The New York City Council tries again: a new bed bug bill

by Renee Corea on December 6, 2008

Note: Check updates on our efforts on Intro 873 here.

I was about to write something that looked back and puzzled over how bed bug bills (both the bold and the timid) go to the Consumer Affairs Committee to die, like this one and this one and this one.

But, while at the Council’s website, what do I find? I scarcely credit my eyes, but there’s a new bill just introduced on November 19. (Nope, nobody tells us anything. That’s something, isn’t it? But we’ll talk about that another day.)

Anyway, this time? Buh-bye Consumer Affairs, hello Health.

This time, what will you do?

Before we go further, can I ask a simple question?

Will you consider:

picking up the phone?
writing a letter?
both?

Because, if you are not willing to do any of the above, can you honestly complain? Rail against the apathy of our city? Against the ignorance of your neighbors and your landlord? Can you continue to declare, with some indignation, that we need more education and more awareness? Can you, in short, whine? (I’ve done my share.)

I hope you will think a good bit about what you will do. This is your city, our city. You don’t want bed bugs, I’m positive of that.

Of course, I’m not above begging you.

If you are a New Yorker and this matters to you, now is when it counts.

The bill

So, the bill, intro 873, is a bit strange, you will see. Gone is any ambition for inter-agency cooperation, for a task force. Forgotten are the woeful mattresses. This bill targets one particular department, but it happens to be the right one.

It has 14 sponsors.

Check it out:

Int. No. 873

By Council Members Brewer, Barron, Comrie, Dickens, Eugene, Felder, Gerson, Gonzalez, James, Koppell, Liu, Nelson, Sears and Weprin

A Local. Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to requiring the department of health and mental hygiene to establish a bed bug technique training program for pest control.

Be it enacted by the Council as follows:

Section 1. Chapter 1 of title 17 of the administrative code of the city of New York is amended by adding a new section 17-194 to read as follows:

§17-194 Bed bug techniques training program. a. The department shall establish a program to train exterminators in the proper techniques to eliminate bed bugs. Upon successful completion of this program, the exterminator shall be considered trained pursuant to this provision, in the proper techniques of bed bug extermination.

b. The department shall establish a program to train property owners in the proper techniques to eliminate bed bugs and to prevent the transfer and spread of any bed bug infestation. Upon successful completion of this program, such owner shall be considered trained pursuant to this provision in the proper techniques of bed bug extermination.

c. Any training programs developed pursuant to this section shall include, but not be limited to, identification of bed bugs and understanding their life cycle, inspection procedures to identify infested areas and furnishings, techniques to prepare infested sites for containment and extermination, encasement techniques, and proper techniques for the moving and disposal of infested furnishings and materials. Any training program should also provide instruction on which techniques and pesticides are inappropriate for bed bug elimination.

d. The department shall make available on its website general information on bed bug awareness, infestation and control.

e. The department shall ensure that a toll-free hotline number, such as the 311 citizen service center, shall be made available to the public for any person seeking to report an incidence of bed bug infestation or to request information on bed bugs.

f. A list of exterminators trained pursuant to this section shall be made available to the public on the department’s website, upon request by calling the 311 citizen service center, and upon request in person at department offices to be located in each of the five boroughs, as determined by the department.

§2. This local law shall take effect ninety days after its enactment, provided, however, that the department of health and mental hygiene shall take any necessary actions to implement this law, including the promulgation of rules, prior to such effective date.

Thoughts? Ideas? And tell me you noticed the hotline!

Below are links to the sponsors and the committee members. If you live in their districts, well, you don’t need me to spell it out, do you? And if your council member is not on the list of sponsors, will you call and explain exactly what you want them to do?

Just off the top of my head, neither Diana Reyna nor David Yassky are on this list. And we know their districts are heavily infested. And Peter Vallone? You see how we can go on and on.

It’s our city and we’re all in this together. Our neighbors and our co-workers are struggling with bed bugs; our elderly parents and grandparents are vulnerable; our kids are exposed. It’s no longer enough to say that this or that bill was co-sponsored or to acknowledge the complex issues. It’s time to get things done.

