EPA National Bed Bug Summit

Welcome to New York vs Bed Bugs. Did you land here looking for a review of NYC landlord/tenant law? Please see this post: Bed bugs and the law in New York City.

Sharon Heath of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will speak at EPA’s National Bed Bug Summit on April 14. It’s a portion of the session titled “How Public Health Agencies View Bed Bug Infestations,” with Mike Herring from CDC, Dr. Camille Jones from the Cincinnati Health Department and Sarah Norman from Baltimore City Health Department.

This is what we have always wanted, for our city and the city’s Health Department to show leadership on the bed bug issues. We have met Ms. Heath (we really like her a lot) and it’s very encouraging that she will participate.

EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs has made the meeting agenda (PDF) available. Topics include bed bug basics, impact on public and private housing, control methods and challenges and the government response to bed bugs.

This is the page at OPP to access all summit information.

The morning speaker session on Tuesday, April 14, will be broadcast via webinar, instructions here (PDF). No Macs, however.

The work groups in the afternoon session on Tuesday will focus on the following objectives:

Tasks:

Identify most significant factors contributing to the problem
Identify and discuss options and solutions & workgroup recommendation

Major Topics to Consider:

Research
Role of Government
Consumer Education and Communication
PCO Education and Training
Role of Property Owners & Property Managers

The next day’s morning session will report the discussions.

I wonder what this will look like?

We have the highest hopes, but this is surely going to be difficult work.

Consider this summary of the bed bug workshop at last year’s International Conference on Urban Pests (ICUP) in Budapest which recently appeared in Pest, a new UK industry magazine. The article by Clive Boase, Bedbugs fascinate in Budapest (PDF), provides an interesting glimpse into the types of disagreements that may emerge in a discussion about what direction to take to control bed bugs in our society. You should take a look; you will likely find something to strongly agree or disagree with.

In a section on “customer oriented solutions,” Boase writes about the views expressed in discussion on the question of responsibilities:

Clarification of the individual responsibilities of the municipality, landlord, tenant and homeowner to deal with infestation, was also seen as important. If responsibility for identifying, reporting and controlling bedbugs was clarified, then a legal requirement for properties to be certified as free-of-infestation could help address the problem. This was felt to be particularly true for rented properties which can act as reservoirs of infestation.

And on training needs:

In terms of the quality of bedbug control work and the training necessary to carry out effective bedbug control, both manufacturers and academics thought that there had been a decline in the quality of practical bedbug control compared to earlier decades and that standards needed to improve.

Note: We listed the bed bug papers presented at ICUP Budapest here. There’s another bed bug article in this first issue of Pest, by the way, on David Cain and his bed bug survey presentation last year. So, we have one more publication to watch for bed bug stuff, great. There’s a preview of the next issue.

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