The $250K bed bug article is now online: How to Rid Your Building of Bedbugs – The Latest Breakthroughs – Habitat Magazine.
As far as I can tell:
- two pest management firms
- a bed bug dog — now on a once a week schedule
- wall void dust applications
- steam followed by conventional pesticide applications
- vault fumigation (Vikane) — this required two contractors, the moving company and the fumigator
- 2 porters and 1 security guard “to make sure the packing was done properly and the basement quarantine not breached”
In the opinion of the second pest management company, the problem was in the basement storage area.
No structural or chamber thermal it seems.
I wonder if, arguably, for this kind of money, you could:
- install an on-site thermal chamber (take a look at Minneapolis-based Adam’s Pest Control’s heat chamber in this Kare 11 news video)1;
- buy or rent one or more of these closet-sized chambers:
JDL 2000 Bug Oven, image courtesy of Colony Pest Management
- and then have money left over to give everyone a PackTite, one for each resident like turkeys at Thanksgiving.
I’ll skip over Metro Pest’s Ben Weisel’s “third world” quote (resignation/fatigue, take your pick) and just mention one thing highlighted in this article that our city can actually do something about: the co-op board president acknowledges the steep learning curve in their bed bug fight, which surely accounts for some of the expense here in a process that took more than a year to sort out.
Shortening this learning curve, for everyone, could be one of the achievable objectives of a well thought out bed bug education campaign.
We’ll talk about bed bug management for the rest of us later.
(Via: BrickUnderground)
- This, by the way, is the story that features that remarkable statement by Dr. Stephen Kells which we highlighted back when we were upset at a certain infamous journal article. On this subject of heat remediation, check out this summary, via Temp-Air, of Kells’ recent research findings: Key Findings of a Bed Bug Research Project in Collaboration with the University of Minnesota. For more heat research trials, with other systems such as Chromalox and Thermapure, and also a good Vikane fumigation resource, see the articles referenced in this post about the University of Florida’s heat research. [↩]
These pages may be of related interest:
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This post is very rich in information and valuable resources. It encompasses so much of the issue at one location here at NewYorkvsBedbugs that every professional in pest management should read the post and the associated links as well as so many other valuable posts. and resources. Renee and I have had some disagreements and misunderstandings, but when I heard that she is planning to leave NYvsBbugs, this would be a great loss. I do hope that one of her silent partners will take over, but even against our sometimes being upset with one another, I do hope that Renee comes back and continues her work here as it is very valuable in imparting information on the subject form a wide range of resources, and I, for one, will miss her insights and her passion — even against the sometime discomfort of our not quite understanding one another. It’s a human thing.
Regarding this post……….
I have been in the pest managerment business for a long time, and have seen the good, the bad and the ugly of pest control services.. and it is really no different with bed bugs except that the impact on people is so dramatic and awful. When I visit a home and a mother of two teenage daughters tells me that they are “living” with this, and they show me live bed bugs in the girls’s beds, and when i ask why they didn’t prepare for the scheduled service – the answer is that the last time they prepared it was 10 minutes and didn’t help much. That is the “close-up” reality that is intolerable and unacceptable. In defense of the JAMA article on bed bugs and disease, the author’s purpose was not to mimize impact on people as it is, but to review the literature and ease anxiety about the potential spread of disease by bed bugs. When I attended the first meeting of the Toronto Bed Bug Project, some were making wild statements about bed bugs being like mosquitoes and being able to spread disease. Might be good for business to create panic, but it is not ethical to create alarm from ignorance… I have heard Dr. Goddard lecture on medical entomology issues and have communicated with him on other matters, and I know he takes the issue seriously. But Stephen Kells characterization of bed bugs being “like a disease” is a good metaphor.. not a disease, but like a disease.
When I read of the co-op’s $250,000 “break-through”, I take a deep breath – and think.. good for them! – and I wonder how much it will cost to have the detection dog check units three times a year. Perhaps that is really good value. I am not sure at this point. $50 per unit per year — that might be a fabulous investment. It will certainly keep the dogs busy and well fed.
If this was the case in every bed bug reservoir, the problem would be knocked down in a few years, though the dog trainers would be raising their prices due to demand. I hear that a trained dog costs about $8,000 – $10,000, so those who have them will realize returns for the average working life of a dog.
For large housing organizations – a cost of even $30 per year to monitor units for bed bugs – is in the millions of dollars.. funds that are needed for maintenance, and not even covering the cost of treatment for bed bugs or for other pests. Of course, if the frequencies were reduced to pre- 1990’s levels, it might be like insurance — good to have when you don’t need it, and terrible not to have when you do need it.
I am not so sure that the use of the dogs at this level is the answer.. Lou Sorkin’s comments in the video clip of his interview about knowledge, awareness and evaluation are really on the money. Stephen mentioning that some public housing administrators in Canada are talking about “thresholds” rather than elimination astounds me. For anyone to say that publically here would be like a political hari kiri.. I sometimes talk about thresholds in oversight in buildings as triggers for more intensive responses because for some common pests, there is always a background of unreported or newly imported infestations. We simply cannot monitor every unit every day or every week or even every month, so there is a background of infestation that may go unreported. That is just the reality of the real world.
