New York vs Bed Bugs » Statistics

Bed bugs and poverty in cold bar-chart blue

Renee Corea — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 11:45:50 +0000

The data of last year’s community health survey which for the first time included a bed bug question is now available at the city’s Environmental Health Tracking Portal:

Name	Number of Adults Reporting	Percent of Adults Reporting
New York City	404,000	6.7%
Bronx	74,000	8.1%
Brooklyn	161,000	8.9%
Manhattan	74,000	5.8%
Queens	87,000	5%
Staten Island	8,000	2.5%

Source: NYC Community Health Survey (CHS), 2009 – NYC Environmental Public Health and Sustainability Tracking Portal

See also a breakdown by neighborhoods (PDF): Williamsburg-Bushwick: 16.5%, Borough Park: 12.2%, etc.

You’ll see there are many ways to explore the data, including a map, but this is the easiest prize:

Adults Reporting Bed Bugs in their Home by Neighborhood Poverty - 2009 NYC Community Health Survey - NYC Environmental Public Health and Sustainability Tracking Portal

On the neighborhood poverty calculations:

Neighborhoods are ranked according to the percent of people whose annual income falls below twice the federal poverty level. Rankings are then divided into 3 approximately equal groupings of low, medium and high poverty.

For more on the neighborhood poverty indicator, see this poverty map document (PDF).

I think all of this is perhaps a bit like Orwell’s notes from his slum sojourn:

But mere notes like these are only valuable as reminders to myself. To me as I read them they bring back what I have seen, but they cannot in themselves give much idea of what conditions are like in those fearful northern slums. Words are such feeble things. What is the use of a brief phrase like “roof leaks” or “four beds for eight people”? It is the kind of thing your eye slides over, registering nothing. And yet what a wealth of misery it can cover!

I am also reminded of something else, from an article written at that familiar, precarious point of false triumph over the bed bug, this time from Iceland. In a section titled Eradicated Ectoparasites, Skírnisson et al. (2003):

Gígja (1944) and Fristrup (1945) state that C. lectularius was the worst pest that had ever occurred in human dwellings in Iceland.

The worst pest that had ever occurred. What does that mean? No bar chart is up to the task.

BDBGS

Renee Corea — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 11:20:13 +0000

Christian Swinehart’s BDBGS! is a NYC bed bug map visualization of extraordinary beauty.

It made me want to return to this site, just to share, and now I can:

It’s an uncommon experience, to be delighted by something bed bug-related.

NPMA/University of Kentucky global bed bug survey

Renee Corea — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 02:34:31 +0000

The NPMA/University of Kentucky global bed bug survey hasn’t been published yet (see the NPMA press release that made the news rounds recently) but I came across an executive summary (PDF) via Pest magazine that has a bit more detail.

There were 521 U.S. and 429 international respondents.

The nature of the increase:

In a previous survey [link added-RC] of U.S. pest control firms (Potter 2008a), 6% of respondents said their companies performed more than 100 services for bed bugs during the previous year. In the more recent survey, conducted two years later, 20% of U.S. respondents reported their company doing more than 100 bed bug jobs last year and 7% reported doing more than 500. Other areas of the world where many respondents reported doing hundreds of bed bug jobs last year included Africa/Middle East (60% of respondents), Canada (37%), Asia (20%), and Europe (13%).

On views about the nexus with poverty, quite interestingly, the Europeans depart from their American counterparts:

When asked if they felt there was a correlation in their country between bed bugs and poverty, respondents to our survey were split, with differing opinions by region. In the United States, for example, 55% of respondents said that “problems tend to be worse among the poor” while 45% said “all citizens are equally affected.” A wider discrepancy occurred amongst respondents from Europe, with 77% insisting that bed bugs affected all citizens equally regardless of socio-economic standing. Nowadays, even five star hotels and high-end clothing stores are susceptible to infestation, but historically the poor have suffered the most from bed bugs.

Might this say more about European societies than about actual distribution rates?

On DIY:

More than half (51%) of U.S. respondents estimated that 50% or more of their customers tried to treat their problem themselves before calling a professional. Pest control firms reported seeing many ineffective and potentially dangerous measures used by do-it-yourselfers, including ammonia, bleach, fire, smoke, kerosene, wasp spray, and bug bombs, as well as professional-use pesticides bought on the internet.

And yet, does it not seem to you that this problem will finally subside when there are effective DIY solutions (and only then)?

Enough about global bed bug catastrophe. Let’s talk about NYvsBB.

Check this out:

In Sweden in the 1930s, almost half of all moving vans inspected had bed bugs, and a subsequent survey in Iceland showed that bed bugs were often found inside televisions and radios being serviced by appliance repair shops (Potter 2008b). The remarkable ability of this pest to “hitchhike” from one place to another means they can materialize almost anywhere…from a restaurant booth to a blood pressure cuff.

I like restaurant booth to blood pressure cuff.

But Iceland and Potter 2008b?

Respectfully say, nah.

Behold the statistical wonders of clever Finnish entomologists. ¹ ² Markkula & Tiittanen (1970).

If I had a nickel for every time someone turned up their nose at this here mere blog.
I think Messrs. Reinhardt and Siva-Jothy read this paper for their 2007 review, as they read everything ever written, but they used the least curiosity-inducing citation possible. I found it by accident at the good old army’s library (I think). Highly recommend.

