Toronto’s Bed Bug Action Committee is now formally called the Toronto Bed Bug Project.
The Toronto Bed Bug Project
The minutes of the September 10, 2008 meeting of the Toronto Shelter, Support and Housing Administration (PDF) give us the lowdown:
The Toronto Bed Bug Project resulted from a report submitted by Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health to the Board of Health on bed bug infestations in Toronto. The Project consists of a Steering Committee and 7 workgroups with representation from Toronto Public Health, various city departments including Shelter, Support and Housing Administration and external stakeholders. Each workgroup will address a specific issue as it pertains to the issue of bed bugs:
- Health Issues
- Legislative Review
- Education/Outreach
- Community Based Responses
- Bed Bug Control Issues
- Tracking and Monitoring
- Public Messaging
The Steering Committee and the seven Workgroups meet monthly. The Steering Committee reviews the activities and reports from all Workgroups and will report back to the Toronto Board of Health. The Bed Bug Action Steering Committee Report will provide clear direction and recommendations to the Board of Health and Toronto Public Health for the development of a comprehensive strategy to manage bed bug infestations in Toronto.
Bed bugs are currently classified as a health issue, not a health hazard. Classifying bed bugs as a hazard might open up other options and funding to address the issue.
The Project will improve communication by enhancing the City of Toronto’s web page on bed bugs, and by providing fact sheets in more languages. Fact sheets are currently available in Mandarin, Tamil, Somali, Korean, Russian and Bengali. They are being translated into French, Urdu, Arabic, Polish, Spanish, Hindu, Portuguese and Italian. The Project is also developing a public message campaign to reduce stigma (“anyone can get bed bugs”) and increase awareness to reduce infestations.
The Project is collaborating with TCHC on two pilot projects, which will investigate methods to control, reduce and prevent bed bug infestations in their buildings. They are also assisting Solid Waste Division in the development of protocols for managing bed bug infested furniture, such as the mattresses for the new “re-use” centers opening July 2008.
Standardized treatment procedures are being developed for pest control companies and these will be made available on the TPH website as soon as they are completed.
Quite a bit we need to unpack here! Especially this business of “re-use” centers and mattresses. We’re going to have to revisit this. But no Toronto bed bug update can be complete without a mention of Joe Fiorito.
Joe Fiorito and the unbearable sadness of bed bug committees
The Toronto Star‘s Joe Fiorito reported recently that Toronto’s bed bug action committee will release an interim report in November. This is something to look forward to.
However, it is unnerving to read the sadness in Fiorito’s bed bug columns in The Star. Consider this:
The lingering truth is that some landlords – Toronto Community Housing is not exempt – remain ignorant, unwilling or unable to deal with infestations.
This column features an extraordinary quote from Rima Zavys, the co-chair of Toronto’s bed bug committee:
In an ideal world?
“There should be services available for free. We need a mechanism for reporting and tracking the spread of bedbugs. We need money for research. Landlords need to know what to do. There needs to be a central number people can call for immediate help.”
And that is all you need to know about any bed bug committee that ever was.
Resources
- Nobugs’ play-by-play account of how the Toronto Bed Bug Action Committee came to be is a must read.
- Joe Fiorito is Bedbugger’s favorite Canadian bed bug columnist.
- The February 2008 Toronto Medical Officer’s report on bed bugs is here (PDF).
- A Toronto Councillor recently announced plans to ask the Board of Health to declare bed bugs a health hazard, in order to guarantee rights of access to infested apartments. Also via. (Yeah, the Toronto City Council certainly seems to be up on the bed bug issues… it was Councillor Paula Fletcher who first asked the Board of Health to report on the problem of bed bugs in Toronto (PDF).)
- Toronto Public Health’s bed bug resources are here.
These pages may be of related interest:
- The Toronto Bed Bug Project: an update to the update!
- Reports from Toronto, including new Toronto Bed Bug Project updates
- Linkages: a Q&A with Rima Zavys of WoodGreen Community Services and the Toronto Bed Bug Project
- The Toronto Bed Bug Project – Medical Officer of Health’s Report
- The Toronto Bed Bug Project is surveying residents about bed bugs
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I was one ofthe speakers at the Town Hall Meeting on bed bugs held at Woodgreen. The original meeting had allocated only 15 minutes per speaker and I felt that this was just not enough time to do the basic elements of bed bug biology, control and the difficulties involved in this, so I asked for 30 minutes, and fortunately, the organizers gave me the courtesy of the extra time. Speakers included a legal aid advocate speaking of tenants’ rights, a physician dealing with bed bug medical issues, public health department staff.
