11/30/2011 Massachusetts Family Loses Everything After Bedbug Infestation

Six-year-old Alexandra Monteiro had a rough start in the first grade at Carney Academy.

When classes began a few months ago, the smiley Disney fan had to wear pants on those hot, early-September days and knew when she got home, some of her best buddies wouldn’t be there waiting for her.

The apartment her mother, Shannon, rented for the family had been infested with bedbugs, leaving piles of items to throw away in addition to bites, welts and scratches up and down the arms, legs and abdomens of her three daughters.

“I wore long pants so no one would know,” Alexandra said. “I just felt bad for my teddy bears because they aren’t with us anymore.”

Shannon Monteiro had to throw away most of the items in her apartment — three bedroom sets, a couch and bureau, among others — and most of her children’s toys, including Alexandra’s teddy bears.

“We had pink Disney carpets for their rooms. It was hard to throw those away. I did it while they were in school because I know they would have cried,” Monteiro said. “Pretty much the only things that weren’t thrown out were the dishes, some clothes and a little bit of food.”

The disaster started last summer when Monteiro started to wonder about the little bites that were appearing on her arms in the morning.

“It was the summer; I thought they were just mosquito bites,” she said. “Then they started spreading. They were everywhere.”

She started trapping and collecting the bedbugs in zippered plastic bags, taking them to the Health Department and doctor’s offices to show authorities what her children were living with. She made many trips to the doctor’s office, coming home with bags of prescriptions for creams and pills that would not only help the bites and welts go away, but relieve some of the itching the children were struggling with.

“They’re kids; they scratch,” she said. “I had to rub the cream all over them for weeks. It’s tough on them, it itches so much.”

As soon as she saved up enough for the first and last month’s rent, she moved to her current residence on County Street, a four-room apartment on the third floor.

Two twin beds are pushed together in the bedroom that also doubles a the living room. Monteiro and her daughters, Alexandra, Alicia, 2, and Shur, 4, all share the double twin bed.

“We’ve got a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs. That’s what we’re thankful for,” she said.

The loss of most of the family’s possessions, the medical costs of the prescriptions and doctor’s visits compounded with her unemployment benefits expiring have put the family in a dire financial situation.

Monteiro worked as a welder for a Brockton company for years, making everything from refrigerator racks to shelves for local grocery stores. But two years ago the company closed up and laid everybody off.

“They shipped all the jobs to China,” she said. “They just closed up and moved overseas.”

Her unemployment benefits expired the last week of October. The family’s only income is a small check from Social Security.

She applied for holiday assistance from The Salvation Army so the children can have some presents to open on Christmas morning.

“It’s depressing around the holidays. It’s been a tough year,” she said. “I’m just thankful for The Salvation Army. The toys will be a big help.

“My children are happy with anything,” she said as Alexandra and Alicia played with some small Disney princess toys she got at Family Dollar.

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11/29/2011  Seattle IRS Office Bitten By Bedbugs

The Internal Revenue Service office in Seattle is investigating an infestation of possible blood-sucking parasites — bedbugs — in its downtown office, after an employee complained of insect bites at work, federal officials said Monday.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration said an IRS employee had complained of being bitten by bedbugs on two floors occupied by the agency in the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building on Second Avenue.

“It is alleged (that) management has known of the presence of these parasites for several weeks and has taken no action to remedy the situation,” OSHA said in a letter to the IRS dated Nov. 18.

David Mahlum, a deputy regional administrator for OSHA, told seattlepi.com that the IRS had received employee complaints about bug bites since at least the summer. But it was unknown Monday if those bites stemmed from bedbugs, or from other pests in the building.

Mahlum said the IRS brought in an exterminator the day after it received OSHA’s letter. He said the exterminator surveyed the offices, found evidence of insect infestation on the 20th floor, and fumigated.

“They found enough evidence to treat a floor,” Mahlum said. But he said the type of bug and spread of infestation were still unknown.

“They’re continuing to monitor the situation,” he said.

IRS spokesman Richard Panick had little information on the agency’s response. He said the IRS is a tenant and that the building is managed by the General Services Administration.

“So any issues dealing with any events, with anything that occurs in the building, would be coordinated by GSA,” he said.

11/28/2011 Airline Passengers Could Soon Be Scanned For Bedbugs

Scanning technology developed at a Richland lab to screen airplane passengers could soon be used to target bedbugs.