The Health Committee

Joel Rivera – Chair
Maria del Carmen Arroyo
Maria Baez
Inez E. Dickens
Helen D. Foster
John C. Liu
Michael E. McMahon
Rosie Mendez
Helen Sears
Kendall Stewart
Albert Vann

And hey, can we say, hearing! I promise you it won’t happen unless you—yes, you—make it happen. Remember, all the other bills, going back to 2005, have died. Died dead, dead.

So, what will it be, NYC?

Find your NYC council member here.

These pages may be of related interest:

{ 1 trackback }

New York City has a new bed bug bill! : Got bed bugs? Bedbugger.com: December 8, 2008 at 2:37 pm

{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Renee Corea December 8, 2008 at 6:12 pm: We lost data over the weekend and some pages, posts and comments were lost.

ashleigh said on December 6:

that was a great post renee. my council member is not on those lists. and when i wrote to him i got an auto out-of-the-office reply. i’m now putting his office on speed dial…

I replied:

LOL! Let me know how that goes and we’ll keep track of council members and what they think about this bill on this dedicated page.
2 Melvin December 20, 2008 at 7:14 pm: A possible reason for the city not taking the increase of bed bug infestation seriously is that physicians do not seem to regard insect bites as a serious medical problem.I have not heard or read anything from mental health professionals regarding an emotional component to the problem.
3 Renee Corea December 20, 2008 at 7:43 pm: Hi Melvin,

That’s a good point. I think the current thought on the health effects of bed bugs might be summarized in the following from the Toronto Public Health fact sheet on bed bugs for medical professionals:

Infestations, however, can cause anxiety, secondary infections, allergic reactions and financial hardship.

And yet, that doesn’t really describe what the experience of bed bugs is like for people who are already ill. Or those who fall into severe depression. Or those who develop a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. When people who have bed bugs feel under attack, it’s because they are being attacked. Add to this the social isolation, the hopelessness that develops when an infestation drags on or recurs, and I think the just thing to say is that bed bugs cause real suffering. If the epidemic grows, then I think we’ll see research on the health consequences, including especially the mental health effects.
4 Melvin December 25, 2008 at 4:29 pm: The bill addresses the problem of bed bug infestation after it has already occurred.I have suggestions on how the city can help prevent bed bug infestation from occurring in the first place, as follows:1)The city should set up a hot line where consumers can report the names of stores and merchants from which the consumers unknowingly purchased merchandise that was infested with bed bugs.2)The city should investigate all consumer complaints,and issue a summons in all cases of valid consumer complaint.
Hopefully other people visiting this website will have additional suggestions on how to amend the bill to include prevention and/0r
other issues regarding bed bug infestation
5 Renee Corea December 26, 2008 at 4:22 pm: Hi Melvin-

I believe the Dept of Consumer Affairs would handle something like that (complaints about bedbugged mattresses and furniture). In the 2006 hearing I think they said they did not receive many complaints about bed bugs and mattresses. I will try to find out more about the DCA’s process. Of course, if there were a city bed bug hotline, then people would have one number to call for all bed bug-related questions.

Do you know anyone who has bought infested furniture? Were they not able to file a complaint?
6 Melvin January 8, 2009 at 3:57 pm: I feel that the Department of Consumer Affairs should be included in the proposed legislation.Inspectors should be trained to identify infestation in stores, moving trucks, and other places that result in bedugs infesting apartment houses ,as well as ,private homes.There should be penalties for merchants failing to prevent and/or eradicate the spread of bed bugs emanating from their premises.

If the city trains exterminators in techniqes for bed bug elimination,it will encourage exterminators to demand even more money for their already high priced services.Exterminators will be the ones who will profit the most from the proposed legislation in its present form.
7 Renee Corea January 8, 2009 at 5:25 pm: Hi Melvin, thanks for your comment. Happy New Year to you.

