Source: CTV Calgary

July 22, 2008 - Edmonton -Bedbugs were found in two apartments in a University of Alberta residence building last month, prompting an immediate assessment of by the university’s pest control provider. Newton Place, located on the periphery of campus, has 320 units and the decision was promptly made to fumigate the entire building.

Doug Dawson, executive director of ancillary services, the department responsible for residences, says that the university’s top priority is the health and safety of its students and as such, the decision was made to fumigate the entire building. “Bedbugs can live for up to a year and are persistent, so we want to make sure that we’ve taken every step necessary to get rid of them,” he said.

There will be two fumigations, one of which occurred last weekend and another that will take place this coming weekend. Tenants are required to leave the premises for two hours, although the university is erring on the side of caution and asking students to vacate for at least four hours.

According to health officials there is no evidence that bedbugs carry diseases so the main health impact is superficial bites.

Not long ago bedbugs were eradicated in North America; however, since governments banned the use of certain chemicals, bedbugs have returned and no accommodation facility-including cruise ships and five-star hotels-are exempt from infestation.

Bedbugs are commonly brought into buildings inside items like suitcases and furniture.

Dawson says the university is monitoring the situation closely and is sensitive to the additional stress this has placed on the impacted students. “This is a transparent process and we are updating those students at all the appropriate steps throughout the process,” he said.

Dawson clarified that the $150 levy assessed to students who do not comply with the packing request is not a fine, but funds that will be used to cover the costs for having it done for them.

Source: Express News (U of A)

Author: Sandra Halme

NEW YORK - A New Jersey man trying to exterminate insects in his apartment blew it up instead, the New York Daily News reported on Monday.

Isias Vidal Maceda was unhurt in the incident, but 80 percent of his apartment was destroyed, Eatontown, New Jersey police told the newspaper.

The accident occurred as Maceda was spraying for pests in his kitchen. Somehow the bug spray ignited a blast that blew out the apartment’s front windows and triggered a fire that quickly spread, the newspaper said.

Police told the newspaper that the Saturday blaze also caused smoke damage to the apartment above.

Source: Reuters (MSNBC)

Bedbugs are back and they’re presenting a growing problem around Ohio. The long dormant parasites have returned to hotels, hospitals, apartments, dorms, nursing homes and jails.

Now a bipartisan push is underway in the Ohio House of Representatives to create a bedbug awareness program through the state department of health. The proposed law would give the health department $335,000 to educate property owners about bedbugs and create a toll free number for the public to report infestations and find information on eliminating the bedbugs.

“The true issue is the materials that are available for treatment of the bedbugs have been removed from the market,” said Scott Steckel, President of the Ohio Pest Control Association. The exterminators group hopes to win permission from the U.S. EPA to allow professional use of the most effective bedbug pesticide that was removed from the market because of problems connected to misuse by consumers.

“A professional exterminator, with protective suits and expertise will not make treatment mistakes that were common to a novice user,” said Steckel. With current treatment methods exterminators say it normally takes many applications to eliminate bedbugs at a cost some property owners are reluctant to pay.

Source: MyFox Cleveland

City official: Residents are not in any immediate physical danger
Marjorie Morris looks over her belongings in her Walnut Place bedroom. Several items have been cleaned and put into plastic bags after bed bugs began taking over her apartment.

Marjorie Morris looks over her belongings in her Walnut Place bedroom. Several items have been cleaned and put into plastic bags after bed bugs began taking over her apartment.
Bed bugs captured in Marjorie Morris’ Walnut Place apartment.

Bed bugs captured in Marjorie Morris’ Walnut Place apartment.
Marjorie Morris, 74, holds up a small collection of recently caught bed bugs Thursday in the living room of her Walnut Place apartment. Morris sits on her couch, which is made up for sleeping, including pillows encased in plastic, because of a bed bug infestation in her apartment. Her mattress, filled with bed-bug eggs, has been taken from the apartment.

Marjorie Morris, 74, holds up a small collection of recently caught bed bugs Thursday in the living room of her Walnut Place apartment. Morris sits on her couch, which is made up for sleeping, including pillows encased in plastic, because of a bed bug infestation in her apartment. Her mattress, filled with bed-bug eggs, has been taken from the apartment.

When Boulder resident Marjorie Morris goes to bed at night, she literally hopes the bed bugs won’t bite.

Morris, 74, has lived for the past nine years at Walnut Place Apartments, 1940 Walnut St., and is among about 100 residents at the public housing project facing an infestation of bed bugs — tiny insects that feast on the blood of warm-blooded animals.

Morris first noticed she’d become one of the insects’ living buffets about two weeks ago.

“I thought I had a spider bite on my leg,” she said. “It got really bad, and I was getting kind of worried about it.”

Then, she said, she started catching and collecting strange tiny bugs she’d never seen before.

“I had a bunch in a baggy,” Morris said. “I took them down to the office, and sure enough, it was a bunch of bed bugs.”

Since discovering the creepy colony of blood suckers, Morris and at least three other residents in the past week have had to pack up their belongings, wash every item of clothing and evacuate the building as pest-control workers fumigate their homes.