The technology developed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has been licensed to a startup company in Corvallis, Ore., as part of a White House initiative to help young companies grow, the Tri-City Herald reports.

The lab, part of the Department of Energy, has signed option agreements with startup companies for three technologies. Innovations include millimeter wave technology to be used to see inside walls to detect insects hiding there, and advances to improve rechargeable batteries and fuel cells.

VisiRay in Corvallis, Ore., signed an option agreement with PNNL for millimeter wave technology and plans to manufacture devices to detect pests in buildings. The initial target will be bedbugs, sometimes called wall louse, because they may live inside walls as well as in beds and couches, the Tri-City Herald reports.

VisiRay was started by University of Oregon Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship students participating in PNNL’s University Technology Entrepreneurship Program. The company’s products would allow inspectors to see through drywall particle board and view clear images of pests inside walls. The initial target will be bedbugs, sometimes called wall louse, because they may live inside walls as well as in beds and couches.

PNNL initially developed the millimeter wave technology with Federal Aviation Administration grants to scan passengers using harmless radio waves. It can detect objects hidden beneath their clothing, whether they are metal, liquid, plastic or ceramic. The technology now is in use at about 78 airports nationwide.

In June, that same technology was licensed to be used to help shoppers by creating a three-dimensional holographic image of their bodies to help them find clothing most likely to fit them.

“We have a long history of working closely with entrepreneurs and early stage companies to develop and adapt our innovations into new or improved products and services,” said Cheryl Cejka, PNNL’s director of technology commercialization, in a statement.

The White House’s Startup America initiative reduces the cost of options to license patents to U.S. startup companies to $1,000, a fraction of the usual cost.

PNNL also signed agreements could lead to products designed to increase the storage capacity of rechargeable batteries used to power portable devices, such as laptop computers, and electric vehicles. Recharging could take minutes instead of hours, according to the Richland lab. Another PNNL technology is being used to reduce the use of platinum in certain fuel cells that are used primarily for backup power.

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11/27/2011 Meet The Women Who Battle New York’s Bedbugs

Beverly Ryce Brady travels the five boroughs wearing a bouclé blazer and jeans cinched with a rhinestone-encrusted belt. She flashes a broad smile when introducing herself, then listens intently to her clients’ concerns. After a brief tour of a home or workplace, Ms. Ryce Brady removes her jacket to reveal a ruffle blouse bearing the logo of her company: Two mice and a cockroach, crossed out.

The 49-year-old resident of Rosedale, Queens, is an exterminator.

“I have a passion for what I do. I like making people’s homes a place where they can be happy,” said Ms. Ryce Brady, who founded Brooklyn-based Pro Service Pest Control with her then-husband more than a decade ago.

Throughout the country and particularly in New York—a city as famous for its rats and roaches as for its hot dogs and pretzels—women are pursuing careers in pest control in greater numbers than ever before. The appeal: competitive salaries, flexible hours and, they say, a job that’s as varied as the invaders they encounter.

Sherry Carlson, 55, an inspector with Bug Doctor Termite & Pest Control, will be on the Upper East Side assessing a bedbug infestation one day, and in a suburban New Jersey laundry room, wielding a glue board to catch a flying squirrel, the next.

“I opened the dryer, and it flew out,” Ms. Carlson said of the squirrel. “I did scream, but then I just went for it. I was very proud of myself.”

Pest control is more than just about managing bugs and rodents; it’s about managing customers’ anxieties, which some women in the field say gives them a leg up on their male counterparts.

“I listen to their fears,” Ms. Carlson said, noting that some clients have intense phobias of the invading pests. “When you see someone cry, whether it’s over a mouse or the death of someone, you have to be sensitive to that emotion. I’ve walked away hugging people.”

Until April, Ms. Carlson had been working in collections at Bug Doctor, a Paramus, N.J.-based company whose clients include Yankee Stadium and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Then, lured by the opportunity to earn more money—Ms. Carlson works partly on commission—she became an inspector.

While men still make up the vast majority of pest control professionals, women are steadily gaining ground, said Missy Henriksen, the vice president of public affairs for the National Pest Management Association. In doing so, they’re fighting not just pests, but also the perception that women are too squeamish to be exterminators.

In New York state, the number of females working as licensed pesticide technicians or certified pesticide applicators rose about 50% in the past decade. Of New York’s more than 25,000 licensed pest control professionals, at least 1,500 are women, according to a registry provided by the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation.

