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.

9/11/2011 Bedbug Infestation Way Up In Central Ohio Reported From Grove City Central Ohio Bed Bug Task Force Summit

Until about 10 years ago, a bedbug was nothing more than a character in a nursery rhyme. How things have changed! 

Reports of bedbug infestations in Central Ohio are up and so was the attendance at Friday’s Central Ohio annual conference on bedbugs.

Close to 400 people gathered in Grove City for the 4th annual Central Ohio Bed Bug Task Force Summit. 

What they learned is that bedbugs in Ohio are more resistant to household insecticides than bedbugs in other parts of the country.

“That is definitely one of the main reasons why the problem is a little worse in Ohio jurisdictions than in other areas of the country,” said Gene Harrington, vice-president of National Pest Management Association.

Ohio State University entomologist Dr. Susan Jones has been testing over-the-counter aerosol products that claim to kill bedbugs.

“They don’t work against bedbugs. This is a product that people are buying, and it says bedbugs right on the bug bomb, but you’re wasting your money,” Jones said.

The bedbug resistance to most insecticides can be traced to genetics. Their short life-cycles speed up the process of developing a resistance to the chemicals. Dr. Jones says the bedbugs have changed genetically.

“They have up-regulated their genes so they can really detoxify these materials,” Jones said.

Jones says her team of researchers is in the early stages of trying to develop a way to interfere with the bedbug genes that resist insecticides.  

She says there’s plenty of research to be done but that federal research dollars are in short supply.

For now, Paul Wenning, chairman of the Central Ohio Bed Bug Task Force, says the only pesticides that work on bedbugs are those used by the professionals. “It has to be done by a licensed exterminator; they have to know what they’re doing; and they have to apply a mix of chemicals – not just one,” Wenning said.

Meanwhile, Ohio has a request pending with the United States Environmental Protection Agency to allow the state to use a highly effective chemical called propoxur against bedbugs. The US EPA has thus far been reluctant to approve propoxur for indoor use out of concern for possible toxicity to children.

Continue Reading More/Watching Video: Bedbug Infestation Way Up In Central Ohio

8/22/2011 Austin Texas Spends Big To Get Rid Of Bedbugs: Housing Authority Has Spent Over $40k Already

The Housing Authority of the City of Austin has spent nearly $40,000 over the past year fighting bedbugs in 15 of its 19 facilities.

Since September 2010, the authority has been treating the insects, whose bites leave itchy red welts on the skin. Over the past year, 166 of the housing authority’s 1,928 units have been treated for bedbugs, said Sylvia Blanco , vice president of housing and community development for the agency.

“There are peaks and valleys,” Blanco said. “It also depends on the season, but right now we’re having a spike because people are trying to get out of the heat. They’re staying indoors, and sometimes they’re bringing the bugs with them.”

Bedbug infestations in recent years have increased dramatically all over the country. The bugs have wreaked havoc in all kinds of buildings: luxury hotels, department stores and private homes, to name a few. Locally, they’ve hit student apartments around the University of Texas and the Austin State Supported Living Center, which houses people with intellectual disabilities. Austin Travis Integral Care has spent $14,000 over the past year battling the bugs in seven of its 46 properties for people with mental illness.

The Austin housing authority contracts with Oliver Termite and Pest Control for monthly treatments for roaches, ants and other insects at all its housing facilities, Blanco said. The company sprays for bedbugs after receiving a complaint from residents. Each apartment generally gets one treatment, which could include two or three visits from the exterminator, Blanco said.

“Maybe on occasion it could take a second treatment,” she said. “But typically it’s pretty effective in the first treatment.”

If the bugs come back after the warranty period, usually 30 days after the last treatment, residents are required to pay for additional service, Blanco said. That costs residents between $175 and $265 . The pest control company also speaks with residents extensively on ways to avoid a reinfestation, such as inspecting all furniture before bringing it into the apartment.

The housing authority does not deny treatment to anyone and tries to be flexible when charging residents, all of whom are low-income, Blanco said. Many people pay off the bill through a payment plan.

Bedbugs are notoriously hard to get rid of because they are nocturnal and elusive and can go more than a year without eating. They hide in crevices, in furniture, even in books. In apartment complexes, they can easily travel from unit to unit, said Missy Henriksen, spokeswoman for the National Pest Management Association in Virginia.

“They will crawl through the baseboards, cracks in the walls and the electrical outlets,” she said.

Even the most extensive treatments can be ineffective. The Fort Worth Housing Authority spent hundreds of thousands of dollars last year battling bedbugs in one apartment complex — even paying to replace carpets and treat residents’ belongings — but still had to permanently shutter the building when the bugs refused to surrender. More than 200 residents had to move.

Simmie Burke, 68 , said he had bedbugs about a year ago in his third-floor home at Austin’s Lakeside Apartments, a Trinity Street complex owned by the housing authority. The pest control company sprayed, he said, which slowed the insects down. But when the insects returned a few weeks later, Burke decided to battle the bugs on his own, treating the apartment and all of his belongings with pesticide .

“A lot of people have them, but they’re ashamed,” Burke said. “They shouldn’t be. It’s not about hygiene. They’re all over the place.”

Continue Reading More: Austin Spends Big To Get Rid Of Bedbugs

Bedbugs On Way Up Says National Pest Association

Yuck.

Bedbugs are on the uptick in hotels, on public transport and in other public places.

So says a new survey from the National Pest Management Association (NPMA) survey. It found that infestations — even in hospitals — are up over last year.

Even the pest-control industry “has been surprised” by the resurgence of bedbugs and “where they’re being found,” NPMA public affairs VP Missy Henriksen tells me.

According to the just-released NPMA/University of Kentucky 2011 “Bugs Without Borders Survey,” involving 415 pest-control specialists, the creepy crawlers have multiplied and are found in places you might not expect.

Survey findings include:

* 99% of pest professionals have seen bedbug infestations in the past year (up from 95% in 2010)

*80% of pest professionals have treated bedbugs in hotels/motels, compared with 67% in 2010

*73% of pest professionals believe bedbugs are the most difficult pest to treat
*54% have treated bedbugs in college dorms, up from 35% in 2010
*46% have treated bedbugs in nursing homes, vs. 25% in 2010
*38% have treated bedbugs in office buildings, compared with 18% in 2010
* 36% have treated bedbugs in schools and day care centers, vs. 10% in 2010. That’s an amazing increase, as is the 31% who say they’ve found bedbugs in hospitals, vs. 12% in 2010
*18% have treated bedbugs in trains, buses or taxis, compared with 9% in 2010
*17% have dealt with bedbugs in movie theaters; 5% in 2010

RELATED:  Does your hotel have bedbugs? Check this registry

Why the increase? “Bedbugs are hitchhikers,” Henriksen says. More of us are traveling, and we lead increasingly mobile lives. Also, strong chemicals formerly used to treat bedbugs haven’t been allowed for decades, freeing the little biters to thrive.

The good news, if one can call it that, is that infestations can be treated, by steam, heat, freezing, chemicals, vacuuming or a combination of the above, Henriksen says. She offers some tips for travelers:

*When checking into a hotel, check behind the headboard and on the mattress for stains — blood or fecal matter indicating bedbugs may be present.

*Try to avoid leaving luggage on upholstered surfaces. The safest place is in the bathroom, on counters or in the shower, because the bugs don’t like uncarpeted or non-upholstered surfaces with no place to hide.

*While many find sites such as bedbugregistry.com, which contain reports by travelers and others about infestations, useful, Henriksen warns that since complaints are anonymous, they could be written by disgruntled competitors or employees. And a bedbug infestation that’s here today could be gone tomorrow if the hotel has a good pest control policy, she says. “And hotels are much more proactive now,” she says. Maybe, but if I see multiple, detailed reports of problems at a hotel, I don’t make a reservation. Better to be safe than sorry.

*The bad news is that more bedbugs are being found on trains and planes, she says. So it’s important to be vigilant when you arrive home.

That means immediately taking out all clothes and washing and drying them on “hot,” she says. Or bag them and send them to the dry cleaner if they’re delicate. Vacuum the suitcase thoroughly and dispose of the vacuum bag, she says.

Good tips. Do readers have any more? Have any of you brought bedbugs home from a trip and how did you eradicate them?

Continue Reading More: Bedbugs On Way Up Says National Pest Association

7/16/2011 BedBug Webinar To Discuss BedBug Insurance: Sign-Up Now For July 21st Event

Join us Thursday, July 21 at noon EDT (9 a.m. PDT, 11 a.m. CDT) for a live web chat to discuss bed bug insurance. Bed bugs are spreading in increasing numbers, infesting apartments, hotels and homes. The problem has gotten so bad that insurance companies recently started offering special coverage for hotels and property managers.

Chat with the experts to find out more about bedbugs. Hartford Courant reporter Matthew Sturdevant will moderate an online chat featuring Gale E. Ridge, Ph.D., an entomologist who specializes in bedbugs at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven and chairwoman of the Connecticut Coalition Against Bed Bugs, and Missy Henriksen,Vice President of External Affairs, National Pest Management Association.

Click Here To Sign Up For: BedBug Webinar To Discuss BedBug Insurance

7/11/2011 New York City Bedbug Complaints Rise Even As Violations Drop

The bedbug wave that caused widespread unease in New York homes, offices, movie theaters and retail stores may have been somewhat more hype than bite, according to data from city agencies.

While residential complaints through the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development rose in the last fiscal year, violations have decreased. There were 4,481 violations issued as a result of 13,140 complaints in 2011, compared with 4,808 violations and 12,768 complaints in 2010.

And though the city’s nonemergency hot line, 311, did report a record 34,044 bedbug-related calls for the fiscal year ended June 30, a 7% increase, as a proportion of overall traffic there were slightly fewer bedbug-related calls made in fiscal year 2011 than in 2010. Bedbug calls represent less than 1% of the total received by the hot line, which fields all types of inquiries.

Regardless, local pest-control companies say there is a boom in the business of bedbug-busting. They say the outbreaks last year in popular clothing stores such as the Epic Hollister in SoHo and the Victoria’s Secret on the East Side were just the start.

They say New Yorkers shouldn’t let down their guards during the winter months, either.

“Bedbugs are 12-month bugs,” said Missy Henrickson, vice president of public affairs for National Pest Management Association.

“It got so bad it showed up everywhere and it carried into the winter. We were getting more calls than ever in the winter,” said Jeff Eisenberg, president of Pest Away Exterminator Inc. and author of “The Bedbug Survival Guide.”

Mr. Eisenberg predicts that the bedbug problem will be worse than ever this year. The problem has spread beyond the city, too.

“The suburbs of New York have been decimated,” he said.

Barry Beck, chief operating officer of Assured Environments, said bedbugs calls to his business lagged in the early part of this year because of a cold winter and spring. The reproductive cycle of bedbugs is faster in warmer months.

“With the heat and humidity, things have been ramping up quickly,” said Mr. Beck, adding that 80-degree temperatures are “heaven” for the blood-suckers.

Bites can cause a rash and potentially lead to a secondary infection, but serious health risks are not known. A Department of Health and Mental Hygiene spokeswoman said that “though bacteria can be isolated from the bodies of bedbugs, there is no evidence that these bacteria or the illnesses they could cause can be transmitted to people from a bedbug.”

Continue Reading More: NYC Bedbug Complaints Rise

7/1/2011 How To Protect Yourself Against Bedbugs This Summer

If you’re worried about encountering bed bugs this summer, or — poor you — you’re already coping with them, you’re in good company. One in five Americans has had bed bugs or knows someone who has, and 80 percent are afraid of encountering them in hotels, according to a survey by the National Pest Management Association. And for once, a public health panic is reasonably well-founded; bed bugs are indeed turning up in hot spots all over the country, with new infestations in major cities hitting the news with regularity.

I’ve been reporting on bed bugs for quite awhile. I’ve covered how to protect yourself from bed bugs when you travel, including a new spray product reputed to fend them off from hitching home in your luggage, and how to get rid of bed bugs if you are unfortunate enough to bring them home with you. I’ve even offered additional bed bug prevention tips for frequent travelers.  In fact, I’ve become something of a reluctant expert in the science of bed bugs and bed bug-prevention. So now I’m going to tell you what you really need to know about bed bugs that no one else is telling you.

1. Know Your Danger Spots. If your summer vacation is going to take you touring the National parks of the West or Southwest, you probably don’t have to take more than routine precautions against bed bugs. They really haven’t made it out to the hinterlands in great numbers yet. But if your summer travel is going to take you to a major cities, particularly one in the midwest or eastern seaboard, watch out. The list of contenders for the “top 10″ danger zones in constantly changing as new pest reports come in, but Cincinnati, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and, perhaps surprisingly, Denver and Los Angeles consistently make the list. Boston and Baltimore made a recent list issued by pest management company Terminix, which also included Dallas and San Francisco for the first time. Other midwestern cities with major bed bug problems include Dayton, Cleveland, and Columbus, Ohio (in fact the entire state of Ohio is under siege, according to pest management experts), Indianapolis, Minneapolis, and Louisville, Kentucky. Another list added Houston and Las Vegas to the list of western cities newly introduced to the bed bug disaster. (Thanks to Terminix, Orkin, and ChemtecPest for these lists.) If you want to know how bad bed bugs are in your summer vacation destination, look it up in the bed bug registry, which keeps up-to-date reports which can even be searched by hotel. Warning: gross-out factor high. Be aware, however, that you may be looking at reports from a year or more ago, in which case the particular hotel may have cleaned up its act.

