1/14/2012 Scientists Find New Ways To Kill Bedbugs

FEW things destroy the reputation of a high-class hotel faster than bed bugs. These vampiric arthropods, which almost disappeared from human dwellings with the introduction of synthetic insecticides after the second world war, are making a comeback. They can drink seven times their own weight in blood in a night, leaving itchy welts on the victim’s skin and blood spots on his sheets as they do so. That is enough to send anyone scurrying to hotel-rating internet sites—and even, possibly, to lawyers.

New York is worst-hit at the moment: neither five-star hotels nor top-notch apartments have been spared. But other places, too, are starting to panic. Hotel staff from Los Angeles to London are scrutinising the seams of mattresses and the backs of skirting boards, where the bugs often hide during the day, with more than usual zeal. But frequently this is to no avail. Bed bugs are hard to spot. Even trained pest-control inspectors can miss them. What is needed is a way to flush them into the open. And James Logan, Emma Weeks and their colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Rothamsted Research think they have one: a bed-bug trap baited with something the bugs find irresistible—the smell of their own droppings.

The reason the bugs are attracted to this smell is that they use it to navigate back to their hidey-holes after a night of feeding. To develop the bait for the new trap, Dr Weeks therefore analysed the chemicals given off by bed-bug faeces and attempted to work out which of the components were acting as signposts. She did this by puffing air collected from a jar containing bed-bug faeces into a machine called a gas chromatograph, which separated the components from one another, and then through a mass spectrometer, to identify each component from its molecular weight. Having found what the smell consisted of, she wafted the chemicals in question, one by one, at bed bugs that had their antennae wired up to micro-electrodes, to see which of them provoked a response.

The result, the details of which the team is keeping secret for the moment for commercial reasons, is used to bait a trap, designed by Dr Logan, that is about the size of a standard mouse trap and has a sticky floor similar to fly paper. And it works. To paraphrase the slogan of Roach Motel, a brand of traps aimed at a different sort of insect pest, bed bugs check in, but they don’t check out.

The new trap could be used both to assess whether a hotel room or apartment is infested and also to kill the insects without dousing everything in insecticide—which is, in any case, an increasingly futile exercise, as many have now evolved resistance. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a 19th-century American sage, is supposed to have said that if a man built a better mousetrap than his neighbour, the world would make a beaten path to his door. Dr Logan and Dr Weeks are about to find out if the same thing applies to bed-bug traps.

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1/7/2012 Do Bedbugs Hide In Used Furniture

That secondhand couch may come with a great price, but does the bargain come with bed bugs?

The tiny pests are a newly growing problem, and some good advice is to be careful when buying used furniture.

How can you spot bed bugs if you’re looking for an item at a yard sale or garage sale? Charities are dealing with the bed bug issue, too. They have some valuable advice to share.

“You look at the seams, and if the seams have little, tiny spots — usually that’s a by-product of bed bugs,” Goodwill’s Ramon Garza told Eyewitness News.

The local organization now trains all their managers and crews to be on the look-out for the insects.

Bed bugs are about one-fourth inch long, according to the California Department of Health Services. Other experts describe the insects as white to light tan, oval-shaped and flat.

That size and shape makes it easy for bed bugs to hide, and they’re hard to spot.

Garza also recommends looking at any furniture cushions. “Pick up the little binding around it,” he says. “You’ll see a little trail, or you’ll see the little, tiny bugs.”

At local Goodwill Industries facilities, any donation spotted with bed bugs is kept separate and then picked up to be destroyed.

And, starting this year the charity won’t even take in mattresses — because of bed bug concerns.

“Currently we’ve been trying to limit the amount of mattresses that are donated to us,” spokesman Ken Beurmann told Eyewitness News. He said they’ll put up signs at donation centers.

“Without a doubt (mattresses) are the number-one source of product that gets donated to us that have bed bugs in it.” Beurmann said.

He said Goodwill never sold mattresses or other bedding like futons. They would take in those items, but send them out to recycling centers. That will no longer be the case, thanks to the bed bug risk.

Beurmann said the organization will now tell donors with mattresses that they should dispose of them properly at some place like a landfill.

The state health department reports there has been a resurgence of bed bug infestations throughout the United States.