Recruitment of women into the field has been buoyed by the efforts of the NPMA-affiliated Professional Women in Pest Management. Rollins, the parent company of Orkin and HomeTeam Pest Defense, established its Women’s Leadership Council in 2007 with a goal of “hiring and developing women in non-traditional roles,” such as inspectors and field technicians, said the group’s chairwoman, Jean Fader.

Working with the public is a big part of the job, but so, too, is working with bugs. And some women admit it isn’t always easy.

Iliana Figueroa, 44 years old, said becoming an exterminator was a major adjustment.

When she first started working as a bedbug specialist at Manhattan-based Assured Environments four years ago, she often found herself unable to sleep.

Ms. Figueroa said that some nights she was haunted by what she witnessed during the day—apartments so infested that she had to walk sideways to avoid brushing up against a wall covered in bedbugs—and other nights, she was convinced that her own Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, home was infested. (It wasn’t.)

“I was this close to quitting because it got so bad,” said Ms. Figueroa, a former medical assistant.

The sheer physicality of the work can also be a challenge, she said. Ms. Figueroa and her partner, James Hunt, travel to jobs with about 150 pounds of equipment, and together they are constantly moving furniture to inspect for signs of infestation.

But Ms. Figueroa said she has grown to love what she does.

“People think, you’re just walking in, putting down pesticides, and walking out,” she said. “It’s not that easy; it’s not that mindless. There is an investigative part of it.”

For trained pest control technicians like Ms. Figueroa, there’s no shortage of well-paying jobs—even in a slow economy, industry observers say. In the Northeast, hourly rates average $13.88 for an entry-level technician, and $21.20 for an experienced technician, according to NPMA statistics.

Most would-be technicians need to complete 30 hours of coursework or work a minimum of two years as an apprentice to sit for the New York state licensing examination.

A licensed technician with two years of field experience is eligible to become a certified commercial pesticide applicator, a designation indicating a higher level of competency in the industry.

Shweta Advani, the owner of Pest Management Sciences Inc. in Elmhurst, Queens, has been training aspiring exterminators for more than two decades—and said she has seen an uptick of the number of women enrolled in her classes. On a recent Tuesday evening, women comprised three of the eight students who came to hear Mrs. Advani discuss the safe application of chemical pesticides.

Among them was Winsome Pendergrass, a 53-year-old home health-care aide, who is studying to become an exterminator—with the hopes, she said, of shifting from one helping profession to another.

“I bathe people, feed them, and keep their home clean,” the Brooklyn resident said. “So why not take it one step further, and make sure they’re safe from insects and rodents who carry diseases?”

As in the health-care industry, compassion and discretion are key to the business of pest control. And that makes women particularly well-suited for the job, Ms. Ryce Brady said.

“When people come to the door, they are surprised to see ladies, but they love to see ladies,” she said. “They feel safer; they feel more comfortable having a girl in their home.”

But the humaneness with which Ms. Ryce Brady, a vegetarian, approaches her clients does not extend to bedbugs.

“I do whatever it takes to get rid of them,” she said. “I see what they do to people; I would kill off every last bedbug in the world if I had the power to.”

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11/26/2011 Stockton Marriott Serves Up Bedbugs For Thanksgiving

We hope you are enjoying this Thanksgiving weekend and haven’t encountered any unwanted guests.  As we comb through weekend bedbug news, we came across one posting of a family staying at the Marriott Courtyard in Stockton California.

After finding evidence of bedbugs at the neighboring Marriott Courtyard, we were moved over to this hotel. Hopeful, we went in to do our usual flashlight inspection of beds, furniture, etc. Even though this one didn’t have as many, we still found the bedbug “skins” that had been shed behind the bed on the carpet baseboard and box springs/bedskirt. Thinking maybe this was only evidence of a previous problem that had been eradicated and that it simply never gets cleaned behind there, we were about to give in. However, for good measure, I wanted to see a second room to be sure. I scooped up samples with a piece of paper, one of which appeared to be an actual dead bug, to take to the desk. All of a sudden, the “dead” bug began to move! We immediately went to the front desk and gave them the live bug and dead skins and departed to look for something outside the Marriott chain. We ended up at the Hilton, which passed our inspection.
This is the first time we’ve ever found anything. The lesson we learned is that you have to pull the bed out even if it isn’t on a roller frame. The pressed wood box is a pain to move, but if the hotels would do the same thing and clean back there after a known bedbug problem, maybe we would still be at the first hotel.

