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.”

Continue Reading More: Meet The Women Who Battle New York’s Bedbugs

9/30/2011 Bedbug Entrepreneurs Compete To Create Best Products

Some want to bake them. Others prefer to freeze them. Still others dehydrate them.

Inventors will try just about anything to kill bed bugs, those nasty, reddish-brown, blood-sucking parasites that are the worst nightmare of many hotel guests.

America’s obsession with bed bugs has led to a rush of entrepreneurs seeking profit from exterminating them, and about 75 companies gathered this week in hopes of launching the perfect beg bug killer.

“I never figured I’d be in Chicago for a bed bug conference. I never thought that in my wildest dreams,” Mike Bourdeau, operations manager at Flynn Pest Control in Massachusetts, said at the second annual Bed Bug University.

Bourdeau said bed bug business is booming. It went from virtually zero percent of Flynn Pest Control’s business less than five years ago to about 20 percent of what the company brings in today.

“It’s probably going to be a big part of our business for … the next ten years,” he said.

A study this year by University of Kentucky researchers and the National Pest Management Association showed 80 percent of surveyed pest control companies had treated hotels for bed bugs within a year, up from 67 percent a year ago.

More than 80 percent of the surveyed companies said they believed bed bug infestations were on the rise.

Whether there are more bed bugs these days or just more publicity about them is hotly debated, but there is general agreement that the problem is here to stay.

“It will become like roaches and ants. It’s not going anywhere. We will deal with bed bugs the rest of our lives,” said Phillip Cooper, chief executive officer of BedBug Central, a research and information firm.
Companies attending the conference showed search and destroy methods ranging from bug-sniffing dogs to vacuum-like machines that spout carbon dioxide to freeze the bugs.

For example, The Bed Bug Baker features a heated tent that can hold a dining room’s worth of furniture to bake away bed bugs at home. For hotel room infestations, there’s an electric heater that can bake the whole room.

Another product is a dust made of crushed fossils called diatomaceous earth that can be sprinkled on floors. It kills bed bugs by dehydrating their shell. Bed bugs walk through the dust, which is also a desiccant, and gradually dry out, said Jeffrey White, an entomologist with BedBug Central.

The measures might seem exotic, but academics and inventors say the number of bed bug hiding spots in hospitals, hotels, homes or even on public transportation, make it hard to apply a “silver bullet” treatment.

While hotel infestations get the most attention, a new study conducted by the University of Kentucky showed college dormitories, nursing homes, hospitals and office buildings are the new battlegrounds. Pest control companies report double-digit growth from last year in treating bed bugs at each place.

“It’s no longer going to be the hotels that are the problem,” said Mike Lindsey, president of Bedbug Boxes. “So you’re going to have to keep chasing it around and find that solution for that particular place.”

Lindsey quit his six figures engineering job to chase the dream of being a bed bug entrepreneur.

He invented a box lined with what look like solar panels to heat clothes or luggage to temperatures that kill bed bugs after his family brought the pests home to Colorado from a Mexico vacation. Now he is marketing a suitcase that uses the same strips to roast any bed bugs inside.

Kenneth F. Haynes, a professor who studies insect behavior at the University of Kentucky, said people have a stigma about bed bugs, and are often embarrassed to get help treating an infestation. The industry is trying to defeat the stigma, which could unlock more customers.

For now, a scramble is on to tap a growing market. Once extermination products for the pest are widely accepted the need for a gathering of experts will fade away.

“We don’t have a roach conference. We don’t have a mouse conference. So, once we get to that point, there will be no need for a bed bug conference,” Cooper said.

9/29/2011 Milwaukee Puts Out Health Alert Against Bedbug Motel: Diamond Inn Has Massive Bedbug Problem With 279 Violations

The City of Milwaukee has put out a health alert at a motel in the city.

Prompted by repeat complaints, the Department of Neighborhood Services says the Diamond Inn, on the 6200 block of West Fond du Lac Avenue, has a massive bed bug problem.

The manager says they’re working on it.

Lakisha Lewis stayed there on Tuesday night, and she claims she was bit.