“Bed bugs, while a significant social problem, do not transmit disease to humans,” a DHS report says. “However, bed bug bites will cause red, raised, itchy reactions to the skin.”

Experts say the pests can turn up, no matter how clean an area is. The tiny bugs can spread by “hitch-hiking” on things like clothes, suitcases, and furniture.

“We look to see that there are, first of all, no bed bugs,” Garza said. He explained that crews at Goodwill now check donations. Anything found with bed bugs is never even brought into a Goodwill store, he said.

Beurmann said their organization helps local people overcome barriers to employment, and selling furniture is an important part of their stores.

He said it’s still possible to offer furniture — they just take the extra precautions. And consumers can still take advantage of used furniture deals, by taking some precautions of their own.

“We’d encourage the public to continue to buy second-hand furniture, as long as you feel comfortable that the organization has taken the necessary measures to get rid of the risk of bed bugs,” Beurmann said.

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12/22/2011 Traveling This Holiday? Be Aware Of Bedbugs

This holiday season, there may be more to worry about when checking off your Christmas list then packing, wrapping and reservations.

Suitcases, gift packages, car rentals and hotel rooms can all be sources of bed bugs – those sometimes hard-to-detect bugs that made headlines last year across the world when what experts called at one point, a preventable outbreak, seemed all of a sudden unstoppable.

“It’s the word you never want to hear because it’s just an ugly little critter,” said Nate Weare, general manager at the Holiday Inn Mansfield. “I say, let’s take a step back and know what we’re looking at.”

Alright.

Bed bugs, which the Center for Disease Control defines as small, flat, parasitic insects that feed on the blood of people and animals while they sleep, and most people describe as just plain icky, started showing up, it seemed, everywhere in 2010 causing, in some instances, panic among hotel guests and travelers who feared for their skin every time they checked in. Though news reports on the subject appear to have died down a bit since then, the problem has not gone away.

The 2011 Bugs Without Borders Survey, conducted by the National Pest Management Association (NPMA), reports that 80 percent of member respondents say infestations are increasing across the country and that nearly all professional pest management companies have received bed bug calls within the last year.

“We do get bed bugs here, and it’s just something we’re going to have to deal with,” said Tom DeJesus, service manager and director of training at Providence-based New England Pest Control. “It’s just incredible how it’s exploded.”

DeJesus, who’s been in the pest control business for 35 years, said in his first 25 years on the job he received in total less than a handful of bed bug service calls. Now, they’re much more common, coming in at times on a weekly basis.

Reports have attributed the outbreak to increased international travel, policies that banned some pesticides and limited knowledge, among other things.

Travel almost certainly has something to do with it. The CDC says bed bugs are experts at hiding in luggage, folded clothes and bedding.

People then can carry bed bugs without even knowing – to hotel rooms, where the next guest can pick up the bugs and carry them on and so on and so on.

That’s where the problem starts with hotels where, 80 percent of NPMA members report having treated for bed bugs this year, compared to 67 percent last year.

“People think of bed bugs and they think of sanitation, and that has so little to do with it,” Weare said. “People have such a negative connotation.”

DeJesus says it’s almost a question of odds.

“Everybody travels and people just go,” he said. “You just have to be careful.”

In fact, the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AH&LA) said the increase in bed bugs has had “a minimal impact on the vast majority of hotels.”

AH&LA urges consumers to remember that bed bugs are brought in by guests and that hotels are not to blame.

The New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has set guidelines for hotels, including the recommendation that they hire a licensed pest control company to regularly inspect the premises.

Often, though, a hotel doesn’t know there’s a problem until a guest comes down to the front desk pointing to a bite on their ankle – if even then.

“Some people get a bite and go to bedbugs.com,” Weare said.

Weare’s hotel was listed on bedbugreports.com, one of several consumer-watch type websites that have sprung up since last year promising a reliable source for which hotels have had bed bug problems.

He said the Holiday Inn in Mansfield hasn’t had a bed bug issue, but that they did have a dog show take place there over the summer.

“If it’s not a bed bug, it’s generally a flea issue,” he said. “We haven’t had bed bugs in years and years and years. But that doesn’t mean we won’t have them tomorrow.”

The Days Inn in Attleboro was also listed on bedbugreports.com.

