Entomologist Sam Bryks is the Manager of Environmental Health Services at hsi solutions in Toronto. He has been in the pest management field for nearly 30 years, and managed the first Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program in public housing in the largest housing authority in Canada for 17 years. He is the author of the 1999 IPM manual, Integrated Pest Management in Housing, written for the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association (ONPHA) and available for download at the University of Toronto’s website. And he has advised the Toronto Bed Bug Project, Toronto’s inter-agency bed bug task force.
Sam Bryks showed us great kindness in answering our questions and sharing his expertise with us via instant messages, and even greater generosity in refining his responses via email. We are deeply grateful.
New York vs Bed Bugs: Why is Integrated Pest Management so poorly understood? I have struggled with this myself.
Sam Bryks: That is a tough one, Renee. For a time most pest control firms talked IPM, as it was a bit of a catch phrase, and there are still lots of proponents, such as IPM in schools as a legislated requirement in some states in your country. Various organizations offer certification in IPM but I, and some others in the field, know that real IPM practice is rare. People say it and give it all kinds of descriptions such as using different methods, and I even heard a talk in which “green” was substituted for an excellent rodent IPM program, but I know that very, very few actually understand what it means.
New York vs Bed Bugs: What are some of the misconceptions?
Sam Bryks: That using different methods of control is IPM. It is not, even if that is part of IPM. Or that low toxicity products mean IPM, though IPM does strive to use least toxic products.
New York vs Bed Bugs: Is IPM primarily an anti-pesticide philosophy?
Sam Bryks: IPM is definitely NOT anti-pesticide. Using pesticides is often part of the total IPM practice. IPM was derived from the agricultural setting when it was found that pesticides alone were losing effectiveness in controlling certain pests due to resistance. Crop yields were not increased in that case, and cost of the pesticides was an additional expense without benefit… so in the fifties and early sixties a system based on information was developed. This was based on knowledge of the pest, of its life cycle, of vulnerable stages, of when best to treat, and to get away from using pesticides against a pest when it wasn’t there at the moment. It really was about understanding the pest ecosystem. This was adapted to the urban model. In the agricultural setting they speak of the economic threshold of treatment… when it is cost effective and, for a time, they talked of the Aesthetic Injury Level for urban pests. In other words, when someone went YUK… funny… but really in the urban setting, I say that in a home one is one too many when it comes to the pests that infest such as roaches, or mice or bed bugs or food infesting pests. The occasional outside insect getting in the house is really of no consequence. Every home likely has some insects somewhere.
But the essential element of IPM is that it is AN INFORMATION BASED SYSTEM that utilizes knowledge to apply a variety of approaches in control, including prevention and use of the least toxic and minimal amounts of pesticide when necessary to control the pest.
New York vs Bed Bugs: First time I hear of aesthetic injury level—bed bugs would have to take that prize by default. But is reduction in pesticide use its primary reason for being?
Sam Bryks: No, that is not the primary goal, but it is an outcome, though in the urban setting it is definitely a very significant goal. In the agricultural setting it was originally based on cost effectiveness, not increasing costs by useless applications that were expensive, but of course the reduction in use of pesticides was a very beneficial outcome for the environment and for people. The impact of our industrial society is greater than one imagines. I live in an area where there is a parkland that extends over about 40 acres. When I was a boy, we saw frogs and toads and certain non-poisonous snakes and lots of other critters including bird species that we now do not see at all. The area became lawn space and the use of pesticides and other challenges basically eliminated all those species.
New York vs Bed Bugs: And now, in institutionalized IPM programs, is pesticide use reduction a first obligation?
Sam Bryks: This is a very, very important aspect that was long not considered. I once had a case of a family in which the idea of roaches was so repugnant that they bought diazinon and were spraying the home on a weekly basis to the point when I walked in, my eyes were burning. I was called because their small child was sick all the time and it was not surprising because the place was heavily contaminated from the repetitive spraying. I advised the mother that she had to stop doing this and reassured her that we would ensure that she didn’t have roaches in her home. She was nearly in tears realizing that her spraying had affected her child, but we kept our promise and got rid of the roaches using other methods.
