From the category archives:
Not sure how I missed this but check out the CDC’s internal site search stats for 2009. Bed bugs rank #44 on the list of keywords, behind scabies, above smoking.
25,506 searches. Frustrated searchers to be sure.
I’m good for at least 20.
As previously noted, nothing but some journal articles and a key.
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It’s amazing how much the Central Ohio Bed Bug Task Force has been able to accomplish without any significant funding. The latest example is this presentation from the recent Central Ohio Bed Bug Summit: Bed Bug Distribution through Greater Columbus, 2007 – 2009 (PowerPoint).
The task force presents data from calls received at Columbus Code Enforcement, the Franklin County Board of Health and also from a survey of pest management firms in the Columbus area (3 firms responded):
Bed bug distribution in Columbus, 2009 - source: COBBTF
The bottom line:
No part of the metro area is bed bug free
And, not surprisingly:
Bed bug calls are straining the resources of CCE [Columbus Code Enforcement], FCBH [Franklin County Board of Health], and most social services agencies in our city
This type of data collection is essential and here it is properly contextualized. Very often bed bug statistics are misunderstood. Valuable indicators, but by no means the extent of the problem.
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Caveman Forecaster analyzed google search volume trends for “bed bugs” and found that searches rise in summer months.
Caveman’s second graph is a bed bug forecast:
Caveman Forecaster "Bed Bugs" Search Volume Trends and Forecast
Caveman also mentions the top-three cities looking for bed bugs in google. I’ll leave you to discover the distinction.
I’m reminded that the Anderson and Leffler media analysis did not look for cyclicality but the Greater London study found 2, 6, and 12-month cycles and August-September peaks.
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Rats ‘n’ Bedbugs Screencast from prisonerjohn on Vimeo.
This is the project page with links to the application, images and video.
In our experience generally people don’t read fact sheets or FAQs, not until they have bed bugs, and often not even then. Delivering bed bug education is plenty challenging. This makes you think, yes? Thanks are in order to Elie’s freaked-out-by-bed bugs girlfriend for inspiring the bed bug portion of the proceedings!
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While we weren’t looking, bed bugs finally got their own category at the city’s 311 website:
The City accepts reports of bed bugs in private residences, New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) property, hotels, single room occupancy buildings, day care centers, and subways. To report bed bugs in a private house or apartment, you must be a tenant in the building.
Under Complaints & Problems, Health & Medicine, Environmental Health, if you were wondering: Bed Bug Information or Complaint.
I called 311 to see if anything was new in how the actual calls were handled and a nice guy named Joseph walked me through what they’re doing. Basically, it’s the same but there was a certain efficiency to this call and no more “bed bugs? did you say bed bugs?” It’s still a complaint process that’s routed to HPD or NYCHA, and a call transfer to the Health Department if the caller wants the bed bug fact sheet. Interestingly, they’re now also taking complaints for subways (it’s a script for rats, mice and bed bugs or conditions conducive to the same), and that call gets routed to the MTA.
Good. And definitely not a small thing. A search for bed bugs in a visit to the city’s website in the past netted precious little. This is going to change.
We’d really like to see bed bug calls included in the monthly reports in every district. Or tracked like rodent complaints (PDF), one of the reports available in My Neighborhood Statistics.
At the New York City Council hearing on bed bug legislation in February, I remember that the Speaker thanked Council Member Brewer and specifically her chief of staff, Shula Warren, for 311’s tracking of bed bug calls. At the press conference, Council Member Brewer said that 311 had received 22,218 calls about bed bugs in fiscal year 2008. These calls would have included the private residential complaints tracked by HPD and also information inquiries, and calls about bed bugs in jails, schools, NYCHA properties, etc. It’s nice to see 311 formalizing this bed bug category on their website and specifically stating what bed bug reports they process. Right direction!
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The Louisa Richards’ (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine) study we’d heard so much of, a study of resident bed bug service requests to pest control teams in London from 2000 to 2006, has been published. The study found an average 28.5% yearly increase in calls about bed bugs to seven boroughs in London (24.7% annual increase in the proportion of bed bug calls relative to other pests).
