Source:  KETV.com

SHENANDOAH, Iowa —

An Iowa inspector has ordered the Days Inn in Shenandoah closed because of a bedbug infestation.Crews spent their lunch hour on Thursday changing carpet inside the motel as a sign outside declared that the business was closed for remodeling.Former employees said that wasn’t the real reason that the motel was shut down.”My manager told me there was a bedbug infestation,” said a former employee who asked to be identified as Aubrey.Several former employees at the motel told KETV NewsWatch 7 that the problem has been going on for months.”There were just spots of blood on, I’d say, 90 percent of the sheets,” Aubrey said. “We’d have to replace the sheets all the time.”

KETV NewsWatch 7 learned that an Iowa inspector heard a guest complain about bedbugs on Thursday morning. A search of the guest’s room found multiple insects and the business was immediately closed.”We washed everything and they put it back in circulation,” Aubrey said. “Washing sheets doesn’t kill bedbugs.”The motel has been inspected three times since May. It passed inspection in the spring, but was found to be out of compliance in July for dirty rooms. A July report also noted there was no pest control certification.The manager denied Thursday morning that the sudden closure was because of an infestation, saying that the motel was being remodeled. The manager was unable to respond to questions about the inspector’s report later in the day.The motel will remain closed until a certified pest control company can prove that the infestation is gone.

Tags: closure, Days Inn, Iowa, Shenandoah

Source:  CBS News

(AP) COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – Bug spray that produces a fog to kill insects is likely to blame for the death of a 10-month-old South Carolina boy, and his 2-year-old brother was critically injured by the fumes, authorities said Monday.

Anderson County Deputy Coroner Don McCown said the boys’ mother had been using foggers in their single-wide mobile home in Williamston, in the northwest part of the state, because of an insect problem. Elizabeth Whitfield, 25, called 911 on Sunday afternoon to report her youngest son was having trouble breathing.

Paramedics took all three to a hospital, and Jacob Whitfield was pronounced dead. His brother, Kenneth, was flown to another hospital about 20 minutes north to Greenville, where he remained Monday on a respirator, but was starting to stabilize, McCown said.

Elizabeth Whitfield was coated in chemicals when she first arrived to the hospital and had to remove her clothes and take a shower. She was released Sunday, but was re-admitted to the ER on Monday with breathing problems, McCown said.

Investigators found seven fogger containers. She told authorities she set off three when she began renting a month ago, then continued using them when the insects wouldn’t die.

“Most people put these foggers in – they do it one time a month or every couple of months. She was using two to three a week,” McCown said. “She said she followed the directions, but you have to wonder. We can’t attribute it to anything else.”

A single fogger is typically used to treat 6,000 cubic feet and can leave an oily residue on furniture and floors. Directions call for residents to cover all furniture, vacate the home for four hours, then open windows and doors for an hour before returning, he said.

While the pesticides appear to be the cause of death, confirmation through toxicology reports could take eight weeks. Other air quality tests turned up nothing. The baby was otherwise healthy with no signs of abuse or neglect, McCown said.

He said the home was located in a rural area and “pretty infested with insects, roaches. It was her goal to get rid of all of them.”

“The stuff didn’t seem to have too much effect on the bugs,” he said. “They’re still running everywhere.”

The scent at the home was so strong authorities called in a hazardous materials team before entering. One deputy complained of headaches, McCown said.

Investigators initially focused on a grease fire, but tests showed that didn’t play any role in the illnesses, McCown said.

“Right now, we’re just concerned about them. We’re hoping the 2-year-old can make a recovery and hope the mom will be OK,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Steve Reeves.

Tags: Bug Bomb, death, South Carolina

Source:  CBC.ca

The student union at Montreal’s Concordia University says it wants to help students make sure the bedbugs don’t bite.

The group has launched an awareness campaign after receiving a growing number of complaints about a bedbug problem from students living in off-campus housing.

“They’re crying, they haven’t had any sleep, they have bites all over their body,” said Jonathan Eldon, co-ordinator of the Concordia Student Union (CSU) housing and job bank. “And, you know, when they have a landlord that may not be responding to the issue, they’re even more frustrated.”

The CSU has posted a series of recommendations on its website.