There is an active linkage to others in the world by various experts through pest management associations, the Entomological Society of America and its publications and meetings, as well as by other experts in England, Australia and elswhere, but in fact, the bed bug web sites and their relationships to one another provide a rich source of information on what is going on world wide.
The material is available and more is becoming available on practically a daily basis.
There has been some focus 0n hospitality industry due to the public relations and business impacts.. If you are a major hotel chain with a reputation and a rating of 3 or 4 stars, having bed bugs is intolerable and dangerous to business. I met one of the directors of a major service firm in the U.S. that specializesi n the hotel industry at a conference in 2003, and we talked the area over a beer the night before the conference began. The degree of focus on solving problems and the costs were astounding. One of the newer approaches using heat that has been recently expanded charges $1800 to treat ONE hotel suite.
If it were as simple as having funds to do it right, the problem would have been solved everywhere, but reality is such that not only are such funds not available, but the situation in multi-dwelling housing is quite different than treating a hotel room…. Much more difficult.
Remi Zavys is right in many ways, but reality is such that the type of funding available to a major hotel chain is simply not there if infestation is rampant.
The key element to controlling bed bugs is in the language of Integrated Pest Management.. it is the “management” aspect and the fact that the educational component is key.. For those in the pest control industry and professionals in IPM at universities and other institutions, it comes back to what IPM is really about. It is not merely using different methodologies, or combined methodologies although this is a key part of the “integrated” part of IPM. When we look at control of German cockroach which is still by far the most successful structural pest worldwide, it comes back to understanding spread of infestation, and the biology of the roach, and what it takes to achieve control and to limit spread. Early warning, understanding structural factors, importance of quality of services (you get what you pay for and if you hire a firm at a price impossible to do the job right, then the job will not be done right).. The spread of roaches in pubs, for example, was sometimes mediated by a cycle of return of beer bottles or containers from infested pubs to breweries and then the risk of breweries then sending infestation to other pubs. Without a careful program of managing such risks of spread, the problem never would go away, and the same applies to roaches and bed bugs in multi-dwelling structures, except bed bugs are harder to control than roaches and they feed on PEOPLE, and the “ugh” factor is far greater..
Few pest control firms usee vacuums for either roach control or bed bug control… easier to spray!!!! and it takes less time even though removal of insects facilitates control with roaches if you use baits, and with bed bugs because they are so resistant to most currently used products.
The bigger picture has to do with understanding the bigger picture. If one understands spread factors and understands what it means to have pest reservoirs (i.e. places where infestation is unresolved, and from which it spreads to other places), and does the necessary things to limit spread, to enable good control not only in the individual unit but in the building and in the community, then there is a hope of stopping the infestations and reducing problems dramatically. It takes legislation and co-operation. It takes education and establishing high standards. It takes helping people who cannot help themselves..
all of these things are part of the IPM process…
Getting that idea across is one of the hardest things to accomplish. Even with legislation for IPM in Schools in the U.S., IPM professionals have reported that true IPM is not necessarily done because the people who are supposed to be in charge of this simply do not understand it conceptually.
If we can get people to understand IPM in its real meaning, not in some watered down notion of combined methodologies which is part of IPM but not the actual “engine of logic” that drives IPM and makes it work.
IPM is a system based on information management and use of that information in order to implement appropriate methodology and combination of approaches. In our organization we call it Integrated Pest Management – Chain of Accountability Program or IPM CAP for short, and we emphasize that all stakeholders must be identified and educated and their roles carefully defined so that there is no element that falls through the cracks because someone says “not my job”…
Bed bugs is a hot issue and it has huge impact on everyone in society, but it really does take Integrated Pest Management as a method of pest management that is not merely a catch-phrase but is used in its full scope of meaning and intention… The more that this starts to happen, the faster this problem will be solved.. and kept in check..
Sam Bryks,
Board Certified Entomologist,
Housing Services Inc.
Toronto Canada
Mr. Bryks, how kind of you to comment. May I contact you? I mean, I hope I can contact you. I hope you are open to sharing your experiences in deploying IPM techniques in urban housing settings.
We need greater understanding. I will be in touch. Thanks again for visiting.
date of my meeting with the director of major pest management organization was in 2006, not 2003. Conference at that time was on bed bugs in the hospitality industry and was jointly sponsored by NPMA and a hotel organization. Sorry for miscue on the date.