A general manage there, who asked not to be identified, said the hotel did have an issue over the summer but it has been taken care of since.

She, too, said the panic of the general hotel visitor is misplaced.

“It’s everywhere in the world,” she said. “People travel and you don’t know who brings them in.”

DeJesus cautions that many of the bed bug websites could be misleading. Instead, he points people to visit the NPMA Website and those of pest control companies.

“I’m sure some of the sites are legitimate,” he said. “But anybody can post something to one of those things.”

The CDC says identification of bed bug bites is difficult without finding other evidence of bed bug infestation, including the actual bugs or their exoskeletons, because bites can take as long as 14 days to appear and may resemble those of a mosquito or flea.

It’s also important to note that the CDC says bed bugs shouldn’t be considered a medical or public health hazard.

DeJesus recommends, when traveling this holiday season, to keep your cool and do your best to keep the bed bugs away by examining mattresses, headboards and other easy hiding places as soon as you arrive in a hotel room, keeping your suitcase on a table instead of the floor, and unpacking your dirty clothes while still in the garage into a trash bag and directly to the washing machine.

“I used to be one of those people who would unpack my suitcase,” DeJesus said. “I don’t do that anymore.”

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12/19/2011 The Bedbug Body Hair Study

Hairy skin helps stop bed bugs biting, according to new research from the University of Sheffield in the UK. Apparently, not only does the fine hair that covers our bodies help us feel the presence of parasitic insects on our skin, it also acts as a barrier to stop them biting us. The findings of the study appeared in an online before print issue of the Royal Society journal Biology Letters on 14 December.

Although humans seem relatively naked compared to other primates, our bodies are covered in a layer of two types of fine hair. One type is called vellus, which is short and nearly invisible, and the other is called terminal hair which is longer and more visible. The follicles are also quite close together on the skin.

The researchers note there are “relatively few explanations for the evolutionary maintenance of this type of human hair,” so they wanted to test the idea that perhaps it acts as a defense against ectoparasites or bed bugs.

First author and Sheffield Zoology graduate Isabelle Dean picked the study as the subject of her honours project, which she carried out under the supervision of co-author Professor Michael Siva-Jothy, of the University´s Department of Animal and Plant Sciences.

For the study they recruited 29 healthy volunteers who had one arm shaved and one arm left with hairs on, and then allowed hungry bed bugs to be placed on the skin of both arms.

The results show that the fine body hair acts to our advantage because it helps us detect the presence of bed bugs in two ways: by increasing the time it takes for the parasite to find a suitable site to start sucking blood, and by helping us feel their presence on our skin.

They also showed that this advantage was greater for those participants who had more layers of hair: the insects took longer to find an ideal feeding site on their arms.

The study helps explain why bed bugs and other parasites such as mosquitoes, midges, ticks, and leeches, seek out the less hairy body sites such as wrists and ankles.

Siva-Jothy explained to the press:

“The hairs have nerves attached to them and provide us with the ability to detect displacement. By forming a barrier and providing detection these hairs prolong search time and make detection more likely because the bug has to spend more time clambering over them.”

The authors suggest the findings also help explain why we have lost the thick coat of our primate cousins, but still retained some body hair.

“For example, if you have a heavy coat of long thick hairs it is easier for parasites to hide, even if you can detect them. Our proposal is that we retain the fine covering because it aids detection and if we lost all hair, even the relatively invisible fine hair, our detection ability goes right down,” said Siva-Jothy.

Siva-Jothy leads a team that is investigating the biology of blood-sucking insects, how they reproduce and retain immunity. They want to discover new ways to control these parasites, which can help us develop better ways to reduce transmission of insect-borne diseases.

He said men have more body hair than women, a result of their increased testosterone at puberty. But this does not mean women are more likely to be bitten:

“Blood-sucking insects are likely to have been selected to prefer to bite hosts in relatively hairless areas,” said Siva- Jothy.

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12/16/2011 Are You Prepared For Bedbug Holiday Exposure?

12/14/2011 Body Hair Keeps Bedbugs Away

Finding hairs in your food can be disgusting, and it seems that blood-sucking insects feel just the same.

Scientists have discovered that hairy people are better protected from parasites, as the hair makes it harder for the bugs to reach skin.

Bed bugs and other parasites such as mosquitoes, midges and ticks prefer relatively smooth areas, such as the wrists and ankles.