She showed TODAY’S TMJ4′s Diane Pathieu bit marks up and down her arm.

“I woke up this morning and I was itching,” said Lewis.

“My guy told me it was bed bugs.  I showed him the marks on my arm.”

This building is no stranger to problems.

“They have 279 violations since 2007, so it does have a history of a number of issues, both building code violations and sanitary and environmental conditions,” said Todd Weiler of the Department of Neighborhood Services.

This time, it was bed bugs.  Of the eight complaints received, all eight of the rooms were infested with bed bugs.

Shanda Rice cleans the rooms at the hotel, and she claims hotel staff has been aware of the problem.

“We’re treating it.  Every room is getting new carpet, everything else like that.”

The manager on site explained that the hotel’s owner is planning on re-doing the whole place, with new furniture, carpeting and beds in two weeks.

Until then, the DNS is warning them to clean up their act.

“We’re going to issue an order to restore it to clean and sanitary condition,” said Weiler.

“We’ll give them 30 days to do that, and also prove that they’ve specifically been treated for bed bugs by a professional.”

Continue Reading More/Watching Video: Milwaukee Puts Out Health Alert Against Bedbug Motel

9/21/2011 Bedbugs Infest Ohio Homeless Shelter: Toledo’s Cherry Street Mission Latest Victim Of Critters

Since spring, bedbugs have infested the Cherry Street Mission, which provides shelter and food for Toledo’s needy.

The pesky bugs have already been a problem in Ohio hotels and college dorms.

Exterminators have been brought in at least twice.

A man who lives there but did not want to be identified was bitten several times overnight on his arms.

“It’s like a burning, like a sting, like an open wound, you know what I mean?” he said. “The bad part is you open it up. Once you open it up, it spreads. You know the itching, the red marks and all that.”

The bedbugs are concentrating in the third floor bedrooms.

Blankets provide a great place to hide, and they can move from clothing to clothing, guest to guest.

“For a while one of our bunk rooms had carpet in it and we figured out that it was a giant bedbug hotel. And so we took out the carpet,” Steve North of the Cherry Street Mission said.

North says the shelter is above capacity, 170 men a night, and bedbugs are likely transferred as they come and go.

Besides the exterminators, they’ve even tried putting mattresses in freezers to freeze the bugs to death!

They keep coming back.

And it’s not just the Cherry Street Mission that is affected.

“I know for certain one of my staff members here in the men’s facility has been bitten by bedbugs himself, and that they have shown up at his house,” North said.

Guests have been told to use a bleach and water mixture to spray under their beds and their bed frames.

The Mission promises to continue treating the problem.

Continue Reading More: Bedbugs Infest Ohio Homeless Shelter

8/30/2011 Are We In A Bedbug Cycle Of Growth? 

“Good night, sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Largely eradicated by the early 1940s, bed bugs were almost unheard of until recently. As infestations continue to rise, some exterminators say avoiding bed bugs is becoming more difficult for area residents.

Fogle’s Pest Control owner Jimmie Fogle said he has seen a “moderate increase” in the number of cases over the last several months.

“They are coming back, but they are not as bad as 30-40 years ago,” Fogle said. “DDT was used then to kill them before it was banned by the government.

“They are attracted to cotton and wool. We find them mostly in bedrooms and the mattresses.”

The exact cause of bed bug resurgence remains unclear, although many exterminators feel increased travel is a key factor. According to the recently released NPMA/University of Kentucky 2011 “Bugs Without Borders” survey, 99 percent of pest control specialists have seen bed bug infestations in the past year.

Gressette Pest Management has seen a 30-40 percent increase in the number of bed bug calls this year over 2010. Company representative Gene Kizer says the insects have no mode of transportation except humans.

“I have my own theory, too,” Kizer said. “We see cycles of insects come and go and we are in a cycle of bed bug growth now. That happens with all insects.”

Orkin Pest Control entomologist Stoney Bachman said the number of bed bug cases has remained steady over the last three years.

“I’d say prior to that, they were unheard of in this area,” Bachman said. “Only recently have they become a household issue. Infestations can also spread in apartments because they can travel through walls.

“Five-star hotels in New York are having bed bug problems. More are actually seen in high-end homes because those individuals often travel more.”

The blood-feeding insects are reddish-brown in color, flat and about a quarter-inch long. Signs of activity include sores on the body where bites have occurred.

Gressette pest control technician L.W. Strock III said many people don’t attribute the bites to bed bugs unless it continues to happen.

“You will see blood stains on the bed sheets,” Strock said. “Having a lot of clutter in the room also gives them ample places to hide, which requires more invasive methods of treatment.

“Stores sell pesticides labeled for bed bugs and they can be somewhat effective as long as you follow the label to its entirety. But it will take you even longer to rid the problem using that compared to what is available to exterminators.”

Although some online information sites suggest there are simple precautions travelers can take to reduce the chance of transporting bed bugs, Kizer said there is little that can be done to prevent them. The eggs are smaller than a pinhead and can be transported on shoes.

Immature or even adult bugs can often stow away in luggage without detection.

“If people are suspicious they have bed bugs, they need to call an exterminator to come out and assess the situation,” Kizer said. “They are easy to identify and are not mistaken for any other insect.”

8/15/2011 Bedbugs Found At Wake Forest University: Canine Search Turns Up In Residential Space On Campus

7/26/2011 BedBugs Continue To Infest The Northeast:  Barre Vermont Hotel & New Haven Connecticut Apartment Amongst Places

Bedbugs Plague New Haven Apartment

A New Haven apartment building is dealing with some unwelcome guests; bed bugs.

Residents at 114 Bristol Street have been complaining about the pests for some time. While not every apartment has bed bugs, it seems everyone in the building knows about them.

“They’re itchy and some were biting,” said resident Kezzie Staton who so far has only heard about the bugs.

According to residents, exterminators have been inside the building over the past week although they are not sure if the exterminators have been able to kill the bed bugs.

Neighbors say that they hope the problem is taken care of soon before the problem spreads to everyone.

“Management sent them over to do something about it but the point is are they doing a good job? We don’t know,” said one resident who goes by the name Robinson.

The management company would not comment on the situation.

Continue Reading More: BedBugs Plagues New Haven Apartment

Bedbugs Found In Barre Vermont Hotel

A Barre hotel is the latest victim to what officials are calling a world-wide epidemic, and bed bugs are to blame.

Bobby Weeks who found bed bugs in the hotel room said,  “We got flashlights out we found 23 of them in her bed, in her kids bed, on the floor, on the bureau.”

Weeks says his girlfriend’s room at the Budget Inn is infested with bugs. He’s now reaching out to local authorities.

Barre’s City Manager Steven Mackenzie explained, “Once we got the report it was to make an inspection, and make a determination.  In this case there were bed bugs confirmed.”

The city has ordered the Inn shut down three rooms on the second floor until they are properly treated by pest control.

Experts say travelers are a main carrier of the bed bugs, but say outbreaks are not limited to hotels and motels. In fact they say they see more calls these days from home owners.

State Entimologist Jon Turmel said, “There is that stigma, oh there are bed bugs that is dirty, that is just not true.”

Turmel says these bugs are not picky when it comes to temperature, season or location. He says they do not carry disease, or pose health concerns, but they are creepy, and annoying.

“I have gotten more calls and samples in the last two years than I have in the past 35 years, ” He explained.

Turmel suspects the reason for the ongoing bed bug problem is due to a reduction in chemical sprays used to get rid of all pests.

“We would go in to places once a week or once a month and treat all of the baseboards, and the heating units. Spray them for cockroaches. We do not do that anymore.”

Turmel says current treatments, like bed bug baits, or extreme temperatures, are more environmentally friendly, but are used once the bugs have already moved in, not as a preventative measure.

The Budget Inn says an exterminator has treated the room twice, and believes the current tenants brought the bugs with them.

Experts say at least four exterminators in the state have the temperature control equipment to kill the bugs, and two companies with bed bug sniffing dogs to help you identify if you have a problem.

Continue Reading More & Watching Video: BedBugs Found In Barre Vermont Hotel

7/10/2011 Bedbugs Booked Into New York City Jails: Staten Islands 120th Precinct Lockup Is Infested

A bedbug problem has spurred the NYPD to shut down the holding-cell area in the 120th Precinct station in St. George, leading the city’s Department of Correction to summon an exterminator to make sure the pests haven’t spread to the pens in Stapleton Criminal Court, according to multiple NYPD and court insiders.

For the last few days, prisoners have been diverted to holding cells in precincts off-Island while exterminators fumigate the holding cells, sources tell the Advance.

“The prisoners were relocated to another police holding facility while the problem is being addressed and the situation rectified,” confirmed Detective Cheryl Crispin, an NYPD spokeswoman, last night. She did not elaborate.

Now several police officers are worried that they might have brought the bedbugs home with them, sources said.

The holding cells at the precinct are notoriously grimy, and last month a masseuse filed a lawsuit against the city claiming she’d been held in a “filthy, unhygienic cell” last summer and forced to clean an overflowing toilet.

The latest problems unfolded when a prisoner being held in one of the cells complained about finding bedbugs, said sources.

The brass at the precinct looked into it, and “there were some critters found in the area where the cell attendant works,” according to one NYPD insider.

That led police to fumigate the cells on Wednesday, but it didn’t take — when prisoners started returning to the cells about 7 p.m., another bedbug complaint forced cops to shut the cells down again an hour later, police sources said.

“They’re trying to process as few people as they can through there,” said one source.

As of last night, prisoners were being rerouted to the 61st Precinct in Coney Island, as they await transfer to court, sources said.

The situation also has attracted the interest of the city Department of Correction, which is sending an exterminator into the holding cell area of the Stapleton Criminal Court, where criminal defendants are taken after being held at the precinct station.

“We are aware of concerns in the Staten Island 120 Precinct regarding bedbugs,” wrote Correction spokeswoman Sharman Stein in an e-mailed statement yesterday. “DOC will have an exterminator go out tomorrow [Friday] to inspect our Staten Island court facilities [holding pens]. If there is a problem, we will arrange to treat the pens with a combination of steam and chemicals when the pens are empty — over the weekend.”

She added, “At this time, we have no reports of staff or inmates complaining about bedbug bites.”

Arlene Hackel, a spokeswoman for the state court system, said the Stapleton Criminal Court building has had no problems with bedbugs, and that the court has been operating as normal.

One inmate was found to have a bedbug on him while in a transport van to the court, but “he was removed, and the van he was in was taken care of,” Ms. Hackel said.

One defense attorney, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that bedbugs have been a problem in the holding cells for several months, and about a month ago, a defendant emerged from a cell with “bites all over his body.”

Last month, 31-year-old Gabrielle Vignolini filed a federal lawsuit against the city, the NYPD and several unnamed officers, alleging she’d been held in one of the precinct station’s cells for 17 hours last August, then released without so much as a summons.

She contended the cell’s water fountain was broken and the toilet was overflowing and depositing waste and water onto the floor. Ms. Vignolini alleged that police denied her request to be placed in another lockup, and just before her release, a female officer ordered her and another prisoner — the owner of the spa where she’d been taken into custody — to wipe up the cell floor.

Ms. Vignolini is a licensed massage therapist and was working as an independent contractor at Morounfola Beauty Spa on Water Street in Stapleton, according to court papers. She was arrested during a sweep while the spa was holding a “friends-and-family event” for invited guests prior to the business’ public opening a week later, according to the lawsuit.

Ms. Vignolini alleges she was never issued a summons or arraigned on any criminal charges, and a spokesman for District Attorney Daniel Donovan confirmed that the office declined to charge Ms. Vignolini.

Continue Reading More: Bedbugs Booked Into New York City Jails

7/8/2011 Bedbug Surge In New Jersey Keeps Exterminators Busy: Population Larger Than Ever

Gregorio Lozano and his team pulled up to the target address and got ready for battle, donning white bio-hazard suits and off-loading silver tanks of cryogen.