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11/25/2011 Use The  Acronym SLEEP To Avoid Bedbugs

Most U.S. adults say they dislike bedbugs because they fear being bitten, but many do not check for bedbugs while traveling, a survey indicates.

Orkin, a pest control company, conducted a recent Omnibus survey and found 33 percent say they check for bedbugs at their travel destinations and 26 percent of respondents routinely conduct an inspection when they return home from traveling.

“Being aware of bedbugs while traveling by plane, train or car is important because these pests are great hitchhikers,” Ron Harrison, Orkin entomologist, said in a statement.

Typically, bedbugs come out at night to feed, but during the day, they are most likely found within a 5-foot radius of where people sleep, Harrison said.

When traveling, Orkin suggests using the acronym SLEEP to avoid taking bedbugs back home.

– Survey surfaces for signs of an infestation, such as tiny rust-colored spots on mattress tags and seams and bed skirts.

– Lift and look for all bedbug hiding spots, including underneath the mattress, bed frame, headboard and furniture. They are about the size and shape of an apple seed.

– Elevate luggage on a luggage rack away from the bed and wall, since bedbugs can often hide behind head boards, artwork, picture frames and electrical outlet panels. Luggage can also be placed in a garbage bag or the bathtub.

– Examine luggage while repacking. Always keep luggage off the bed and store it far away from the bedroom.

– Place all clothing from luggage immediately in the dryer for at least 15 minutes at the highest setting upon returning home from travel.

Russell Research conducted the survey Nov. 18-21 among 1,112 U.S. adults. It has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

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11/24/2011 Majority Of Travelers Neglect Checking For Bedbugs

As travel peaks this Thanksgiving, holiday travelers have one more thing to worry about catching besides flights – bed bugs. Atlanta-based pest control leader Orkin conducted a recent Omnibus survey and found that, despite nationwide media coverage of increased bed bug activity, only a third of respondents (33 percent) check for bed bugs at their travel destinations, and only 26 percent of respondents routinely conduct an inspection when they return home from traveling.

While 63 percent of people dislike bed bugs because they fear being bitten*, 62 percent do not check for them when they return home from traveling, and 56 percent of respondents report not knowing how to conduct a bed bug inspection.

“Being aware of bed bugs while traveling by plane, train or car is important because these pests are great hitchhikers,” said Orkin Entomologist and Technical Director Ron Harrison, Ph.D. “Bed bugs have been found in all 50 states where we provide service and travel easily from place to place on personal belongings and in luggage.”

Thirty seven of the 50 busiest airports ranked by the FAA are in cities on Orkin’s top 50 bed bug cities list. Of the top 10 bed bug cities, only Dayton, Ohio does not boast a major airport.

Consistent inspections, as well as early intervention tactics, are important to help lower the risk of an infestation and the need for extensive pest control treatments. One female bed bug can lay one to two eggs a day and up to 200 eggs in her lifetime. Typically, bed bugs come out at night to feed, but during the day, they are most likely found within a five-foot radius of where people sleep.

Pest control professionals use several different techniques to identify bed bug infestations, including:

Thorough conventional inspections – performed with the naked eye.

Trained bed bug-sniffing dogs.

DNA testing, a new technique employed by Orkin to help confirm the presence of bed bugs by swabbing areas these pests typically crawl across for bed bug DNA.

“These pests can be found anywhere – from the finest hotels to the cleanest homes,” said Harrison. “Bed bugs do not discriminate, so everyone should get in the habit of regular inspection.” When traveling, Orkin suggests using the acronym S.L.E.E.P. to avoid taking bed bugs home with you.

Survey surfaces for signs of an infestation, such as tiny rust-colored spots on mattress tags and seams and bed skirts.

Lift and look for all bed bug hiding spots, including underneath the mattress, bed frame, headboard and furniture. They are about the size and shape of an apple seed when fully grown.

Elevate your luggage on a luggage rack away from the bed and wall, since bed bugs can often hide behind head boards, artwork, picture frames and electrical outlet panels. Luggage can also be placed in a garbage bag or the bathtub.

Examine your luggage carefully while repacking and when you return home. Always keep luggage off the bed and store it in a closet or other area, far away from your bedroom.

Place all your clothing from your luggage immediately in the dryer for at least 15 minutes at the highest setting upon returning home from travel.

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11/23/2011 Do BugZip Bags Work Against Bedbugs?