Eldon recommends students be careful when buying second-hand items.

“If they do buy things second hand on Craigslist or at a thrift store, we say, clean it thoroughly and be very careful,” Eldon said.

Eldon said picking up mattresses of the curb is a bad idea.

Concordia student Ami Kingdon was forced to sleep on a yoga mat in her bathtub after two attempts to exterminate the bugs in her apartment failed.

She said she had bites the size of quarters on her arms, legs and neck.

Finally, a third extermination resolved the problem, Kingdon said.

“The thought of saying that I had bugs was just repulsive,” Kingdon said. “Then, when I found it was a widespread problem I felt better because I realized it wasn’t just me. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Montreal public health authorities said the city has seen a marked increase in the number of bedbug cases since 2005.

Officials say the problem is due in large part to the fact the problem often goes unrecognized and unreported.

Tags: Concordia, Montreal

Source:  Wired.com

Male bed bugs get confused in bed. Now a scientist has found a bug chemical signal that translates, “Whoa, buddy. I’m a guy too.”

Male bed bugs grasp and try to mate with any other member of their Cimex lectularius species that has had a full meal of blood recently, says chemical ecologist Camilla Ryne of Lund University in Sweden. Single-minded males don’t seem inclined, or even able, to distinguish other males from females at first.

At first contact, sex recognition for these insects works largely by trial and error, Ryne says. What corrects those errors, she has found, is a blend of chemicals that earlier work has also described as the bed bug alarm pheromone.

“This is the first time to my knowledge that anyone has shown that alarm pheromones are used for sexual recognition,” Ryne says.

Females can release the substance when disturbed but typically don’t when grasped by a male, Ryne says. But males do exude the scent when grabbed by another male. After a whiff of the stuff, misguided suitors back off, Ryne reports online October 24 in Animal Behaviour.

Considering that bed bugs are making a comeback as a pest in the industrialized world, “knowing how they mate is important,” says entomologist Joshua Benoit of Ohio State University in Columbus. He too has been studying the alarm pheromone, and he agrees that the bugs use it in several ways.

Pheromones may have achieved their fame in popular culture as dizzying lures for the opposite sex, but biologists have discovered plenty of other kinds of pheromones. Compounds can fuel aggression among male mice or urge baby rabbits to search for a nipple.

Bed bugs release the pheromone blend of the small, volatile molecules (E)-2-octenal and (E)-2-hexenal when disturbed, Ryne says. A mating attempt might indeed be disturbing, since males deliver their sperm by what’s called traumatic insemination. They ignore the opening to the female reproductive tract and inject sperm with a needlelike appendage directly through the outer covering of a mate’s body. In the abdominal area most commonly pierced, female bed bugs grow a mass of the kinds of cells associated with immune defense. Males, though, have no extra protection there.

To test the idea that the alarm pheromone helps mistakenly targeted males free themselves, Ryne painted nail polish over the glands that produce the substance, thus blocking its release. Males that couldn’t signal chemically ended up in longer embraces than males dabbed elsewhere with nail polish.

For a different test, Ryne collected the substance by washing disturbed males with a solvent. When she applied wafted the extract over mating pairs of males and females, the males backed off. The finding showed that even in the presence of a suitable mate, the signal disturbed the males, she says.

Ryne herself can smell the pheromone, she says. It’s a bit like almond, but not particularly pleasant. “Older people say that you used to be able to tell whose house had bed bugs because it had a peculiar smell,” she says.

Images: 1) A male and femal bed bud mate.  2) A bed bug feeding on blood from a person. Rickard Ignell/Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Tags: mating, pheromone

Source:  cincinnati.com

COLERAIN TWP. – Fourteen people were temporarily displaced overnight in a fire at an apartment building in the 3100 block of Regal Lane, according to Hamilton County emergency communication reports.

One minor injury was reported in the 3:23 a.m. blaze, a dispatcher said. The victim was treated at the scene for a minor burn and released.

Flames and heavy smoke were visible from the apartment building when fire crews arrived, reports state.

Colerain Township police officers got to the building just before the fire department and began evacuating residents, said Colerain Township Police Sgt. Mike Owens. They carried out a few people, including an elderly man who was treated by paramedics and released.