They were on the hunt for bedbugs.

With the bedbug population larger than at any point in recent memory, exterminators are busier than ever, with infestations of the wingless red insect — no bigger than a pin head — increasingly being found far beyond homes and bedrooms. They’re now being found in stores, offices and the workplace.

“There really is a mass paranoia about the insects now,” said Steve Spinelli, owner of Titanium Laboratories in Nutley, which devotes 80 percent of its business to bedbugs, up from 15 percent in recent years.

Experts say labor lawyers have begun advising businesses on their liability and whether they should pay to treat not only their offices, but the homes of employees as well.

David Cassidy, a labor lawyer at Norris McLaughlin & Marcus in Bridgewater, expects to see the issue come up soon in new union contracts.

In rare cases, Cassidy said, bedbugs might warrant employee disability claims if someone is bitten at work. Even if no one is bitten, morale tends to drop after an infestation, he said. Some employees get labeled as “dirty” if their peers suspect they’re responsible for the bedbugs, Cassidy said.

“We’ve coined this harassment as giving someone the ‘Scarlet B,’” he said.

Despite increased concerns, experts say most people know little about bedbugs or infestation signs. Others try to remain ignorant, preventing the chances of catching the infestations at a small size.

“There are still people out there in New Jersey that are incredulous that it can happen in New Jersey, to them, said Peter Di Eduardo, an account manager at Bell Environmental exterminators. “They think it can only happen in New York.”

Americans once thought bedbugs were relegated to good-night wishes. Effective pesticides wiped out most U.S. bedbugs in the 1950s. But increased international travel to places like South America, Asia and Africa allowed bedbugs resistant to traditional pesticides to travel back to America, said Changlu Wang, a professor at Rutgers University’s Department of Entomology.

Outbreaks began to pop up in major cities, especially in New York, attracting media attention and scaring people about what lives in their mattresses.

At the same time, some exterminators were found to be equally ill-informed about how to deal with bedbugs. In January, the state Department of Environmental Protection fined a Newark company, TVF Pest Control, $860,000 and revoked its pesticide business license after spraying at least 50 residences and apartments for bedbugs in three counties with two banned chemicals during a six-month period, according to the DEP.

“If you’re spraying pesticides incorrectly, and besides the fact that you can make people sick, you wind up irritating the bugs, so you’re ending up spreading them to your neighbors’ apartment,” Di Eduardo said.

The state Legislature, meanwhile, has gotten into the act. The Assembly in 2008 set basic guidelines for landlords and tenants facing an infestation. Since then, the Legislature has passed seven more laws, including the establishment of 30-day warranties from exterminators and requirements for health care facilities and shelters to keep a standing agreement with a pest-control company.

Most recently, the Senate has proposed a $500 tax credit to offset the high costs of extermination.

Lozano, who first learned to battle bedbugs when his own house was infested, works in Bell Environmental’s bedbug division, created about two years ago to deal with increasing infestation. In the past year alone, bedbug calls have risen about 50 percent.

“How many calls have we been to? I don’t know — thousands by now,” Lozano said. “This is my second call today.”

At a home in Paterson, Lozano and his extermination team — garbed in white suits and latex gloves — moved through the downstairs, checking sofas, beds and drapes. This was actually the second treatment, and the team found some lingering bedbugs.

As they searched, Lozano stopped and pointed to the shoulder of Di Eduardo, who had accompanied the team.

“Look at that sucker!” Lozano said. A large bedbug had crawled up Di Eduardo’s suit, nearly to the neckline. Di Eduardo looked down, picked it up between thumb and forefinger and squeezed it, leaving a trail of blood on his latex gloves.

“You know, I’m most worried about taking them home to my wife,” he said. “She’d shoot me.”

Continue Reading More: Bedbug Surge In New Jersey Keeps Exterminators Busy

6/14/2011 Insurer AON Launches BedBug Insurance Policy: First Of Its Kind For Hotels, Landlords & Companies