This was because of the fear of having an infested home… that is an extreme case, but at one time one of the standard solutions was to spray entire buildings for roaches once a year. In some housing organizations, spraying units four times a year was not unusual. That was whether infested or not as a preventive approach… wow!!!
New York vs Bed Bugs: And this did not achieve control, needless to say?
Sam Bryks: Not really. Insects will try to avoid pesticides and if the cure is worse than the pest…? Also, if no one takes any actions about highly infested units that we call focal infested units (meaning that infestation comes from this focus point of high infestation). This changed in the early 80s with the advent of baits especially hydramethylnon baits, but that is another story… Getting back to IPM, the whole idea is to achieve control, limit spread, eliminate through common sense approaches relating to the pest species. For example, people would spray for spiders indoors out of fear when most indoor spiders are harmless and control is achieved by vacuuming, by glue boards and, amazingly enough, by looking at the environment. Incandescent lighting draws flying insects and spiders hang out where there are, so change of lighting can have a huge impact. I once investigated an ant problem in a hospital day surgery and it was traced to lighting that attracted insects and the ants fed on dead insects, so part of the IPM approach was to change the habitat, not just treat for the ants by spraying as was the routine by most firms. “Ants… oh, let me spray them,” and then spray again and again because without looking at the cause, you can’t find a cure. Changing the lighting reduced the risk by changing the local habitat. This also applies to bed bugs by reducing risk of spread by common sense approaches.
New York vs Bed Bugs: So, do you want to take a definitive stab at a definition of IPM; we see so many and they don’t particularly illustrate what is behind the concept?
Sam Bryks: Yes, there was a great definition by Marcos Kogan… I don’t remember it by heart, but I can get it for you. It says that IPM is an information-based system utilizing a variety of methods including pesticides when needed with focus on impact on producers and the environment. Applied to the urban area, it is stakeholders instead of producers.
New York vs Bed Bugs: Stakeholders meaning?
Sam Bryks: Means everyone impacted in society. Tenants, landlords, workers, property management people, municipal people, social workers and care givers, health departments, pest control service providers. It is really society at large in this case. No one wants to have them and the stakeholders each have roles in enabling prevention and control. It goes to the heart… family doctors, nursing home operators, hotels….
New York vs Bed Bugs: Okay, so, what of our friend, the bed bug? Specifically with regard to an emergent pest outbreak such as bed bugs, are there limitations and challenges inherent in an IPM approach? Or are the challenges to do with the bed bug itself?
Sam Bryks: First is understanding how this happened. Clive Boase really got it right. Of course we look at the underlying reasons such as change in use of pesticides and the way they spread but close up it has to do with unresolved infestations from which the insects are spread. If you have one hotel with a bad infestation, it will spread that infestation through guests to their homes, and to other hotels, and from there to other people as well. These are called reservoirs of infestation. And these reservoirs can be ONE UNIT in a building, or a range of other locations, but it has to do with high turnover of people. This is why homeless shelters are vulnerable, as well as university residences, and any kind of multiple dwelling housing as it involves many people living under one roof.
In order to truly bring this pest under control, we need to eliminate it from everywhere. And the more infested places not resolved, the more it will continue to spread. We have seen that happen in the last ten years DRAMATICALLY.
So part of IPM is understanding that fact. This is part of the biology of the pest. Further to that it is understanding how it behaves and what we should do and what we should not do to limit spreading things.
The toughest thing about the IPM approach is to get people to actually take the responsibility to solve the problems, not blaming others. Landlords being blamed by tenants, tenants being blamed by landlords… Of course, the bug itself is a huge challenge. These critters were in low numbers for nearly 50 years, and they have made an amazing comeback.
People like Michael Potter, Stephen Kells, Richard Cooper and especially Clive Boase have contributed a lot to knowledge of bed bug behaviour and looking at the problem holistically and understand how very difficult it is. Stephen Doggett in Australia put together a bed bug policy for the entire country focused especially on the hospitality industry. I have also appreciated contact with Joe Barile, Technical Director at Bayer, who is a great resource to the industry.
This is definitely not an easy pest to control. Baits don’t work of course and the bed bugs are very resistant to current products. And as you have said, it is expensive, very expensive to treat even one home. So the IPM idea is to use our intelligence and information to do the best we can do.
New York vs Bed Bugs: But can this approach scale? In a large building, which is your area of expertise?
