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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11/23/2011 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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9/23/2011 Bedbug Pesticide Illnesses On The Rise: Several States Report Incidents

As more people in the United States are feeling the bed bug’s bite, there has been a spike in illnesses from pesticides used to kill the insects, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC.L reported on Thursday.

From 2003 to 2010, 111 people were sickened and one died from bed bug insecticide, the government agency reported in a study that is the first of its kind in the country.

Nearly three quarters of the illnesses occurred from 2008 to 2010 as the bed bug population in the United States increased.

Pesticide-related illnesses occurred in seven states: California, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, New York, Texas and Washington. Some 81 percent of cases were not severe.

New York City, where there were increasing reports of bed bug infestations, had the largest number of cases at 58 percent. Nationwide, 93 percent of the cases were in private homes, the study found.

Although the CDC said there have not been enough cases of serious illness to suggest a large public health burden, the numbers might continue to increase as bed bugs become more resistant to common pesticides.

Bed bugs are wingless, reddish-brown insects that suck blood from humans and other mammals and birds. They do not carry disease but, according to the CDC, “can reduce quality of life by causing anxiety, discomfort and sleeplessness.”

Illness can result from misusing pesticides to kill the bugs, the CDC said. Two of the most common causes of illness were excessive insecticide application and failing to wash or change pesticide-treated bedding.

Common symptoms included headaches, dizziness, nausea and vomiting, the CDC said.

The lone fatality was in North Carolina in 2010, and the 65-year-old victim had a long list of health problems including diabetes and renal failure, the CDC said.

Her husband applied pesticides in the home that were not registered for use on bed bugs. The woman also applied a bed bug and flea insecticide to her arms, sores on her chest, and on her hair.

The CDC recommends using both nonchemical and chemical approaches to fight bed bugs, including hiring an expert to heat infested rooms or cool them to kill the bugs.

The agency also advises against buying used mattresses and box springs and urges anyone with a bed bug problem to hire only certified insecticide applicators.

“Insecticide labels that are easy to read and understand also can help prevent illnesses associated with bed bug control,” the agency said. (Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Cynthia Johnston)

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9/18/2011 Bedbugs Invade Imperial County California

More than 40 years after bedbugs were eradicated in this country with the use of strong pesticides such as DDT, the infamous bedbug is making a comeback across the country and biting its way into Imperial County.  

Bedbugs are about the size of an apple seed, said Sandy Fishell, owner of the extermination company Terminix of Imperial Valley.

The insect is flat, has no wings, it can’t jump but it can crawl very quickly like a cockroach, Fishell said.

In Imperial County, “we never had bedbugs,” Fishell said, adding she received her first bedbug job here in 2003.

After that, bedbug calls became more common, she said, and started “ramping up” about three years ago.

The county Public Health Department also saw a rise in complaints associated with bedbugs, deputy director Jeff Lamoure said.

In 2008 the department received three complaints associated with bedbugs — two from El Centro and one from Holtville — according to a report by the county Public Health Department.

In 2011 this number rose to 24 complaints and came from all cities in the county except Calipatria, according to the same report.

Most of this year’s complaints came from low-income extended-stay motels in El Centro, Lamoure said, adding that the area of State Street and Adams Avenue seems to be the most affected by bedbugs.

In 2009, Terminix got four bedbug calls a year, Fishell said. In 2010 that number increased to about two calls a week, she said.

There has been a steady rise of bedbug incidents in the county since 2008, said Gabe Cordero, president of Pestmaster Services.

But even with the rising number of cases, Cordero said he doesn’t believe bedbugs are an epidemic.

Still, it is quite an effort to bring bedbugs under control and eradicate them, he said.

The first cases of bedbugs in the United States started to reappear about 13 years ago, said Micah Nix, executive director of the National Bedbug Association.

But mapping an exact location of where and how the incidents started is difficult, Nix said, because such data wasn’t collected.