3. Travel Prepared. The last thing you want to do is arrive and start worrying about bed bugs. Take the worry out of travel by bringing protective supplies, including plastic bags to store your clothes in (those air-lock travel bags do double-duty by making extra room in your suitcase, as well as keeping bugs out.) Don’t be tempted to hang your clothes in hotel closets or leave them strewn over chairs, unless you’re 100-percent certain the room’s bug free; bed bugs are now known to favor upholstered furniture and yes, they can climb walls. Put your suitcase on a luggage rack and pull it out from the wall. If you’re going to New York, Ohio, or anywhere else where bed bugs are known to be, well, practically everywhere, you ca also bring a household remedy reputed to keep them at bay. (No guarantees here.) These can include Vaseline, which some say you use to coat the legs and rails of the bed so the bugs can’t climb up, and an herbal spray, Rest Easy, that promises to repel bed bugs. I travel with it and spray it around the edges of my suitcase and all over the luggage rack, just in case. Or you can take the extreme measure being recommended by some and bathe the bed rails, headboard, and the edges of the mattresses in a mixture of rubbing alcohol and floor cleaner. (Seriously, people recommend this but it smells so vile you’re probably better off staying home.) When I come home from a trip, I wash everything I’ve brought with me and dry it in a hot dryer and leave my suitcase stored in a plastic garbage bag for two weeks, also with “just in case” in mind.

There’s a lot more to say about bed bugs, but I’ve probably disgusted you enough for one day. More posts to come, including how to get rid of bed bugs once you’ve got ‘em. Still excited about that summer vacation? Just kidding.

 Continue Reading More: How To Protect Yourself Against Bedbugs This Summer

6/16/2011 As The BedBug Problem Grows So Do The Issues: Landlords, Cities & Insurers Must Figure Out How To Deal With

An alarming invasion of bed bugs in homes, hotels, schools, hospitals and other facilities has led to a renewed call for lifting of a government ban on a pesticide once used to combat the bugs and moves in several states to require property/casualty insurers to cover the costs of clean-up.

The resurgence of the critters has also prompted renewed research into the best treatment and prevention methods.

Though around for centuries, by the mid-1900s bed bugs were almost completely eradicated in the U.S. due to a variety of pest control products used to treat infestations. Some now question whether this latest bed bug tipping point can be contained.

According to Missy Henriksen, vice president of the National Pest Management Association (NMPA), there are a variety of reasons for the dramatic increase in bed bugs, including increased travel and mobility of society. Other factors include changes in pest control, resistance towards pesticides, and changes in the pesticide application process.

The NPMA and the University of Kentucky studied what has been done on bed bugs to date. Released last summer, this study found that 95 percent of pest management professionals reported treating bed bugs in the past year. In 2000, that figure was below 25 percent.

“We also found as part of that, that bed bugs certainly aren’t just in beds any longer,” said Henriksen. “We’ve seen news stories that indicate that as well. Bed bugs are being found now in schools, in movie theaters, in office buildings, in hospitals and medical facilities, they are being found in cars. Anywhere where people are, you will find bedbugs. Bed bugs need people for their very survival. They are hitchhikers and they will travel with people on their belongings and take up residence in new locations.”

They are also in municipal buildings. Firefighters in Des Moines, Iowa last month called in a bed bug-sniffing dog that found bugs in an office, on two chairs, on stools and on four mattresses at Station No. 4. The firefighters, who eat and sleep at the station during their 24-hour shifts, said they worried about accidentally taking some of the little pests home.

Chemical Controversy

Last month, a two-family Ohio house was destroyed when a heater being used to kill bed bugs set a carpet on fire, according to officials. The exterminator blamed an equipment malfunction for the fire.

The fire renewed a controversy over the use of a pesticide, Propoxur, which has been successful in treating bed bugs. The product was taken off the market in 2006 by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because of health risks, including nausea and vomiting experienced during exposure to the product. The EPA says it is a danger to children’s nervous systems.

At a press conference in Ohio, Republican U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt and Democratic state Rep. Dale Mallor called on the EPA to solve the growing problem of bed bugs and allow Propoxur back on the market.

“The loss of this home, in my opinion, is the result of the EPA’s inaction to approve of a product that is effective at controlling the bedbugs,” Schmidt said.