Sam Bryks: For example, before 1999, we never publicized an infestation in an apartment unit. We had it treated discreetly and those products worked fairly well… not much spread when we had those products. I am not saying that removing those products was wrong, not at all. There is a great concern about exposure of children to pesticides. And you probably know that New York State and a couple of others had sued HUD for not enforcing IPM programs by their clients. Notwithstanding this, we know HUD does support IPM very strongly. The rationale was the cost to society of children’s allergies and asthma caused by roach infestations. I remember years ago reading a study which looked at the differences in pesticide residues in single family dwelling and in non-profit housing in three states in your country. The results were dramatic. The non profit housing units had far higher residues of pesticides. Not surprising for that time.
New York vs Bed Bugs: Can you name the formerly effective products you are referring to?
Sam Bryks: Well, things like diazinon and dursban, and baygon. Trade names for two organophosphates and one carbamate, and before that a relative of DDT, chlordane, which was banned more than 20 years ago… For roaches, the bait products changed this dramatically, but don’t want to digress… the story was not a final one… insects are amazingly resilient genetically.
I am not a scientist who researches the effects of pesticides in detail, but when they remove a product it is because of concerns about long term effects… I think if we look at the risk/benefit idea, that is, one weighs risk against benefit. It is like a cancer patient having chemotherapy which is very, very tough to endure, and no one would want to take chemotherapy if they didn’t have cancer, so the risk of death outweighs the difficulty of chemotherapy, and of course doctors do their best to minimize those negative effects. With pest management it is like that. No one wants to use a very strong toxicant if they can do it some other way with a less toxic product. I remember reading about fluoride-salt based roach baits… wow!!! I think it was sodium fluoride. Long before my time. That material was very, very dangerous, and I am sure its use was restricted, but a product that can kill people is not desirable of course. Now it is about more subtle long-term effects, not about short-term effects though the organophosphates and carbamates are neurotoxins.
I know that there are still people on the side of pesticide use who revile Rachel Carson and her landmark book “Silent Spring” but she basically said, be careful, use wisely and don’t poison the environment. She didn’t say DON’T EVER USE. She was noted as one of the 100 most influential people in the 20th century by Time Magazine. She basically gave the alert about environmental impact, but she had a common sense approach and was not anti-pesticide, rather she was pro-common sense. It was equivalent to the current debate about global warming.
New York vs Bed Bugs: Let’s turn to issues of application. What are the specific problems in the implementation of IPM in large, multi-unit buildings? What are the ‘moving parts’ that need to be coordinated and where are the vulnerable points? And how do you measure results?
Sam Bryks: With bed bugs we are now facing an epidemic of infestation with very expensive treatment that doesn’t always work. So what to do? We, at my company, have taken the process of IPM to a new focus. That is Chain of Accountability. We promote that to do IPM properly, we need all stakeholders involved, each doing their part… so we need to educate tenants to report infestation and to treat them with respect and not stigmatize them. As I said, in past we kept it very quiet, we changed that and advised that property managers post alerts about infestation.
Got some backlash on that from tenants who felt their homes were being labelled. So we advised to post alerts discreetly. This is also critical from a legal perspective. If a landlord doesn’t alert tenants, then they could be sued. I have seen this happen as a matter of due diligence. The tenant is responsible to let the landlord know so that things can be handled, and to prepare the unit, but the landlord is really responsible for the building, and part of that responsibility is to advise other tenants of the risk. When we had few cases, we didn’t do that because it was so rare and we managed to eliminate them, and no one wanted to stigmatize a particular tenant, but things have changed – it happens a lot now and it can happen to anyone.
New York vs Bed Bugs: This is very interesting, the ever-present stigma. I should like to ask your thoughts about what we can do about the stigma; for example, what exactly is a discreet bed bug alert? Why can’t we treat bed bugs as if they were termites?
Sam Bryks: I am laughing. Termites eat wood. Bed bugs eat PEOPLE. And there is a whole fear factor. People are afraid of taking them home. I have heard of really terrible reactionary attitudes about infestation… not allowing people into offices, and advising staff not to go into their homes but meet in a coffee shop. I wonder what the coffee shop owner would think if he knew someone was shifting this risk to his business. I am asked to give training to caregiver agencies so that their staff do not have to be afraid, and can deliver their services but also protect themselves. This is so important. We have heard of work refusals because of bed bugs. If a caregiver finds an infestation because they have been educated in this, then they can not only protect themselves with reasonable precautions without fear but also alert others when there is a problem.