Even though it is unclear why there is a resurgence of bed bugs after all these years, Nix said, foreign travel and tourism are considered the main factors behind the resurgence.

Nowadays, “We have our own native colonies,” he said, “so we are responsible for spreading bedbugs across the country.”

Bedbugs live by sucking blood from hosts such as humans and are excellent hitchhikers, Nix said.

The insect can “hitch a ride pretty much to any location,” mostly by inanimate objects such as bags, luggage and furniture, he said.

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6/3/2011 Are BedBugs Transmitting Diseases? An Alarming Number Of People Bitten By Them End Up In The Hospital With Severe Infections

Even though there is no proven correlation between bed bugs and MRSA, an alarming amount of people bitten by bed bugs end up in the hospital with severe infections, MRSA being one of them.

“Scientists studied five bedbugs taken from three patients treated at St. Paul’s Hospital. All three patients were residents of Vancouver’s poor Downtown Eastside, where both bed bugs and MRSA have been on the rise in recent years. The researchers wanted to see if there was a connection, so they crushed and analyzed the bugs and found three samples with MRSA, the superbug that is resistant to most commonly used antibiotics. The two other samples had vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium, or VRE, a less dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It’s also not clear whether the bacteria existed on the bed bugs or in them. That is, were the bedbugs carrying MRSA on their backs, or were the bacteria living and growing inside them? Either way, it’s bad news: if bed bugs are capable of carrying and transmitting MRSA the way a mosquito spreads malaria, it could mean a whole new vector of human disease.”

Considering that:

• MRSA can live for up to 7 months on dust
• MRSA can live for up to 8 weeks on a mop head
• MRSA can live for up to 9 weeks on cotton (towel)
• MRSA can live for up to 203 days (over 6 months) on a blanket
• MRSA can live on the skin of otherwise healthy individuals, with no symptoms indefinitely

We have to wonder if bed bug contamination is not so far fetched.

To curtail the contamination, a California company, Decon ProGreen, LLC has developed a protocol called: “bio hazards & bed bugs” using solutions that kill MRSA on contact as well as most bacteria, viruses, fungi and molds. In laboratory tests, this solution has been proven highly efficient on exoskeleton bugs like bed bugs as well as their eggs. The protocol has been tested in hotel chains for over one year with 100% success. This company only uses products that are biodegradable and non toxic, safe for humans, pets and plants.
Decon ProGreen’s “Bio hazards & Bed Bugs” protocol is now available for licensed pest control applicators.

5/5/2011 Los Angeles Woman Settles Motel Bedbug Lawsuit: Bitten 167 Times In Glendale Motel

Three women who sued a Glendale motel, saying they suffered more than 100 bed-bug bites, have settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, attorneys said Monday.

Attorneys representing the three women — Nichole Eatman, Vera Domini and Regina Martocci — said they met with representatives for Rodeway Inn-Regalodge Motel, at 200 W. Colorado St., and its franchiser, Choice Hotels International Inc., last week, to reach the settlement.

They filed a motion Thursday to dismiss the case, according to Los Angeles County Superior Court documents.

Eatman, Domini and Martocci claimed they stayed three nights in a motel room that was infested with bed bugs and their larvae. Domini sustained 167 bed bug bites while staying at the motel, DeArmas said.

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12/7/10 BedBugs Invade Beverly Hills: Turning Up In Golden Triangle Retail District

New Yorkers aren’t the only ones coping with creepy, crawly bloodsuckers.

Bedbugs have turned up in the Golden Triangle retail district of Beverly Hills and inside homes and apartments in more than two dozen local communities.

“It’s really all over the county,” said Angelo J. Bellomo, director of environmental health for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

After noticing an increase in reports from tenants, property owners and businesses, public health officials last spring began tracking reports of bedbugs and later posted public notices about how to prevent and treat infestations. They’re confirming as many as 55 reports of the lentil-size, brown critters each month.