We have a warning for anyone with travel plans — beware of bed bugs. One of the fastest ways they can spread is by hitch-hiking, which means they go from hotel rooms, onto your luggage, and into your home. However, there is a new product designed to stop them and 7 On Your Side looks into it to see if it really works.

The number of bed bug complaints in California has increased 26-fold in the last five years. The largest number of incidents were reported in San Francisco and Alameda Counties.

“Bed bugs are a huge problem now worldwide. In the last 10 years, they’ve exploded,” said Bill Donahue, who runs Sierra Research Labs in Modesto.

These mostly nocturnal creatures can’t fly, they don’t carry disease, yet the bloodsucking insects strike fear in most people who encounter them. A San Jose couple sent us pictures of one inch welts on their bodies after being bitten at a motel in Arizona. One year later, they are still too upset to talk about it.

The California Department of Public Health tells us the number of bedbug reports in San Francisco grew from 215 in 2005 to 567 in 2010. Alameda County had just 25 incidents reported in 2005, but more than nine times that amount in 2010 — 234.

“Bed bugs are just hitch hikers, so wherever they come from an infested area, whether it’s on luggage or in somebody’s purse or backpack, you can potentially transport that bed bug to another location,” said Donahue.

The BugZip was developed to keep that from happening. We wanted to see for ourselves if BugZip works. The independent Sierra Research Labs put both luggage and clothing inside the BugZips. The researchers took special care in checking the zippers.

“If they find an entry point, say a missing tooth in one of the zippers, they might be inclined to walk through that and be able to enter through that,” said Michael Donahue from Sierra Research Labs.

The researchers discover the zipper on one of the bags is broken. This is actually the second defective bag we found.

“It’s been a little of the feedback is the zipper has kinked a little bit around the corners and might cause problems. Certainly if anybody has problems, the company replaces them no questions asked,” said Adam Greenberg, the president and inventor the BugZip.

Both bags were removed from testing and replaced. Now the experiment can begin. Each bag is placed inside a separate containment area. Then 50 bedbugs are dumped directly on top of the BugZip. If there’s an entry point somewhere, the bedbugs will find it. Most of the bedbugs will eventually falloff the smooth surface of the BugZip.

We’ll give the bedbugs 72 hours to see if they can find their way into the luggage. We return three days later to see the results and we find one nymph, or young bedbug, stuck in the zipper. It tried, but wasn’t able to find an opening. The researchers are eventually able to account for all 150 bed bugs.

“In this test, we were able to recover all 50 bedbugs in each arena. So basically the bed bugs were not able to enter into the encasements,” said Sumiko De La Vega from Sierra Research Labs.

The BugZip sells from $10 to $20, depending on the size. Each bag is intended for use on a single hotel trip, but can also be used for an entire vacation. BugZip hopes to have a version with an improved zipper by the end of next year.

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11/22/2011 San Francisco Seniors Living In Bedbug Infested SRO Hotels: Bedbugs, Rats, Mold, Dirty Bathrooms & Drug Paraphernalia Are Just Few Of The Problems

Bedbugs infesting mattresses. Rats running rampant. Mold covering bathtubs. Isolation. Busted elevators. Lack of nutritious food. Leaky pipes, lack of heat, broken locks, dirty bathrooms and drug paraphernalia littering the halls.

It sounds like a horror movie, but it’s all too real for seniors living in the worst of San Francisco’s single room occupancy hotels. And it’s a problem likely to get even more dramatic as the city’s residents get older. By 2025, one in five San Franciscans are expected to be seniors and the number of people over 85 will have doubled.

“The huge lion’s share of them will be concentrated in the low-income population so that shows a tremendous need for more support and better conditions at SRO hotels,” said Supervisor Eric Mar, who called a Monday hearing on the issue at which dozens of seniors and advocates lined up to share their stories.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever opened a door and just had the odor of death in your face. If you have, it’s something you’ll never forget,” said Thomas Jenkins, 61, who lives in a Tenderloin SRO and volunteers with the Mission SRO Collaborative. He was present when a property manager opened the door of an elderly woman after nobody had seen her for a week.

Suggestions for improving the lives of seniors included educating them about their rights under the city code and encouraging them to make formal complaints; devoting more money to enforcement of the laws already on the books; increasing fines for landlords who violate the code; creating an ombudsman position at City Hall to field the complaints; putting an affordable housing bond on the ballot; paying for wellness checks of seniors; and encouraging private owners of SRO hotels to hire case managers. Mar said he will turn some of these ideas into proposed legislation.

