The Michigan Bed Bug Working Group has published a bed bug management flow chart (PDF)—additional working group materials are available at Michigan’s Emerging Diseases Issues website; see also our previous discussion of some documents that describe the goals and genesis of the working group.
The Michigan flow chart is adapted from the Harvard School of Public Health flow chart.
You will notice upon comparison an important change, as the Michigan document specifically tells landlords to:
- Work with resident to form a workable pest management plan that involves prep by resident, treatment by PMP, education and response from landlord
- Inspect, caulk crevices around room, inspect neighboring units to identify and contain further infestations
This is great. Multiple unit housing can absolutely be made free of bed bugs, I firmly believe, and need not be declared a lost cause.
However, I propose that we should identify just what is to be done to “contain further infestations.” I am not a pest management professional, but I can play one on TV, and I say that inspecting is not enough. I think you can still be conservative about treating areas that are not currently infested (but we all know might become infested after the first round of treatment in those areas that are infested is completed) by treating structural voids.
In a recent PMP article (link is to the digital magazine edition), Richard Diggs of Alexandria Pest Services, describes their bed bug treatment protocol in some detail; it includes, aside from a battery of other tools and strategies, dusting of wall cavities above baseboards. It’s worth a read. Whenever pest management professionals describe their bed bug work and success rate, I am intrigued by their tone and the implied assessments of what everyone else is doing, and I wonder why we are in the situation we are in, after all. I also always want to ask, yeah, but does this scale? But you can read for yourself.
You can also read about “built-in pest control” in this article, Managing Insecticide Resistance in Urban Insects (PDF, 1996 ICUP) by Michael Rust. I only know about it from reading Boase. Actually, we’ll revisit the Boase article, given recent developments.
So, in my considered TV PMP view, because there is no reported resistance to dusts, and because we are in a very deep hole, I submit that inspecting is not enough and you have to treat potential harborage sites and dispersion routes as well. The most conservative thing you can do is dust.
We can’t avoid multi unit housing as some would have us do. I think the bed bugs can be dispatched even in multi unit housing.
These pages may be of related interest:
