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.
“Correctly respond to the first outbreak”
Jessica of Chicago vs Bed Bugs has a very nice and wide-ranging interview with a Chicago pest management firm—Smithereen, who not only have a great name but have been around since 1888.
Reenactment of Article 151 of the NYC Health Code was adopted
The article was formerly titled Rodents, Insects and Other Pests and is now called Pest Prevention and Management. This is a PDF of the adoption resolution.
Ray Lopez recognized with Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Award
We missed this fantastic news last fall: Ray Lopez was named a 2008 recipient of the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leader Awards.
Stepping up our campaign: a sample letter to the Speaker of the City Council
The time is right to contact the Speaker of the New York City Council, Christine Quinn, and ask for her support of policy initiatives against the spread of bed bugs in our city. We want to ask you to continue to write letters and make phone calls to your own council member to seek his or her support of Intro 873, the bed bug education bill currently in the Health Committee. However, together we can make the Speaker of the City Council aware of our struggles with bed bugs and ask for her leadership and support for legislative proposals and a comprehensive bed bug policy for our city.
If you’re satisfied your council member is already on your side
Why not contact your other representatives? Everyone needs to be educated about bed bugs, so that they can participate in creating solutions! When we call someone and they say they’ve never heard of bed bug problems in X community, you know that doesn’t mean that there are no bed bugs in that community. It just means what they say: they’ve never heard of your bed bug problems. It’s time to tell them: Continue Reading
We know it’s not easy to get your council member’s attention
We know because we don’t just ask you to do stuff we wouldn’t do ourselves. I’m trying to interest my own council member in bed bugs, the idea of a bed bug task force and, specifically, Intro 873. It’s… going.
Permanent prophylactic measures, city of plastic bags
Mangy_cur, a New York vs Bed Bugs cofounder, the awesome photographer of this flickr set, tells us that over a year since the start of the bed bug infestation (at the moment, but relatively recently, eradicated), this is still pretty much what life is like:
On page 5 of the NYS IPM Guidelines, a great photo
It’s a photo of the life stages of bed bugs (sans only one stage) arrayed in single file formations and I think of it as the marching dead bed bugs—but actually some of them look quite prosperous, engorged as they are. The photographer is Allison Taisey.