“It’s a mess,” Morris said. “You’re not even living. It’s worse than camping on the ground.”

Morris, like most of the residents in the 95 federally subsidized units, lives on a fixed income from Social Security benefits. She said the costs and burden of removing furniture, replacing her mattress and cleaning her small apartment have been overwhelming.

Morris’ daughter, Boulder resident Sandra Detar, said she’s concerned for her mother’s health, too.

“My husband and I flipped her mattress last night and we were shocked at not the bugs, but the eggs,” Detar said. “You would throw up if you’d seen what we’ve seen.” 

‘We’ve been trying everything’

Joe Malinowski , consumer protection coordinator for Boulder County Public Health, said residents are not in any immediate physical danger from the insects, which are not known to spread disease.

“The biggest human risk from bed bugs, besides the obvious discomfort from being bitten, is people becoming infected” from bite wounds, he said.

Malinowski said there has been an increase over the past two years in the number of complaints the county health department has received about bed bugs.

“They do seem to be really difficult to treat,” he said.

Tim Beal, director of housing services for Boulder Housing Partners, which oversees 1,000 low-income units in partnership with the city, said Walnut Place managers are aware of the bed bugs — and it’s not the first time the insects have appeared in the 36-year-old building.

“It seems to be a sort of national epidemic,” Beal said of the infestation. “You treat a unit and they’re gone, and then they show up again upstairs and three units away. They could be anywhere.”

Beal said the housing authority has spent as much as $20,000 combating the bugs, which have appeared several times in the building over the past three years.

“We’ve been trying everything, and now they’re reappearing,” Beal said. “It’s a very uncomfortable situation, obviously, when the bed bugs are present. It’s very embarrassing for a lot of the residents, and we’ve tried to be really sensitive to that.”

Beal said managers have worked with individual residents to remove the bugs, helped move out furniture and have handed out $20 in quarters for residents to wash their belongings at a Laundromat.

“We totally get it when someone says, ‘I don’t have the money to clean this unit or treat my stuff,’” Beal said. “We’re trying to work with residents.” 

‘A lot of ramifications’

But some residents of Walnut Place were critical of the response and said not enough is being done.

“It has been what I consider bad,” said Shirley Leech, 78, who has lived in the building for 13 years. “I don’t know if I can afford to live somewhere else.”

Leech’s apartment hasn’t been taken over by the bugs, but that doesn’t make her feel any better about the situation.

“I lay in bed and I think about it, and I get itchy,” she said. “People don’t want us to visit if we have bugs. There’s a lot of ramifications.”

Housing officials said they don’t know where the bugs came from, but transients have been known to sleep in the building and could have been carriers of the insects, said Beal, the housing coordinator.

He said officials are still considering how to deal with the problem — and who will pay for it.

Mike Burns, general manager of Boulder’s PestRite pest-control company, said the housing authority will have to inspect the infected units thoroughly, and deal with a long-term follow-through to completely rid residents of the bed bugs.

“If left untreated, it can become very bad within two or three weeks,” Burns said. “If you don’t do services properly, and at the right intervals, you will end up with infestations again.”

Burns said the most effective treatment is using a combination of high-temperature steam and growth-inhibiting chemicals that prevent the insects from maturing to breeding age.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Heath Urie at 303-473-1328 or urieh@dailycamera.com.

Source: Daily Camera

SAN DIEGO — Residents of a 16-story building in downtown San Diego say they have an unwelcome visitor living in their homes — bedbugs.

It’s happening at the Westminster Manor, which is home to low-income seniors. Resident Rose Chapin, 76, told NBC 7/39 she first noticed the problem in June.

“I saw little black spots on my bedspread,” Chapin said.Soon after, she noticed bloodstains, bites on her chest and legs, plus larvae found in the couch. Chapin said that about 50 of the 150 apartments in the high-rise wound up with them and are being sprayed for bedbugs.“They’ve sprayed two times in my place already, but I still have to keep all of my clothes in bags out on the balcony for the rest of the month. And I have to do about 50 loads of laundry when that’s done, just to make sure they’re gone,” Chapin said.Bedbugs were nearly eradicated in this country 40 years ago, but since 2003, the National Institutes of Health report urban areas like San Diego have reported an enormous surge in bedbug bites.“The residents spread them when they visit each other. There’s no way to prevent it, so we treat the apartment as soon as we discover a problem,” said Bill Keys, the buildings superintendent said. “At any time, we could be dealing with four or five rooms.”Rooms are treated and the clothes are washed and bagged up. Chapin’s are sitting on her balcony in plastic bags.”These are all my clothes — blouses, dresses, suits, more blouses, sweaters — everything is out here,” she said.But after all that, Chapin said she is still being bit.The good news is that bedbugs rarely spread disease. Bug experts said the rise in the critters might be because there are more people traveling these days, transporting the bedbugs in their luggage. And pesticides like DDT are no longer used, and new chemicals don’t generally target bedbugs.Spraying at the apartment complex continues every two weeks, as notices are posted with tips on how to put the bugs to bed, once and for all.For more information on bedbug exterminators, click here.

Source: NBCSandiego.com

EDMONTON - An outbreak of bed bugs at a University of Alberta residence has led the school to send in exterminators to fumigate the entire building.