But as the insects search for somewhere to dive in, the nerves in hairs also increase the chances of them being felt on the skin and swatted away.

Researchers studied 29 brave volunteers who had one arm shaved before hungry bed bugs were placed on their skin.

12/12/2011 Are Bedbugs On Your Holiday List?

With all the preparations for the holidays, bedbugs might the last thing on your agenda. However, if you have kids coming home from college or are hosting out-of-town guests, you may get more than you bargained for.

I recently had a scare when my son was traveling with the baseball team and stayed overnight in a hotel. He described insects that resembled ticks on two of his roommates when they woke up the next morning. Collecting the insects would have been helpful so I could have ruled out bedbugs, but what 20-year-old thinks of that? I immediately went into action and proceeded to heat treat everything before his belongings were allowed entry into the house. Folks need to take this seriously. Bedbugs are showing up in area hotels, schools, dormitories, and apartments, so the problem is real. They move around easily on students’ backpacks from their home, to school and then to your home.

So what is a bedbug? Bedbugs are about one-quarter-inch long, are brown and have an oval flattened body. Before feeding, they are clear in color but, after consuming blood, they change to a dark red color. Female bedbugs lay eggs that are 1/25 of an inch long in clusters where adults reside. Eggs hatch in four to 12 days and take 35 to 48 days to mature. For a bedbug to grow, it needs to feed. An adult bedbug, however, can go up to a year without a bloodmeal. In the absence of humans, they may feed on birds and rodents.

Bedbugs hide during the day in cracks and crevices in loose wallpaper, behind molding or throughout all areas of a bed. At night, they emerge to inject their mouthparts into an unsuspecting host creating a painless bite while taking a blood meal. How do you know if you have been bitten by a bedbug? If you have never been bitten by a bedbug, it may take 10 days to 2 weeks for a reaction to occur. Others that have been previously exposed may wake up with several red, scratchy welts (usually in a row) the next morning.

The best advice is to avoid bringing these guys home with you. My family makes fun of me when we stay in hotels. The first thing I do is to peel back the sheets and look at the mattress pad for signs of excrement and/or reddish-brown spots from blood stains about the size of a pencil point. When leaving the hotel, check clothing and suitcases for small insects. If the room you stayed in had bedbugs, do not bring the suitcase into your home. Unpack it outside and put clothing directly into the washing machine. Wash in hot water and then dry on high heat. If the clothing requires dry cleaning, let the cleaners know that you suspect bedbugs so it can be handled appropriately. Treat the suitcase before bringing it into the home.

When bedbug numbers build up, a sweet, musky odor becomes obvious because of an oily substance they emit. Some describe it as a sweet raspberry odor. If you find signs of these insects, request another room or go to another hotel. Some folks are taking extra precautions by cleaning luggage and clothing carefully after staying in hotels.

These insects are very difficult to control and the help of a professional pest control operator is preferred. Control options are varied. Some homeowners throw away bed, frames, mattresses and pillows trying to rid their homes of these critters. We recommend that you keep the bed but place a bedbug encasement over the mattress, pull the bed away from the wall, and use monitor traps at the base of the bed. Also, don’t move the pillows to the couch because they will move with the pillows. Sticky traps can be placed around the room and bed to determine the hiding areas. Some pest control companies are using canines to detect bedbug places with great success. It’s amazing how efficient dogs are at detecting bedbugs because of their enhanced sense of smell.

Once the hiding places are determined, one can develop a line of attack. Initially, remove as many bedbugs as possible from the area. Vacuum to remove bedbugs from beds, sofas, carpets, etc., then put the vacuum bag in a zip lock bag and place in a deep freeze for a week or more or immediately throw it away. Bedding should be washed with soap and borax in hot water and then dried using high heat. Placing items in the dryer for one hour on high heat is sufficient to do the job. Send curtains and pillows to the dry cleaners or place in the dryer. Clean out drawers in the room(s) and treat with pesticides. Homeowners may try treating this problem on their own, but pest control companies have additional products available for treatment and are trained on dealing with these pests. For more information on control and pesticides for treatment, refer to http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ig083 .