New York vs Bed Bugs: Yes, but how do we leave these attitudes behind? Is it not imperative to do that, now that we have this extraordinary outbreak? Do we not see the impotence and the invalid reasoning behind all of this?
Sam Bryks: It is really education. If an organization creates anxiety by policies, then they are doing themselves a disservice and creating negative attitudes towards clients. We need to give staff assurance and make them feel safe. Can it happen? Yes of course. But if you advise staff how to reduce risk and then tell them that if it does happen, they will get help, this makes all the difference. The whole idea of our IPM Chain of Accountability Program, is that kind of education. I too am revulsed by the idea of taking bed bugs home. What a nightmare that could be… but using common sense is the way to approach this. I remember the first major infestation I encountered, I came home and went downstairs and took off all my clothes to my underwear and put into the washer. Family wondered why and I didn’t tell them. See… me too!! But from that experience, we develop common sense practices for staff. The next one I went to which was reported to be severe, I had tyvek disposable coveralls and it was easy to take off and dispose of. I don’t have any at home… yet.
New York vs Bed Bugs: Can you say how many cases of bed bugs were treated year in, year out, before the current bed bug boom?
Sam Bryks: I worked for a large pest control firm and during eight years I never saw or heard of even ONE case. At that time these were historical pests. If any firm had specialized in that, they would have gone broke very fast. I have heard of techs in the business who prior to about 1997 had never seen one infestation after 20 years of service work. The bed bugs were out there, but in very small numbers. I know that in the former MTHA, the provincial housing agency in Toronto, the rate was perhaps about 4-6 jobs annually out of nearly 30,000 units. That is a very, very low rate. It is actually a percent rate of .0003 %. For roaches in a private detached home we estimated a risk of about one newly imported infestation in about 20 years with some variance on where people shop and so on. This would mean about 10 new cases per year in a 200 unit building. That is a new infestation rate from outside of about 5%. Still fairly low, but if each infestation is not resolved, and then spreads… well it rapidly increases to much higher levels in a building.
I don’t want to guess the rate of newly imported infestation for bed bugs, but I would say it is probably in that range now.
New York vs Bed Bugs: Yes, but now those 4 annual jobs, once they could not be effectively controlled, and discreetly controlled, morphed into the situation we have now, which is essentially unabated spread.
Sam Bryks: No, those four treatments were handled because the products were more effective then. Simple reality. We had few callbacks. Sometimes I think there may be a bringing back of products, but I don’t think anyone thinks this is likely. We hope for better products designed to take advantage of bed bug behaviour.
Poor control results in increase of resistance… if you don’t succeed in killing all of them, then survivors are often the ones who have some resistance… but also there were some bad practices. People using spray products — often aerosols that may have killed some bed bugs but actually dispersed them or pest operators asking tenants to lift mattresses and boxes as part of preparation so they don’t have to do that. This can result in dispersion of some to less accessible hiding places or an unresolved infestation that spreads from sheer population pressure.
Bed bugs have nasty mating habits you know.
New York vs Bed Bugs: Yes, we’ve heard, but then, aren’t rats the same? It’s the prerogative of vermin, I suppose.
Can we strategically bring back some of these products, to control this epidemic?
Sam Bryks: Not for me to say. I don’t see that happening. Though there could be huge pressure to do that. I think that use of the IPM approach to prevent and limit spread is the answer. Not so bad if you have to treat a few units, but pretty bad when you have to treat an entire building at about $300 each per unit. That adds up for a large site. We are talking hundreds of thousands of dollars and the problem will return lickety split if nothing else is done. I know of cases just like that.
Not so different with rats. I would rather control rats than bed bugs. Much easier, but you know that rat infestations are largely the outcome of poor practices in managing garbage. In both Toronto and New York this has been traced to poor garbage handling in the inner city. Rats take advantage of that.
And IPM works with rats as well. It is about habitat and strategies of control.