Colerain Township firefighters woke a sleeping couple on the third floor, but by then it was too late to take them into the smoke-filled hallway to leave the building, Owens said. They were eventually rescued off their balcony.

The fire was contained to its origin, a bedroom in a second floor apartment, and reported knocked down by 3:38 a.m.

Fire investigators have determined the blaze was started by a resident spraying for bed bugs while smoking, said Capt. Steve Conn, spokesman for the Colerain Township Fire Department.

“They were spraying for bed bugs, and it had alcohol in it,” Conn said. “One of the residents lit up a cigarette, and it basically flashed and started the room on fire.”

By 6 a.m., all but three or four of the residents had returned to their units, Conn said. The American Red Cross is assisting the displaced family.

Damage is estimated at $20,000, according to Conn.

Tags: Cincinnati, Fire

Source:  Inner City Press

September 16, all UN workers in the UN’s Albano Building on 46th Street have been informed by e-mail that

“As you might be aware of the recent case of bed bugs infestation on the 9th floor and the fumigation that took place over the weekend. PES has made an arrangement with the exterminator to come in today starting at 6:30pm with a dog to go through the entire building and make sure that there are no other cases. Please inform your staff who will be here after 6:30pm. I will follow up with PES and ask for a report of what if anything they found.”

This confirms, in writing, that the UN has suffered “bed bug infestation.” Since there are no, or at least few, beds in the UN, it is understood that the bed bugs were introduced by the moving company which the UN contracted to move office equipment and belongings from the Secretariat building to the swing space, between 1st and 2nd Avenue, so that the Secretariat was be gut rehabilitated under the UN’s Capital Master Plan.

Full Story

Tags: UN

Source:  PCT Magazine Online

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada — In his full-time position as quality assurance manager and technical advisor for a major North American pest control company, Sean Rollo saw first-hand just what type of challenges were inherent with bed bug control

He also realized the value of bringing together a diverse mix of experts to share their bed bugs experiences, which is why he launched www.thebedbugresource.com in 2007 (which he operates on his personal time). “The site was established primarily to replace a mail serv list that professionals involved with bed bugs were using,” Rollo said. “The forum-based (i.e., message board-based) site allowed for greater interaction and prevented full inboxes from ‘reply to all’ subjects that were not of interest to all those involved.”

When the site was first launched in 2007 it was receiving 1,000-plus hits per day. To give you an idea of how the site has grown (and how people’s interests in bed bugs has grown) www.thebedbugresource.com has received more than 750,000 hits so far this year (93,750 per month) and the number of emails and posts Rollo answers has grown as well.

“The site has evolved from a message board to a full blown information resource on bed bugs,” Rollo said. “The information has been compiled from personal experience as a pest control professional and entomologist along with information gleaned from (University of Kentucky’s) Dr. Michael Potter, (Cooper Pest Solutions Technical Director) Rick Cooper, (Virginia Tech’s) Dini Miller, (Australian bed bug expert) Steven Doggett, (New York PMP) Gil Bloom, (American Museum of Natural History in NYC) Dr. Sorkin, (UK molecular biologist) David Cain, and many other bed bug specialists.”

Rollo said he is proud that the site does not endorse companies, services, or products but rather offers up information about how to choose a company, the types of services that are available, and the product choices and innovations that are out there for readers to be able to make informed choices.

So just who visits the site? Rollo said a diverse mix of people visit the site, including teachers, nurses, housing authorities, lawyers, entomologists, pest professionals, home owners, students, etc. “I am also always amazed at how global the readership is,” he said.  “I get visitors from the four corners of the earth.  I think St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean off of Africa was the most unique place a visitor was from thus far.”

Rollo said his short-term goal is to get more industry professionals to participate in the discussion forums. Ultimately, Rollo says he hopes that site will play a role in the industry’s efforts to “make a significant dent in bed bug populations around the world.”

Tags: Cain, cooper, Doggett, Miller, PCT, potter, Rollo, Sorkin

Source:  Virginian Pilot

A woman is suing an Oceanfront motel owner, contending that he knew bedbugs were in the room he leased to her and her infant son this year.