“During the past 12 months, have you had a problem with bed bugs in your home that required an exterminator?”

Renee Corea — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 04:31:03 +0000

The NYC Health Department announced at last Wednesday’s press conference that 6.7% (of adult residents) answered yes.

Despite the bad news, it is exciting to have this question included in the city’s health survey for the first time.

Not that there are no problems with this question. Does it not exhibit an anxiety about confirmation in its chosen proxy of professional pest control services? As there are problems, perhaps, with some of the alternatives one can think of. There must be an art to this and the Health Department, with its public health tracking expertise, may have wanted to distinguish actual infestations from unconfirmed or suspected situations. And yet, how many people self-treat? Out of necessity or preference? And how? Are they successful, with or without an exterminator? (The exterminator word, though deprecated in favor of pest management professional, is well chosen here.)

I hope this question is tweaked in the years to come.

In any case, 6.7% is high, higher than I thought/guessed based on a consideration of what the under-reporting rate might be.¹

Survey data is not yet available but will be posted at the city’s environmental health tracking portal and at the yet to be realized bed bug portal.

This is the first in a series of posts wrapping up recent developments. It is not a full return of the blog.

In the only other comparable survey I remember, the Spring 2008 Greater Cincinnati Health Survey’s question was “In the past year, have you experienced a problem with bed bugs in your home or apartment?” The rate was 7.9% in Hamilton County and 14.5% in the City of Cincinnati.

FY 2010 NYC stats update

Renee Corea — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:46:47 +0000

We updated bed bug statistics through FY 2010 (PDF), data courtesy of the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), and for the first time added a table of 311 directory assistance calls. This table is based on data available from the Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications (DOITT).¹

There are a number of misconceptions about the available statistics in New York City, and this is the reason for this update.

First, unless otherwise noted, these are fiscal year numbers. NYC’s fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30. Therefore, a phrase such as “so far this year there are” in a press report is meaningless unless contextualized.

There are no mechanisms to collect infestations data from businesses, theatres, and commercial buildings.

There are several NYC agencies that maintain (collect may be too strong a word for some of them) bed bug data. Just as an example, NYC has two housing agencies (a fact that escapes some writers), HPD and NYCHA (the New York City Housing Authority), and each maintains its own data.

The statistics obtained from HPD for FY 2009 and FY 2010 do not contain inspections completed data and NYCHA statistics are not included in this update.²

We do not have statistics from the Department of Education (DOE).³ Similarly, the New York City Council, HRA, etc.

One has to be careful of the following: reports do not equal complaints do not equal inspections do not equal violations. NYCHA residents call a centralized service line or 311 to request pest control services (and have a very hard time of it). Private residential tenants call 311 to lodge complaints against their landlords. For the last year that we have inspections completed data, FY 2008, there were 9,213 HPD complaints received but only 5,190 HPD inspections. And now we can see that in that same year there were 12,941 calls to 311 tagged as “bed bug complaint – residence.”

Some co-op residents end up calling 311.⁴ However, we don’t know how many co-op residents are availing themselves of HPD complaints to compel their boards to act.

The final misconception I have given up on, and that is the idea that HPD stats somehow accurately represent the distribution of bed bugs in the city. So you will see references to so many bed bugs in X neighborhood but almost no bed bugs in Y neighborhood. But I can’t bring myself to explain all the reasons why this is flawed again. Just think about what an adversarial landlord-tenant complaint/violation system is like and the types of buildings and the disposition of landlords that are likely to feature in such a system.

The good news, if you do want to go down that path, is that there was a 37.6% decline in complaints in Queens Community District 3 (East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, North Corona) in FY 2010.

Too bad, then, that there was a 48.2% rise in Brooklyn CD 3 (Bedford-Stuyvesant, Stuyvesant Heights, Tompkins Park North).

Instructions to find your community district are in the udpate: NYC Bed Bug Statistics Fiscal Year 2010 Update (PDF).

I hope this is useful.

Best wishes.

More interesting (summer) fun with bed bug stats here and here. Also interesting and surprisingly fun is the interactive online course about bed bug management developed by HPD.

Specifically: June 2008 (PDF), June 2009 (PDF), and June 2010 (PDF) directory assistance reports.
For HPD inspections data through FY 2008 and for NYCHA statistics, both obtained under FOIL, please see Bed Bugs in New York City: A Citizen’s Guide to the Problem (February, 2009 – PDF).
DOE bed bug statistics, like most NYC agency bed bug statistics, are not available to the public. However, in the 2009 WoodGreen report, Bed Bugs are Back: Are We Ready?, a figure of 300 bed bug complaints in NYC schools in 2007 is cited.
Please note that a recent Q&A in The Cooperator described an HPD memorandum in which HPD “requires cooperatives to assume the responsibility for eliminating bedbug infestations.”

#44

Renee Corea — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:18:23 +0000

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.

Bed bug tracking in Columbus: “a fraction of the actual bed bug infestations”

Renee Corea — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:58:39 +0000

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.

Lazy hazy days of bed bugs

Renee Corea — Sun, 17 May 2009 06:15:56 +0000

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.

Elie Zananiri’s Rats ‘n’ Bedbugs

Renee Corea — Fri, 01 May 2009 13:31:25 +0000

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!

Rats and bed bugs: a mainstreaming idea

311 finally has bed bug category

Renee Corea — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:30:50 +0000

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!