I have a high regard for Stephen Kells’ work and have reviewed his heat treatment study with Tempair, but after working in the industry for 5 years, I was amazed that his articles in American Entomologist symposium did not mention IPM even once.. I seem to have become the IPM advocate when Michael Potter and Stephen Kells give little voice to the concept and some even attack it as not applicable to the urban area.
There is a lot going on in approaching how to attack the problem. Clive Boase said it first and right in relation to “reservoirs” and the fact that whenever there are unresolved sites of infestation with major infestations, the spread will go on. How to solve this? It is not only detection as a proactive activity or use of total building approaches such as Vikane either for possessions or for entire sites, because without sustainability of control through prevention, these methods are short term and doomed to failure. It has already happened in a number of cases that no one wants to highlight because spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on short term control is embarrassing.
And how do we get efficient prevention? In my view and that of many others, it is about education of all stakeholders, including tenants, property management folks, social care agencies, as well as legislation to ensure that recources are brought to bear against reservoirs of infestation..
In my view, it all comes down to the Integrated Pest Management approach .. I know some link IPM to banning pesticides, but it is really not about that..
If we look at the bigger picture, these things come into focus.
NewYorkversusBedBugs has brought so much of this to one place and that is an amazing accomplishment. That is why I am here…….. to learn and to share ..
Sam
Sam
How much is early detection worth?
Isn’t early detection one of the priority goals of a good IPM progam?
A large housing authority can provide K9 services utilizing their in-house staff at a much lower cost than the figures that you are quoting.
The Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) is a good model to follow, if you want to track the impact of a well trained K9 team that is utilized in a properly designed IPM plan.
Chasing resident complaints is a sure way to stay behind the growth curve of the infestation in a large multiple occupancy structure.
Look at Doggett’s article on this subject.
Chasing resident complaints is a proven approach that will exhaust a pest control budget. Compare the diagrams of the complaining units to the diagram of the infested units that were found during the study.
How can we expect a spot treatment approach to be successful in a large community that relies on occupant complaints? Lou Sorkin explains the problem in clearly in the posted video.
The only cost efficient method to screen a building holistically is to utilize a reliable K9 team.
The employee hours that would be required to replicate the work of an effective K9 team would be outrageous compared to the true cost of maintaining an internal K9 division or contracting with an independent provider.
Your reasoning that prices will increase… seems to be at odds with the prices that I hear quoted in the field… which are dropping over time as more competition enters the market
How many unidentified infested units (reservoirs) are needed in a building to support an intractable long term infestation in a large residential community?
If it was up to the tenants…. I bet the preferred threshold figure would be zero.
I don’t disagree with what you’ve written Doug. Good thoughts.
I think that for a larger housing organization, inhouse K9 resources are a great idea. It doesn’t mean checking every unit 3 times a year necessarily. I am sure that uf a K9 team was used in combination with good education and early report of found infestations, then the whole building check might be needed once a year depending on reports and then as appropriate… i.e. if there was a reported problem.. check the block or check the floor, or check floors… i.e. you raise the bar as needed. You develop functional decision rules to use the resource effectively…
I look at prevention and focused treatment to limit spread of infestation, but I really wonder about the usefulness of checking every unit 3 times a year. that would depend on a lot of variables … sounds wonderful, until one does it a few times and finds very little… If it comes down to this being the only way … well, i would agree with that, but at this point, i am not sure sure that it is the only way nor that it is an effective use of that resource.
I have been encouraging the use of K9 resources as i see this as the only effective way of monitoring an entire building at the present time, but my goal would be to reduce the need for full building monitoring, by good education and preventive strategies, and of course, use the resource when it is merited..
That is an IPM approach. I am not arguing that the annual monitoring may not be useful, but at this point, i am questioning if that is really the case in all situations. I call it resource management… For a large housing organization if they invest in 2 or 3 dogs, for a planned worklife of about 10 years, i think it would be a great investment, keeping in mind that finding good handlers is the critical point. And will that in house resource now only do this as a job? Add at least another $45 – $50,000 salary per handler. As well as costs of looking after the dog in addition to the $8,000 – $10,0000 investment. Good stuff, but we need to educate property management because the sad reality is that pest control is still a low end service ….
If we looked at an ideal situation, it would be good results from education; prevention, early response, IPM strategy of decision rules so that the use of the K9 resource could be reduced due to reduction of the cases… I like that instead of the idea of 3 times a year checking every unit…. and of course, if checking 3 times a year is what it takes,, i am in support of that, but at this point, i am not so sure of this strategy being cost-effective but i would say that for out of control situations, the first step is to monitor the entire site… and use the K9 resource as the most cost effective and reliable tool…
the threshold in units should always be zero infestation, but in a building, there will be some level of new infestations and the goal should be to keep the incidence as low as possible from year to year.
and if it takes the 3 x annual k9… so be it.. but as i said .. i am not sure that this is necessary as an annual process every year.
Thanks for the feedback Doug,
Sam