Michelle A. Scott is seeking $100,000 in compensation from Dan Perrella, owner of La Coquille Motel on 16th Street, for the medical treatment of her son. The boy was “significantly and permanently injured” by bedbug bites, “suffered itching, rashes, pock marks, scarring, humiliation and embarrassment and remains injured permanently from the insect infestation,” she said in her complaint filed in Virginia Beach Circuit Court.

Perrella, meanwhile, said the woman’s son was covered with scabs when they checked in. When he asked whether the child was all right, Scott told him the boy had chickenpox.

After Perrella learned bedbugs were in the room, he said, he moved mother and child to one of his other properties, the Flagship Resort Inn. He suspects they brought the bugs to La Coquille.

The city health department has received two complaints of bedbugs at La Coquille this year.

One – the subject of this lawsuit – occurred in February. It was a “complete infestation” confined to a single room, said Erin Sutton, environmental health manager for the city’s public health department.

The second complaint involved a few of the pests in another room in May, she said.

Through Labor Day weekend, city officials found bedbugs in 10 Beach hotels this year. Six had just a few bugs in a single room, Sutton said.

“Any hotel can be a victim of bedbugs being brought in, from five stars to no stars,” she said. “With travelers being a transient population, they can bring them in.”

She described the critters as a nationwide problem for the hotel industry and insisted “a bedbug complaint is not a reflection of the type of hotel it is.”

Four hotels, including La Coquille, had more serious problems with the bugs.

The Oceanfront Super 8 and the Cerca del Mar motel had some bugs in multiple rooms, but not on the level of an infestation, Sutton said.

At the Castle Motel on Pacific Avenue, officials found infestations in some rooms and a few bugs in others, Sutton said.

That motel is also owned by Perrella. Two years ago, officials shut it down because of a bedbug infestation.

Perrella said then, and again this year, that he rid the 47-room property of the pests by fumigating and replacing mattresses. The work in 2007, he said, cost close to $40,000, and he estimated he lost an additional $20,000 in revenue.

Last week, he spent $1,400 to have a contractor spray for pests as a precaution before the Labor Day weekend, he said.

He said homeless guests who check in are often the source of the bugs, and he had begun to turn them away. “I don’t need any more incidents.”

The current lawsuit isn’t the first that Perrella has faced over bedbugs.

A guest who stayed at the Castle Motel around the time of its 2007 infestation sued Perrella and eventually received a $10,000 settlement, he said.

Tags: La Coquille Motel, Perrella

Source: InsideBayArea.com

RICHMOND — Slats of saffron light creep up the wall as afternoon inches toward dusk at Billy Nichols’ apartment. Warm air and sound pour through his open security gate from the fifth-floor breezeway beyond.

Discomfort prevents him from zipping up his pants, but the 68-year-old diabetic maintains a clear-eyed composure, despite a galaxy of pustular bedbug bites on his back and buttocks.

This Richmond resident knows what scores of others learned during an itchy, unsanitary summer at this city-maintained complex.

It gets worse. Just wait until the light dies.

“They come out of the walls, the ceiling, when it’s dark. I just sit here in my chair and I hear ‘em,” Nichols said. “I feel them on me, crawling on my arms.”

A plague of the bloodsucking pests continues to torment scores of tenants in the 150-unit Hacienda high-rise in central Richmond, where the city Housing Authority houses the poor, elderly and disabled. Tenant leaders estimate that a bedbug infestation first noticed in March has spread to at least half the apartments.

They wonder why they’re still waiting for relief, six months later.

“I was homeless for four years. I slept in fields, under freeway overpasses,” said Denise Cordoba, who lives on the fourth floor. “But it wasn’t until I moved here that I got bedbugs.”

City officials say they plan to treat infested units. Residents suggest the city empty every unit by moving tenants into temporary housing and fumigating the entire complex, an option Housing Authority Director Tim Jones said he will consider.

“We will inspect and treat as many units as necessary to fully eradicate the problem,” Jones said.

Jones said he knew of 11 affected apartments, though the tenants council sent the Housing Authority a petition for relief in mid-April that 63 tenants signed.

Cockroaches and rats make their appearances, always have. But bedbugs bite. Their saliva makes skin itch, raises bumps that stand out on exposed arms and legs throughout the complex on a warm weekday afternoon. The pests burrow maddeningly into the building, literally and figuratively. They have come to dominate the thoughts and conversations of most who live here.