“I’m sick of this, and you should be sick of this too,” said Seth Katzman, director of supportive housing for Conard House, which helps the mentally ill. “These are your constituents.”

Jenkins is certainly sick of it – particularly having to come to City Hall during the budget process every year to plea for money for SRO services. “We’re too old to be coming down here to do it,” said the retiree, who used to work in theatrical lighting and lives on a Veterans Affairs pension. “The way I look at it, stuff should be given to us on a platter. I’ve worked my whole life, and I shouldn’t have to beg for nothing.”

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11/21/2011 How To Fly Bedbug Free: Avoid Bedbugs On Airplanes

Just because you haven’t heard much about bed bug-infested airplanes doesn’t mean that economy or business class seat is free of the icky pests. While the topic hasn’t hit the headlines the way bed bugs in hotels has, the stories are getting out.

Passengers Go Viral with Bed Bug Complaints

According to the Daily Mail, British Airways was forced to fumigate two planes after discovering a bed bug infestation on a Los Angeles-London flight. However, BA did not act quickly; the business class passenger, Zane Selkirk, became so disgruntled by the airline’s lack of response to her complaints that she set up a website and posted photos of her bite-covered arms, legs and feet online and they went viral and it wasn’t until then that BA conducted an investigation and found the bugs. Another passenger wrote an op-ed letter to the New York Times last year after flying United Airlines to Washington D.C. from L.A. — again in business class — and arriving covered in bites his doctor diagnosed as bed bug bites.

Yet search for official reports or statistics about bed bugs on airplanes and you won’t find much. “There are numerous cases of bed bugs being spread on airplanes,” according to Bed-Bugs.com, a referral site for extermination services. “Bed bugs can spread through close proximity with fellow travelers as well as their belongings. They also thrive where there is frequent turnover of people. On airplanes, people are in close proximity, are not able to move other than on the plane, and their belongings are required to stay untouched for long periods of time. This is an excellent recipe for bed bug transmittal.”

Packable Airplane Seat Covers Offer Bed Bug Protection

Of course, it’s easy to imagine that the last thing the airlines want to talk about is passengers bringing home a bed bug infestation as a result of an overpriced, under-served flight. And they’re not likely to add fumigation to their standard cleaning procedures. So what can you do to protect yourself?

How to Stay Bed Bug-Free While Flying

Several companies are coming to the rescue with products designed to protect against bed bugs in transit.

1. Cover Your Seats Invented by a New York entrepreneur fed up with worrying about bed bugs at the movies, Bug Off seat covers are light stretchable plastic covers that are easy to slip over airplane or movie theater seats. They’re light and packable and provide a bug-proof layer between the upholstery and you. You could accomplish the same thing by bringing a box of saran wrap and encasing your seat in plastic, but these seat covers are much easier to use and the fabric is also comfortable to sit on. Several other companies, BedGuard and Seat Defender have also jumped into this market, but I’ve tried Bug Off covers myself and can attest that they’re big enough to go over any airline seat and the strong fabric doesn’t rip even on a long flight. At $2.99 they’re also not a big investment.
2. Bring your own pillow and blanket. In Zane Selkirk’s horrific experience, it was the blanket “crawling with bed bugs” that caught her eye. It doesn’t have to get that extreme, though, to suggest it’s best to beware airline blankets. After all, during last year’s H1N1 flu epidemic, many airlines pulled the blankets fearing they could transmit the virus. Pack a travel pillow (inflatable if you’re tight for space) and a blanket or pashmina shawl. Or just dress in warm layers instead.
3. Plastic Bag Your Carry On Since it’s way to easy for bed bugs to slip into your carry on while it’s stored under your seat. The best way to prevent this happening is to encase it in a plastic bag, such as a shopping bag or kitchen-sized garbage bag.
4. Stop Bed Bugs Before They Get In Your House The real problem with bed bugs isn’t when they bite you en route (the bites heal quickly and don’t cause any lasting damage), it’s when they come home with you and set up housekeeping in your home. The way to keep this from happening is with stringent preventive measures. Don’t bring luggage or carry-ons inside your home, but empty them outside and wash clothes and anything else that’s washable. A hot dryer will also kill bedbugs, so dry anything you don’t want to wash. Put the suitcase and bag itself in a plastic bag and store for two weeks.

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