University of Florida researchers have found a way to treat bedbugs without the use of chemicals. Cold doesn’t affect these critters, but turning up the heat does the job. All the furniture is moved to the center of the room and a box is placed around the furniture. By using two heaters and a fan at the center of the box, the heat is pushed up to 113 degrees. Go to http://news.ufl.edu/ 2010 / 08 /02/bed-bug-remedy/ for a short video on the process.

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12/11/2011 New Way To Disinfect Hospitals Of Bedbugs

Toronto: A new technique would not only disinfect hospitals worldwide but also stop bed bug outbreaks.

“This is the future, because many hospital deaths are preventable with better cleaning methods,” said Dick Zoutman, researcher at the Queen`s University.

“It has been reported that more than 100,000 people in North America die every year due to hospital acquired infections at a cost of $30 billion. That`s 100,000 people every year who are dying from largely preventable infections,” Zoutman added.

The new technology involves pumping a ozone and hydrogen peroxide vapour gas mixture into a room to completely sterilize everything – including floors, walls, drapes, mattresses, chairs and other surfaces.

“It is far more effective in killing bacteria than wiping down a room. He has also used this technology to kill bed bugs,” said Zoutman, according to a university statement.

A major US hotel chain has already expressed interest in the technology because of its potential to save the company millions of dollars in lost revenue and infected furniture.

Zoutman worked with Michael Shannon of Medizone International located in Innovation Park, Queen`s University.

Medizone is commercializing the technology and the first deliveries are scheduled for the first quarter of 2012.

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12/2/2011 Should Tenants Or Landlords Pay For Bedbug Treatment?

The bed bug problem across the country has gotten so bad that many property managers have added “dead bug addendums” to their leases, according to Gold Seal Termite and Pest Control in Indianapolis. It is to relieve companies of the high costs associated with getting rid of them.
However, what if bed bugs are not specified in a lease? Who pays for the costly treatment?
Misty Brooks, a mother of two, noticed bed bugs in her daughter Kaley’s bed in July.
“I went to go change my daughter’s linens and I saw a bunch of bugs in there and it just grossed me out,” said Brooks.
When Fox59 visited the apartment, we could see blood spots around the outlet, in the corners of the kids’ room and live bugs were crawling around the walls.

“They’re on the beds, they’re on the walls, and you can see them on the walls,” said Brooks. “It is disgusting.”

Brooks told Fox59 managers at the Sawmill Apartments did send a company to get rid of the bugs in July. However, the process did not work and the bed bugs remain.

Brooks said she was then told it was her responsibility to have the apartment treated and that she must have brought bed bugs when she moved in last December.  She believes the problem is complex-wide because of how often pest control workers show up.

“I’ve seen them outside of apartment over there, apartments in the front of the complex, sitting right outside the building, so I know we’re not the only apartment that has them,” said Brooks as she pointed in all directions of the complex.

So, who pays to have the bed bugs removed? It depends on your interpretation of the lease.

The lease states: The owner has the right to exterminate any infested apartment. The lessee may be asked to remove portions of their personal belongings for pest control treatment. In the event that pest control treatment is required due to an infestation caused by the lessee’s abuse or negligence, use of the premises, then the lessee will be responsible for the cost of pest control treatment in the leased apartment unit and any adjoining apartment units and or the common areas of the building.

Fox59 went to the leasing office at the Sawmill Apartments. We were kicked out and sent to Magna Properties, the management company.

There, Mike Abdalla, Magna’s president, said he was going to call security if Fox59 did not leave after we asked about the bed bug problem.

On the phone, Abdalla said they remediate bed bugs for residents initially and give them literature on how to solve the problem further.  He said if they are notified of a problem, they will fix it.

Brooks will likely move when the lease is up but everything is infested.

“We’re going to have to start all over, we’re going to have to throw everything out,” said Brooks.

She is still waiting for answers from Magna properties.

“My son, he always tells me there are bugs on his bed and it makes me want to cry,” said Brooks. “You know, he shouldn’t have to live like that. He shouldn’t have to get bitten up because they don’t’ want to deal with their problems.”

According to Gold Seal Termite and Pest Control, prices to get rid of bed bugs range from $300 to $1,000.

Abdalla said he would call Fox59 back to tell us what he was going to do to fix the situation for Brooks and the rest of the residents. However, he never called back and did not return our calls.

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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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