Across the United States, bedbugs have turned up in posh hotels, movie theaters, churches, hospitals, dormitories and high-end clothing stores. Fears of hotel infestations, particularly in New York, have thrown the travel industry into a tizzy, and national “bedbug summits” have drawn standing-room-only crowds.

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11/4/10 San Francisco To Propose Tough BedBug Bill On Property Owners:  stiff penalties on property owners who allow unhygenic conditions to persist on their property

Everyone knows that bedbugs are a terrible scourge, an epidemic that just keeps getting worse. Except maybe they’re not.

Despite a surge in media reports, many bedbug sightings turn out to be false alarms. A chemical reaction to shampoo, mosquitoes, animal allergies, and all-around poor personal hygiene can all be mistaken for an infestation. Or it could be fleas, which are themselves quite a bother to deal with.

A new bill in San Francisco would impose stiff penalties on property owners who allow unhygenic conditions to persist on their property. The San Francisco Apartment Association is opposed, saying that it’s too much work to keep properties bedbug free.

In New York, around 80% of bedbug reports fail to turn up any of the bugs.

Over the last few years, the Department of Public Health has kept tabs on property owners, hotels, and tenant groups. Not surprisingly, bedbug reports are on the rise. But those reports are unofficial and anecdotal. It’s more likely that bedbugs are only a problem for very few people.

And despite the confidence with which some reporters describe bedbug epidemics, there simple aren’t any reliable data on the insects’ resurgence. All we know is that numbers have increased in the last decade, but it’s unclear by how much.

Fueling the hysteria is a new national bedbug registry. It’s a neat idea, but it’s far from accurate. None of the reports are vetted, and it’s hardly an exhaustive survey. Nevertheless, a frightened public has latched onto the idea of hungry insects and turned them from a potential inconvenience to an all-out monster.

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10/30/10 Bedbugs Strike Cal Poly

San Luis Obispo, CA — Cal Poly has joined the ranks of New York, Philadelphia and Detroit: bedbugs have invaded. There have been recent reports of insects entering Cal Poly dorms and causing red, splotchy spots on some students’ bodies.

Bed bugs tend to inhabit dark crevices and seek out furniture, beds, clothes, suitcases and backpacks; they typically feed every week to week and a half on sleeping prey. Bed bugs are not known to transmit any blood-borne diseases. The Tribune suggests preventive measures are to keep your room clean and wash bedding regularly.

Cal Poly officials say they have been taking measures to eradicate the quarter-inch bugs.

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Other Stories On Bedbugville That May Be Of Interest

Bedbugs Reported At USC

10/29/10 Bedbugs Reported At USC

One student said the bugs “get hungry every night and I am their feast.”

LOS ANGELES — Students at USC say there’s a widespread bed bug problem, according to an undercover investigation by KTLA news.

The tiny, blood-sucking creatures have been reported by students living in campus housing.

USC student, Michelle Huynh says she’s living a nightmare because the bugs “get hungry every night and I am their feast.”

Huynh says when she lifts up the covers to look under her bed, she “finds these nasty little buggers.”

Other students say the bed bugs are spreading. Dental student, Shaheen Moezzi says “there’s quite a few different cases that have been breaking out in different apartment complexes.”

Moezzi adds, “about two weeks ago there was a case in an apartment adjacent to mine.”

City Park USC Housing reportedly has had bed bugs in the past and recently treated and cleared a complex where Mike Shubat lives. Shubat says, “some guy came in with a little dog and just sniffed out the bed in every room around the carpets and stuff” before giving it the all clear.

Some students fear that several areas on campus are infested but say the school has not released any warning about the problem.

Huynh says it’s time for people to know what no one wants to hear.

KTLA shared the reports with officials at USC and in response the school released a statement saying “USC housing has had fewer then 10 confirmed bed bug cases in the last six months. We take all reports very seriously and have in place an aggressive pest management protocol designed in conjunction with national pest control service providers.”

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