to reflect about.

And because it’s been Cincinnati this and Cincinnati that here for the longest, we’re going to show Hamilton County Public Health a little love! For the simple reason that they care about bed bugs.

More soon.

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Heartfelt thanks to all of you supporting our efforts for a New York City bed bug task force

by Renee Corea on September 16, 2008

in Bed Bug Task Force

Thanks! You are wonderful and we really, deeply appreciate your taking time from what we know you must be going through if you have bed bugs to make a call or write a letter. And if you no longer have them or never did? Then we are in awe of your generosity and so grateful for your action.

Please keep those calls, letters and other contact with your council members, legislators and influential New Yorkers you know going. Talk about bed bugs with your friends and colleagues, if you feel comfortable doing so, and mention our campaign for a bed bug task force.

We have great hopes for this effort, but it will never happen without you. Thanks again!

If you want to get in touch with me privately, please email me at renee at newyorkvsbedbugs dot org. We can use all the advice you’d care to offer. And if there’s anything we can do to help, feel free to get in touch.

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New IPM bed bug manual for homeless shelters and group homes: a Q&A with Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann

by Renee Corea on September 14, 2008

in Featured,Interviews,Public Health

The New York State Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Program at Cornell University has produced a comprehensive bed bug prevention and management manual for the New York City Department of Homeless Services. The project was supported by a Partnership Grant from the Northeast IPM Center. Written by Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann and Cathy Pichler, the Guidelines for Prevention and Management of Bed Bugs in Shelters and Group Living Facilities should prove to be a rich resource for its intended audience and for the general public. We have been anticipating this publication since we saw mention of it in a report to the New York City Council.

Project coordinator Dr. Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann spoke to us on the phone about IPM, the public health importance of bed bugs, and the control of bed bugs in our city.

NYvsBB: What is bed bug management from an IPM perspective?

Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann: When you’re managing bed bugs, you can’t do anything but IPM, because IPM doesn’t rule out any type of approach, but it does include all approaches. You can’t do it without IPM. IPM uses all available methods in a logical way while minimizing risks.

NYvsBB: But the only acceptable level [of bed bugs] is zero…

Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann: Right! You know, we’re not talking about pesticides risks, we’re talking about risks of having to spend too much money, risk of getting bed bugs in your neighbor’s apartment, and also the risk that you face from your health. So, the acceptable level is zero, for bed bugs, absolutely.

NYvsBB: What was the genesis of this project? And what do you hope New Yorkers take away from the Guidelines? How do you hope this document will be used?

Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann: The project started because NYC was becoming overwhelmed with calls about bed bugs… I think where we wanted to have the most impact was on underserved audiences, which was homeless shelters in general, but also privately run shelters and particularly group living facilities, like group homes for adults who are transitioning in life; they seem to be the most at risk, and also elders in homes seem to be greatly at risk. So this is for non-traditional underserved audiences. I hope this publication encourages agencies to cooperate in helping people with bed bugs.

NYvsBB: Did you get any sense of the prevalence of bed bugs in these living situations?

Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann: I did. I received calls for a period of time, maybe early spring, I received 5 calls in 2 weeks from different group homes. ‘We have this, what do we do?’ One was a monastery in upstate New York and they needed help, because it’s a communal living situation, and they don’t necessarily have a lot of money, and they have no knowledge, and they’re at the mercy of the pest control industry, and they don’t know who to pick… so they look for advice.

NYvsBB: How would you characterize the asthma risk? I know there’s that Egyptian study and another study from 1928 I think where this guy had asthma for years, and they finally isolated it; it was bed bugs. And I know the city is very concerned about asthma, so what is the potential?

Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann: I think there’s great potential for it, but I think we really need the research to back it up now. Now is a perfect time to do that research. Because a lot of insects, ladybugs, can trigger asthma when they occur in high numbers in the home, and certain species overwinter in the home. If ladybugs and cockroaches can do it, you know bed bugs can.

NYvsBB: Where do you come down on this question of the public health importance of bed bugs? Because I notice your colleagues, in pest management and entomology, when they speak to the press, you start to hear this note of worry…

Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann: I believe it’s a public health risk. I think it’s a risk we don’t understand fully but when people are stressed and they have no money and they’re facing this insect and they’re getting no sleep, I think that’s a public health risk. That’s aside from the mystery that is, how much pesticide exposure is too much…

NYvsBB: What about the illegal and inappropriate use of pesticides, how worrisome is that?

Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann: There are plenty of vendors throughout New York City who sell these products; they’re not registered in the United States and nobody really knows what’s in them, and occasionally DEC, the Department of Environmental Conservation, goes around and does a raid on these places and confiscates these illegal pesticides, but the people who are selling it don’t really understand, the people who are buying it don’t really understand the risk. And it’s out there; it’s really pervasive.

NYvsBB: What are your thoughts about our situation in the city, do you think we have a chance to achieve control? Or are we going to be living with them for some time?

Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann: [pause]

NYvsBB: [laughter] What do you see happening?

Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann: I think what will happen is that this problem will get worse…

NYvsBB: If you had to isolate one or two things that are the most important to achieving control of bed bugs in our city?

Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann: Early detection, just like with breast cancer, is the most important part of control, because it’s easier to eliminate a small infestation, and the more infestations you have, the more infestations you will end up with, sort of like cells of cancer, the more you have, the more they multiply. People’s awareness—and that’s with any disease or any problem—awareness facilitates early detection, which facilitates control, which facilitates the control of the spread.

NYvsBB: Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann: Just that I’m tired of bed bugs.

We certainly share the sentiment. But we are grateful that bed bugs have become Dr. Gangloff-Kaufmann’s subject because the Guidelines are impressive in scope and detail and contain very well-crafted advice on how to inspect for bed bugs, how to identify the signs of infestations, how to manage an infestation, what to look for in a pest management company, how to prevent the spread, how to avoid “bringing them home” and many very useful tips and tricks. (Like the notched MetroCard bed bug inspection tip! We have heard that the MetroCard is a staple in Lou Sorkin’s kit. Now you can see a photo of it on page 12. We note that Lou Sorkin, Richard Cooper and Gil Bloom were part of the advisory group on this project.)

For the administrators of shelter and group living facilities, the Guidelines should be invaluable in aiding their implementation of a sound bed bug strategy.

The Guidelines are available for download from the website of the New York State IPM Program here.

And there’s something else to look forward to: Dr. Gangloff-Kaufmann and her colleagues are planning a workshop called “Bed Bugs and Public Health: Establishing the Connections” for the next International IPM Symposium in March, 2009.

New York vs Bed Bugs advocates the development and wide dissemination to the public of best practice protocols to control bed bug infestations in New York City. And we think bed bugs are a public health concern.

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The New Jersey quandary about who is responsible

by Renee Corea on September 13, 2008

in Legislation

We like Nobugs’ take on the recent struggles of New Jersey lawmakers to define an acceptable answer to the question of who should pay for bed bug treatments.

The laws in New Jersey currently make landlords responsible for bed bug eradication but allow them to charge tenants for the treatments. This motivates an under-reporting of bed bug infestations that increases the likelihood of the continued spread of infestations. Senior activists were first able to interest state lawmakers and now the Jersey City City Council.

What is interesting about the emerging New Jersey picture, in sharp contrast to our own, is that lawmakers are at least actively pursuing solutions to the spread of bed bugs and in so doing, engaging in a public conversation with their constituents and landlord groups. The concerns of landlords need to receive greater attention; we need their cooperation and support.

Landlords usually object to shouldering financial responsibility on the assumption that bed bugs are “brought in” by tenants. Actually, I would say that the most common scenario is an infestation that spreads between apartments and between floors, so that in any given building, some tenants will have “brought in” bed bugs inadvertently (a risk we all share alike in these times), or due to ill-informed behavior, such as picking up furniture from the trash, and many more tenants will have gotten bed bugs from their neighbors. The reality is that the landlord is the one party in a position to put into action a coordinated plan of inspection and eradication, and only such a coordinated plan has any chance of succeeding. A public education effort will go a long way towards ensuring tenants are aware of the potential sources of infestation. And an acknowledgment that it is cheaper to take proactive, preventative actions (education of tenants and pest-proofing of apartments) than it is to treat full-blown infestations, and that it is cheaper to inspect and treat the entire multi-apartment infestation at the same time than it is to treat apartments serially, will go a very long way to eradicating this pest from our cities.

An active interest by legislators is certainly a prerequisite to control. But the very first step is to understand the problem. Everywhere we need to begin by consulting entomologists and pest management professionals. You can’t solve a problem that you do not understand, as is painfully clear in Jersey City, where the City Council believes a single treatment should do it and a need for more than one treatment can be taken as evidence of tenant negligence.

We should be especially careful of the incentives and disincentives in bed bug policymaking. Anything that will encourage people to self-treat or to ignore an infestation until it grows and spreads must be avoided. Still, it is good to see a city grappling with these questions, however difficult it is to see the gaps in information. A public conversation about bed bugs, in any city, can only be good for all of us.

We should also realize that bed bugs in Jersey City—by a process that should by now be completely devoid of mystery—can come take in the sights of Manhattan or Queens, and ultimately set up shop in your conference room, your bus seat, your best friend’s couch. Bed bugs in Washington Heights or Brooklyn Heights or Jersey City Heights… same difference.

We need to eradicate bed bugs everywhere and to utilize a coordinated, cooperative approach.

As Clive Boase recently told us:

[I]f we leave infestations ticking over in certain areas of our cities, then they may bounce back out again.

UPDATE: September 16, 2008

While Jersey City is handicapped by insufficient information about bed bugs—an unwillingness to consult bed bug experts?—New Jersey State Assembly members Joan Quigley, Grace Spencer, and Harvey Smith have clearly done their homework. The bill they’ve introduced, in addition to resolving the issue of who is financially responsible, would also assign the essential educational role to the Department of Health and Senior Services.

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