But getting back to bed bugs. With IPM… educate all stakeholders as needed.
New York vs Bed Bugs: Pity there isn’t a fundamental reason for bed bug infestations, like garbage is for rats.
Sam Bryks: There is a fundamental reason. That is the existence of unresolved infestations. That is the first reason and it follows, spread by a variety of means including between units and by poor disposal of infested items, especially bedding.
Education of all stakeholders. Early warning and notification of infestation. Keeping track of infestations… which units? Doing adjacent unit inspections or even block inspections. Hiring good companies to do the work… the lowest price is usually the worst job.
With IPM, everyone is involved. And if there is a case that needs special attention, it means that the special assistance MUST be provided by some means. A bad infestation that is avoided with the idea of evicting a tenant, who can’t help self, is a pretty poor approach. Some activist lawyers here in Toronto would sue a landlord if they tried to evict a tenant for that reason. Handicap or inability to prepare a unit is not a valid reason for eviction by Human Rights standards. A tough one, because landlords are not social workers, but along the lines of the IPM CAP model, we need to define what they need to do and can do to handle these issues as part of their accountability for the entire building. Not so easy, but fortunately in our society, we value compassion for others.
New York vs Bed Bugs: And yet, the costs, the incredible costs, how do we eradicate infestations that are so expensive to eradicate? What readjustment of priorities must occur?
Sam Bryks: IPM includes tracking and monitoring and it includes looking at how the treatment should be done. Is anyone monitoring what the contractor is doing? I mention in the workshops I give that some experts say that a one bedroom apartment should take 3 hours to treat and that for smaller units, the absolute minimum time would be 1/2 hour if it were a new infestation, but a very focused half hour and attendees both tenants and building staff often tell me that their contractor was doing units in less than 15 minutes… Now, 3 hours is a long time and expensive, and I am not sure if always needed, though to be honest, I can’t say it is not needed. I think that early detection and treatment along with some common sense approaches can reduce the time a lot with a reasonable prospect of control with two treatments, but once it is a heavy infestation, it can take hours and hours to get under control.
People are looking at heat treatment, but currently it is very expensive. Hopefully it may be modified to enable, but I am not encouraged by this at the moment. It works very well, but the set up to do it is not easy. It may very well become the method of choice for the wealthy.
New York vs Bed Bugs: The last question is: If you had to design a training program for bed bug management in a multi-unit housing/urban setting, that took into consideration all the stakeholders and the challenges we know about, what would you worry about?
What is critical?
Sam Bryks: Well, we have developed exactly that. We start with educating the key management people. At the level of directors and contract managers. We had a CEO drop in to support the program, but all the other directors and contract managers sat in a four hour overview of IPM.
Tenants need to know that the management is committed to do what is necessary. And if the key management are educated in this formally, lights go on in their heads that were closed doors before. Tenants need to know what they can do to help prevention and to know that they can report problems without fear of being blamed. Tenants need to know what they can do, etc. But I have found that if the management does not get involved in very real ways, credibility is not there among staff. I once had occasion with a colleague to visit a hospital that had been experiencing roach issues. We found the cause that another pest control firm had missed, but the Housekeeping Manager was totally disinterested though we were doing this at his request as a courtesy. A few months later we saw him at a 2 day workshop put on by our firm because his job was on the line as he had failed in this area, and he hired our firm. The bed bug issue is so hot that executives must be involved in very practical ways. The people who are in charge of maintenance services must have a solid understanding of this, not just a perspective of who does it cheapest.
I have been invited about a half dozen times to train care givers from agencies so they know what to look for and how to protect themselves but even more so to enable them to act in a supportive role for their clients.
And the industry needs to set some reasonable standards of what should be done… Right now it is either over the top for those who can afford it, and not enough for those who cannot.
New York vs Bed Bugs: What of the role of building staff?
Sam Bryks: Everyone has to buy into the same goals. I hate when I hear a firm has done a building and then they step back and away and wait for new work when it recycles. IPM is proactive not reactive. When things happen that need reaction, it is there, but the idea is to do everything possible to prevent problems before they happen rather than have to react after they happen. I just heard of a case in Toronto of a major grocery store being shut down due to rats. When I hear this, I am hearing a failure caused by a non IPM program. A good simple example of an IPM kind of accountability is sanitation in large food warehouses. The best programs give responsibility for cleaning to fork lift operators who are usually not seen as being cleaners, but the responsibility is to clean up if you spill rather than “oops, the cleaners will do it”… This dramatically reduces the actual incidence of spills by the operators. With bed bugs, this is easier because if you show building staff that the things they can do will reduce risk for them as well, and there is appreciation for this, people will look at it differently than just horror and call the spray man.