“I’m up all night long,” Cordoba said. “I wonder what’s going up in my hair, my ear.”

Cordoba knows the bugs will come for her when she starts to drift. So instead of resting, she lies awake all night on blankets on her bedroom floor, despite her arthritis. She used to have a mattress, but it was so infested that she had to get rid of it.

Exterminators visited a handful of units in May, told the tenants to call back if they started seeing more bugs in 20 days or so, said Dolores Johnson, president of the tenants council. Cordoba called after 10, but nobody came out to spray again. A number of residents received letters in mid-August telling them the city would exterminate but needs them to vacate for at least eight days. The Housing Authority and members of the resident council met Thursday to discuss how to tackle the problem.

Bug bites now mark residents and frequent visitors to the Hacienda like an exotic leprosy. Tenants poke speckled arms out their doors for inspection, talk about how their grandchildren no longer visit.

“It’s an ungodly feeling,” Cordoba said, “like the hair standing up on the back of your neck.”

Some collect great jars and bags of the flat, red-brown insects. Itch medicine doesn’t always help. Nor does getting down on hands and knees to scrub walls and floors with bleach, which Nichols does daily, despite his paraplegia.

The bugs just keep coming back, no matter how many times you wash your sheets and clothes.

“They like to hang on in the seams of mattresses,” Nichols said. “I used to brush mine every day. But I could see these tiny little pink things coming up through the fabric. Those are the babies. The adults are about the size of an apple seed, look just like them.”

The wingless bugs grow to about one-quarter inch in length, and all drink the blood of people and warm-blooded animals. When a bedbug feeds, its body swells and turns bright red, according to Contra Costa Health Services. They crawl or are carried from one place to another and, like roaches, spread gregariously.

Spraying in one unit will not eliminate the pests if they remain in the immediate area; for this reason, tenants advocate a building-wide extermination.

It can’t come soon enough for Shirley Malbrough, whose grandchildren won’t visit because they’re afraid.

Malbrough lives in a stark room, mattress pulled away from the wall. Not that it helps.

“They’ve been biting on me since April, and they’re still biting on me,” Malbrough said. “It’s no way to live.”

Tags: Richmond

Source: Calgary Herald

Surrey resident Stella Chenier slept sitting on a kitchen chair last night.

She’s on the verge of tears: Bedbug bites have been driving her crazy.

A resident of Ted Kuhn Towers, a B.C. Housing complex across Old Yale Road from Central City Mall, Chenier says a number of building units are infested. Her unit has been fumigated twice since the bugs crept in two months ago, but the problem is worse than ever, she says.

“The spraying job they’re doing here is not helping,” she said.

Chenier is not alone.

Mark Amery of Vancouver Bed Bug Control Inc. says calls are up about 30 per cent from 40 per day in 2008, and exponentially from just two calls per day in 2004.

He says callers are often sleep deprived and close to tears.

“It feels like you’ve been violated — you’ve been sleeping with bugs that are feeding off your blood.”

Sometimes Amery will flip a mattress over and the fabric will shiver with the movement of thousands of pests.

“I had one guy throw up,” he said.

Amery says the bedbug infestation is soaring in downtown Vancouver mainly due to international travel.

The itinerant population of the Downtown Eastside also transfers bedbugs in furniture carried from room to room, but Amery says he gets as many calls to the dense downtown core, and even out to Dunbar on Vancouver’s west side.

He says bedbug infestation exploded after the Sydney 2000 Olympics, and he expects Vancouver’s problem to surge in hotels during the 2010 Winter Games.

Shelley Beaudet, senior environmental health-control officer with Vancouver Coastal Health, says bedbug complaints have skyrocketed.

Beaudet noted reductions in powerful pesticide use and the trend to reuse and recycle items such as furniture are powering a global boom.

The health authority will monitor hotels before and during the 2010 Games, she said.

As for the Ted Kuhn Towers, B.C. Housing spokesman Sam Rainboth said in Chenier’s case, a second-hand sofa is believed to have brought the bedbugs. Her unit will be fumigated again, he said.

Tags: Olympics, Vancouver