Residents of Newton Place, an apartment-style residence that is home to a lot of international students, have been told pull all their furniture away from the walls to accommodate the pest control staff.

Half the building will be sprayed this weekend, with the other half to be done the following weekend. Students must leave their room for four hours after the fumigation.

This is the second time the U of A has had to deal with bed bugs.

Two years ago there was an outbreak in MacKenzie Hall, which is part of the Lister Centre complex.

Students complained that several sprayings had to be done, forcing them to spend long periods out of their rooms.

Doug Dawson, the university’s director of ancillary services, said the persistent nature of bed bugs is why the school is fumigating all of Newton Place.

“I’d never heard of bed bugs before, so I searched on the Internet. They seem really scary, so of course I am worried,” said Jing Yang, an education student with a room on the 12th floor of the 20-storey building.

Newton Place, located on 112th Street just east of University Hospital, has about 325 residents.

Source: Edmonton Journal

NEW ROCHELLE - A bed bug infestation that started in the city cell block spread to three radio cars, with the most recent problem vehicle discovered yesterday.

Capt. Kevin Kealy said the issue first cropped up about three weeks ago, when some prisoners in the cell block complained of insect bites. There are no mattresses or cushioned surfaces, just a solid sleeping bench in the holding cells, he said, but bed bugs were discovered on the floor. The cell block was quarantined for three days of chemical applications to exterminate the bugs, Kealy said.

“That seemed to have worked,” Kealy said.

But then bugs turned up in three radio cars from different tours, including a car used for a daytime tour of duty yesterday. The car was taken out of commission for 24 hours so it could be fumigated, he said.

Last week an officer on the midnight tour complained of being bitten, he said.

As a precaution the men’s locker rooms were also fumigated on Friday. That was because a bug could drop off a uniform and get onto clothing when an officer is changing and be carried home, Kealy said.

The original bed bugs must have come in on a prisoner, he said. While the county jail said they did not have “a massive infestation,” it only takes one person to carry in the bugs and create a problem, Kealy said.

“The concern is even if you exterminate every inch of the place, another prisoner could bring them in and they re-infest,” Kealy said.

Kealy said he has no recollection of a previous bed bug problem.

Prisoners were handled in court on an abbreviated schedule while the cell block was quarantined, he said. No one required medical treatment.

Source: LoHud.com

Hordes of foreign travelers visiting Sydney for World Youth Day and Beijing for the 2008 Olympics are being warned they may be bitten by bloodsucking bed bugs, which are breeding in plague numbers worldwide.

Ironically, the travelers themselves are part of the problem, since bed bugs are expert hitchhikers, hiding in their clothes and luggage. Perhaps the bugs should be renamed Itch-hikers. And tourists can truly say they’ve been bitten by the Travel Bug.

But it’s no laughing matter. In the US, five congressmen have cosponsored a Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2008, which proposes to provide $200 million over four years in grants to states to fight bed bugs in hotel rooms.

“Right now the bill’s prospects don’t look great, but the anti-bed bug netroots is mobilizing its membership to lobby for the legislation, so it could be a real dogfight,” Josh Patashnik comments in The New Republic.

In Sydney, the Department of Medical Entomology at Westmead Hospital has launched a special Bed Bug Web site. “Bed Bugs during the early part of the 21st century have undergone a massive resurgence and there has been a notable lack of quality information available on this re-emerging public health pest,” it says.

The problem was wiped out in Australia during the 1950s with the aid of the now banned chemical DDT, Westmead Hospital entomologist Stephen Doggett wrote. He said international travelers had been unwittingly carrying the insects into Australia for the past two decades and current pest control measures were failing to eradicate them.

Bedbugs are reddish-brown insects that, when bloated with human blood, are the size of apple seeds. Drawn by body heat, they attack at night and inject an anesthetic that makes them difficult to detect while they’re filling up. A hungry bed bug can consume its body weight in blood in five minutes. Next morning its victim will scratch at an irritating itch, and perhaps see tiny spots of blood on the sheets.

Chinese authorities have spent millions of dollars trying to eradicate bed bugs and other “harms” before the 2008 Olympics begin on August 8.

“In front of Bird’s Nest, the National Stadium, fully-armed workers launched a new war on Friday against the capital’s rats, flies, mosquitoes and cockroaches,” Xinhua news agency writer Li Huizi reported from Beijing on June 20, adding:

“Such pests were dubbed the ‘Four Harms’ in 1950s by late Chairman Mao Zedong, and later turned into a long-term national campaign to enhance public awareness of disease prevention.”

In the 1950s, Chairman Mao launched the Four Harms Eradication campaign to get rid of pests, which originally were rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. In the absence of sparrows, locusts consumed many crops, which later became disastrous.

Mao instructed in 1960 that sparrows should not be included in the kill list, which, instead, changed one of the four harms to bed bugs.

Sydney and Beijing have no more bed bugs than most other parts of the world. For a really vivid account from a Canadian travel advisor who had stayed in a bug-infested Parisian hotel, you should read a review headed “Yikes!!! Bed bugs galore!!!”

Source: Ohmy News