Further, and most interesting, the study found evidence of ‘cyclic peaks’ of 12, 6 and 2 months. Also, the greatest number of calls were made in August and September:
The results indicate 2, 6 and 12 month periodic cycles for the number of call enquiries for bed bugs. The 12 month cycle peaked in August-September and reflects data from other studies showing the number of bed bug calls increasing during the summer and declining in the winter (Cornwell, 1974; Cleary & Buchanan, 2004; Doggett et al., 2004; Ryan et al., 2004; Kilpinen et al., 2008). The 12 month cycle increased in amplitude for later years, which may suggest greater bed bug dispersal during the summer months, and greater optimal conditions for survival and reproduction (Omori, 1941). The 6 and 2 month cycles appear, however, to be specific to this study.
There is evidence that suggests that some first and second time treatments may be ineffective (Ryan et al., 2004; Hwang et al., 2005). The 6 and 2 month cycles may reflect call back periods from members of the public to pest control services after initial treatment has failed, because the data did not differentiate between first time callers and subsequent calls received from the same household. Further studies would be necessary to confirm these findings.
Fascinating. Consider this additional area of inquiry. The authors also collected and tested additional statistics for this period: temperature, numbers of overseas visitors, and number of UK residents traveling abroad:
There was evidence for only one borough to suggest that outdoor temperature had an impact on the increase in calls concerning bed bugs. [...]
In addition, although the effect of people’s movements has been previously hypothesised to contribute to the cyclic numbers of bed bug infestations (Cornwell, 1974; Kilpinen et al., 2008), human movement only had a significant contribution in one borough. More evidence would be required to determine whether human movement influenced the number of bed bug infestations.
Emphasis added.
Richards, L., Boase, C.J., Gezan, S., Cameron, M.M. (2009) Are bed bug infestations on the increase within Greater London? Journal of Environmental Health Research 9:1 17-22. PDF available.
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We missed Elie Zananiri’s interesting statistics visualization project idea:
By prisonerjohn via flickr.
From Elie’s post, Rats vs. Bedbugs:
The project would start with a simple animation of an uneasy person with 6 rats on his left and a bunch of bedbugs squirming on his right. The user would then click on one of the two sides, which will take her to the in-depth visualization.
The visualization will consist of a map showing the concentration of rats or bedbugs at different focuses in New York City.
By prisonerjohn via flickr.
I hope Elie settled on this idea. Can’t wait to see more of it.
An uneasy person.
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New York vs Bed Bugs recommends community and pest control industry surveys and a city-wide reporting database to track bed bug infestations in our city. Will we get it? Not sure, but I think we’ll be here until we get a comprehensive bed bug control plan, and no such thing will be complete without these tracking tools.
What information might be gleaned from surveys?
Hawai’i leads the way with methodology modeled on the 2003 Toronto study, Hwang et al. (2005).
In this study, Examination of Bed Bug (Cimex lectularius Linnaeus) Infestations on the Island of Oahu, Hawai’i (PDF), the authors collected health department data, surveyed 18 pest control companies and 16 shelters:
Abstract: Bed bug (Cimex lectularius Linnaeus) infestations have been increasing over the past several years in the continental United States. This study identified a similar rise in bed bug infestations on the island of Oahu, Hawai’i and followed up to characterize the local situation. The amount of calls and complaints regarding bed bugs to the Hawai’i State Department of Health, Oahu Vector Control Branch (DOHVCB) and Pest Control Companies (PCCs) increased in 2007 as compared to 2006. Eighteen pest management professionals (PMPs) were interviewed by phone in follow up. The number of sites treated for a company ranged from 2 to 650 in 2007, with a mean of 95.31 sites treated. Residential facilities were most commonly serviced by PMPs, shelters much less often. Eighteen employees from 16 shelters were then also interviewed using a different, in-person survey form. Eleven of these shelters had experienced a bed bug infestation, two of which were still affected at the time of the interview. Sixty-four percent of shelters’ infestations were limited to one incident, 87.50% of these were able to quickly eliminate infestations. To be able to contain an infestation in shelters such as these, training staff on prevention measures is critical. With the overall rise in infestations, updated public information is essential.