Building staff are also educators in support of tenants. Boston Housing Authority actually trains tenants to be IPM Educators and work with other tenants to address housekeeping issues. We have also dealt with hoarding issues, and I saw a program on this recently on TV. It is not a one time thing to help someone who hoards. It is an ongoing support program because a hoarder may tolerate bed bugs in horror so not to face the shame of their cluttered home. I speak to people in that situation with honesty and respect. I respect their need to keep possessions and try to encourage them to find ways to manage this reasonably – ways for them reduce the volume. This works in time. Negative reaction and judgment (Oh my god!!! how can you live with so much stuff!!!) just injures. The person usually knows their situation very well, and if they are sort of stuck in it, one can help get them unstuck by respect and by getting special help.
An example of a really wonderful program in Toronto is that of Seaton House, the largest shelter. I was asked to visit some years ago and I gave my overview then as well as I could. The shelters were experiencing major problems. One of the staff who has a social work background, Richard Grotsch, decided to use the men in the shelter to attack the problem as part of their looking after themselves and he developed a process of non-chemical treatment and prevention that knocked the problem down amazingly and then, he worked like the devil to get support for those guys providing services to others. They are called the Bug n’ Scrub team and they do fantastic work in helping clean up units in preparation for bed bug treatment. They are very busy.
New York vs Bed Bugs: We’ve heard of them and are so intrigued. We need more of such projects, but of course, they start with committed and visionary individuals.
Sam Bryks: He gives those guys meaningful employment and helps others. We need more of that kind of tenant involvement and that too is part of IPM. IPM is also like a quality assurance program, it involves checking to see if things are working, keeping up with the latest technology, and above all else, two things, education and also focus on use of information to look after things. Where, what, how, why. Good data collection. Our program involved pest control guys documenting on handheld input devices time in and out. Access, housekeeping rating, pest type, degree of infestation, preparation…
When you have that data, you can see how many cases, on which floors, how badly infested, and what is needed in action.
New York vs Bed Bugs: Very reminiscent of the rat control program currently underway in NYC (under the leadership of a rodentologist). They’re “indexing” rats in one borough.
Sam Bryks: Probably Bobby Corrigan. He did his PhD in that at Purdue. I have spoken to him in past. He is the rodent man in the U.S. He does classical IPM. Study the problem. Collect data. Then plan strategy of control that includes a preventive aspect and sometimes it has to have a regulatory element. That is as true of bed bugs as of rats.
Reminds me… in Alberta Canada, they take pride in being a rat-free province. I am skeptical of that reality, but they have very few because every sighting is documented and acted on. They work hard to keep it like that. Rats are very costly in an agricultural setting.
New York vs Bed Bugs: Do you think this is the answer for bed bugs? Provided we can come up with the cash (i.e., the will)?
Sam Bryks: IPM, yes… that is the answer. That is the model that is needed. I fear I haven’t explained it here well enough and used too many words. To understand it, one has to understand that it is a process based on good information gathering, on analysis and decision making, and of course, always on education and it includes everyone. And when I say that, the first person I think of is ME… I am constantly trying to learn more from networking. Learn from Michael Potter and from Clive Boase and from Richard Cooper and Stephen Kells, and Joe Barile, and I also share with them what I have learned from my unique job in housing for the last 22, nearly 23, years in doing IPM in housing.
Good to talk to you, Renee. Thanks for the opportunity to get on my soapbox tonight. Congratulations on your new president. We are very hopeful of his positive impact on the world here in Canada. If he were in our business, he would certainly be doing IPM. I am sure of that. I think his message is a lot like our Chain of Accountability. That is thick, but I also think it is true. And I hope it makes you laugh a bit too.
Editor’s note: You can read the Marcos Kogan IPM definition in the Compendium of IPM Definitions at Oregon State University.
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