I don’t quite agree with you about pest control providers and this bill. I’ve already heard from a PMP who does not like the bill.
8 Melvin January 8, 2009 at 7:03 pm: Does Renee or anyone else agree that the Department of Consumer Affairs ,or another government agency,should take action to prevent merchants from selling infested merchandise?
9 Renee Corea January 8, 2009 at 10:43 pm: Renee agrees, Melvin!

I’m sorry you’re not getting any responses to your questions except from me. Now you know how I feel. But you know, if we post our comments on this page: http://newyorkvsbedbugs.org/nyc-council-intro-873/ maybe they will be more likely to be seen.

This is an under-reported problem. We don’t hear stories of NYC consumer complaints — about mattresses for example. I’m going to say that I will try to research it, but in all honesty I’m swamped and it won’t be soon.
10 Ugo Voso February 12, 2009 at 7:59 am: Hello,
I am a pmp with 13 years experience. I will try to make it to the hearing. Some fixes are in order. Here are some points I will try to make:
A. The landlord / superintendent training should be limited to bedding, sofa bed and furniture disposal procedures and how to perform exclusionary repairs to cracks and crevices to keep infestations from moving to adjacent apartments. In order to apply pesticides outside of there own unit/apartment, one must be a certified pest control applicator licensed by the D.E.C. (department of environmental conservation).
B. The bedbug training for pest control applicators should also include the exclusionary techniques so they may offer this additional service to the building management. An applicator should already be certified in either category 7A (structural) and/or 8 (public health).
C. All used bedding should be placed in a sealed storage bag while awaiting trash pickup using a special 311 call.
A big cause of new infestations occurs when new bedding is delivered and the old bedding gets removed. The furniture or mattress vendor offers a free removal of the old mattress, sofa bed and bed frames etc… What happens is an old infested bed gets placed in the back of the truck alongside new mattresses on route to additional deliveries. The bedbugs shake off the old mattress and hitch onto the new mattresses. The plastic encasement on the new mattress is insufficient to exclude the invaders since it still has many places where the bedbugs enter and hide.
Thus, comingling of new and used mattresses should be prohibited. The vendor should make seperate route for used mattress pick-ups. If this is not possible the department of sanitation shall dispose/incinerate all old bedding. The landlord /superintendent shall render the bedding unuseable by cutting it up or slashing. Fines should be levied in the even the bedding is placed outside while still in a useable condition. (The same way a landlord must remove the doors to an old refrigerator subject to a fine if not performed).
All truck beds used by furniture and mattress vendors should be periodically fumigated by a licensed pest control applicator. A sticker placed in the bed will serve as proof to a D.E.C. official who will be able to pull over any mattress/furniture delivery truck during a “spot check”. Fines are to be levied in the event used bedding is found with new mattresses in the same cargo area.
D. The governing agency should be the D.E.C. as they now train, license, certify and regulate pesticides. A special bedbug category could be added to the license identifying those who attend the training course. Periodic training credits would need to be performed to keep up with state of the art innovations. Those up to date will remain on the 311 contact database.
E. The term “exterminator” has been in disuse for over a decade and should be replaced with “pesticide applicator” or “pest management professional”.
11 Renee Corea February 12, 2009 at 12:42 pm: Hi Ugo, thanks for your comment. I’m confident that any landlord/property manager training is in non-pesticide application bed bug management. To do otherwise would be against the law, as you mention.

DEC is a state regulator not under the jurisdiction of NYC. However, it would be good to see DEC add specific bed bug management courses, but, again, they’re a state agency and this is a NYC Council hearing. We have to take care of the problem in our city whether or not we get assistance from others or from the state. It’s up to us and we can’t wait for things that might be good but are certainly not happening and that we cannot control. We need our own plan with control components that we can set in motion ourselves.

We believe that the Health Department is the appropriate NYC agency to lead a coordinated effort to control the spread of bed bugs in New York City. A strategy involving all relevant city agencies would be best, of course, and the consultation of entomologists and urban pest management folks is absolutely key. This last part is what worries us the most, actually.