Fickle, V.J., Yang, P., Olmsted, G.K. 2008. Examination of Bed Bug (Cimex lectularius Linnaeus) Infestations on the Island of Oahu, Hawai’i. Hawai’i Journal of Public Health. 1:1, 36-39. Full-text PDF available.
Here are some interesting items from this paper:
The spread of the infestation in this shelter may have been due to the short walls separating units. Whereas all other shelters examined had separate rooms for every family, this shelter used cubicles with 4ft walls to separate families.
One shelter on the Big Island of Hawai’i was given a large walk-in freezer and pre-freezes all items for several days before they enter the facility.
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If you think about this problem long enough, you think about how long it will take for bed bugs to decline in our society once more. And would that be with or without the introduction of an effective and widely-deployable control method?
Right. Nonetheless, we rather obsessively collect whatever hard-to-interpret clues we find.
In a WHO document dated 16 July 1959(1), a report on a visit to Eastern Europe, there is this.
Poland:
Bed-bugs are no longer to be found in trains, but they are still common in old buildings. Although no special control is carried out against them, Bojanowska reports that there is evidence of DDT-resistance in several places.
Hungary:
[Dr Privora] suspects DDT-resistance in some populations of bed-bugs and wishes to test for it; DDT-resistant bed-bugs evidently exist in Hungary.
Romania:
Bed-bugs are now fast disappearing in Romania, and no resistance is suspected.
Happy Romania.
No one is capable of making me unhappy like the venerable J.R. Busvine.
Here in 1964(2)—in a section on indoor insect pests of public health importance—he begins, as elsewhere, with his depressing point about slums:
Many years ago, J. W. Munro pointed out that Cimex lectularius L. was not only a common feature of slum dwellings but even a cause of slums; for when the insect became firmly established in terraced houses, the better tenants moved away and the character of the neighbourhood declined. In 1934, a Ministry of Health Committee summarized information on eradication of bugs and a committee of the Medical Research Council was formed to promote research on the matter. Particularly relevant was the thorough ecological study of Johnson (1942).
Then he describes the historical progression of the incidence of certain pests in a nice table that omits the names of the cities:
Data on various infestations from British cities 1934-1960
City C is really interesting. From 367 houses treated in 1947 to 142 in 1957. But wait, the number goes back up to 340 in 1960!
City A is, I suspect, what Clive Boase was telling us about: a decline before the war, from a 10.7% infestation rate in 1934 to 5.2% in 1937. (Yes, I suppose we could have asked, but it’s much more interesting to find stuff on our own six months later.) By the way, in the table, if it’s unclear, bugs stands for bed bugs.
This also gives us context for the Finland numbers in 1968. There an eastern province had a 6.3% infestation rate. Those are not, it would appear from this history, trivial numbers.
It is very clear to us that bed bugs have cycled up and down, cropping up in years and places where by all rights they should have been gone. We will probably take a closer look at this history, before our objectives here at New York vs Bed Bugs are finally reached.
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The New York vs Bed Bugs report that was the subject of a New York Daily News preview article is available for download.
It is a brief analysis of the available statistics and our issues. This is the link to download the PDF.
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Please write to support the Community Integrated Pest Management Program at Cornell
Check out some notes on the New York Entomological Society's January bed bug seminar
Please help disseminate the NYC Health Department's new bed bug guide:
NYC info: Bed Bugs in New York City
New from the National Center for Healthy Housing, What’s Working for Bed Bug Control in Multifamily Housing: Reconciling best practices with research and the realities of implementation (PDF)
New research on the active spread of bed bugs in buildings, essential reading for policy makers and property managers
Check out the innovative work of the Central Ohio Bed Bug Task Force
For property managers: bed bug management contract specifications, Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association.
Recommended article: Bed Bugs: A Systemic Pest Within Society (PDF), Stephen Kells, American Entomologist, 2006
Bed Bugs Are Back: Are We Ready? (PDF) from WoodGreen Community Services, Habitat Services and Public Interest in Toronto