Oho officials have twice requested an exemption for the state from the federal ban on Propoxur, but the EPA has thus far refused to grant the exemption.

Bed Bug Legislation

To address the issue, the federal government convened the second annual National Bed Bug Summit in Washington, D.C. in February. Part of the agenda included what states and cities are doing to control the problem and the effective use of heat and non-chemical treatments.

Eleven states are considering bed bug legislation this year. Maine adopted a bed bug related law last year. New York is considering requiring insurers that underwrite property/casualty policies in the state to cover costs associated with bed bug infestations.

Maine’s bed bug law requires a landlord to inspect a unit for bed bugs within five days of being notified by a tenant of an infestation possibility. Within 10 days of determining an infestation is present, the landlord must contact a pest control agent and take reasonable measures to treat the infestation. The pest control agent must carry liability insurance that is current and effective at time of treatment.

In addition, before a unit can be rented, a landlord has to disclose whether a unit is currently infested with or treated for bed bugs. The landlord has to provide, if requested, information as to when the unit or adjacent units were last inspected for and found to be free of bed bugs.

South Carolina enacted the Bed Bug Prevention and Sanitation Act and Hawaii added a bed bug question to the state’s real estate disclosure form.

Larger municipalities such as Detroit, San Francisco and New York City are also reviewing the issue.

Continue Reading More: As The Bedbug Problem Grows So Do The Issues

2/14/2011 Meet Lola: London’s Bedbug Sniffing Wonder Dog

I don’t like dogs as a rule. But as the Jack Russell is released from her cage into my hallway I’m pinning my hopes on her. “Run, Lola, run!” I whisper as she darts towards the living room. For this is a dog with special powers that I’m hoping can bring to an end a painful chapter in my life.

Lola was born on a farm in Wales two years ago, bought soon after by entrepreneur Mark Astley, and sent to America to get an education. After a few months at the made-up sounding National Entomology Scent Detection Canine Association, she started work in London’s hotels and homes. She has the distinction of being the only certified bedbug sniffer dog in Europe.

So how did this highly trained animal come to be rootling around my Tooting front room?

Back in September at the height of the panic in New York over a bedbug plague, I wrote a piece for the BBC. It was based on a survey of a thousand pest control firms suggesting that the bedbug problem was becoming, in the words of Missy Henriksen of America’s National Pest Management Association, a “bedbug pandemic”. The one ray of hope in all this apocalyptic talk was the arrival of Lola, who had begun working for Trust K9, the firm founded by Astley. But I never thought that a few months later I’d be asking for Lola’s help.

It was in December that I first started to itch. After a few days away over Christmas, I came back and the bites multiplied. Clearly whatever it was had been missing my blood. Soon the red marks turned to scabs, which bled at inconvenient moments. But still I wasn’t sure. Maybe it’s an allergy, fleas or something else, I thought.

“Go and get your Bs!” Astley commands Lola using their code – hotels don’t like clients hearing about bedbugs. On a lead she pulls her handler around the living room. Her white face with its splodge of brown around her right eye is the epitome of cuteness but her eagerness makes her resemble a Heathrow sniffer dog trying to impress a visiting Home Secretary. After a few minutes, Astley is satisfied. The room is clean. At this point he shows us what Lola would have done had she found something. He hides a vial of live bedbugs in the sofa when she’s not looking but within 15 seconds Lola has detected the smell, pounced, and is pawing deep under the cushion.
Where dogs win out over humans is in picking up an infestation early before visual clues such as blood spots appear. However, it’s not cheap, with a callout costing £275. But for hotels or people with large rambling homes, Lola makes sense.

“Dogs seem to be working well,” confirms Richard Moseley, technical manager at the British Pest Control Association (BPCA). “Of course it depends how well-trained the animal is but the benefit is it can check a large area in a short time with a minimum of pesticides.”

As Lola approaches my bedroom she arches her back and tugs at the lead. “From her behaviour there’s a lot of [bedbug] scent in this room,” Astley translates. She does a few laps of the bed, sniffs the skirting board, then leaps up onto the bed and buries her nose in the duvet. “Because you’ve had bugs in here for a while, the whole room smells of them. She’s trying to find the greatest source,” he explains.

Then Lola’s up by the pillows and pawing frantically between the mattress and headboard. Bingo! She doesn’t physically unearth a bug – her skill is to give a positive ID of the smell. “Good girl,” Astley shouts in a decent approximation of the late dog trainer, Barbara Woodhouse. Lola barks in triumph and leaps up to receive a handful of biscuity treats.

I’m relieved. You can put up with it for a while. But in the past month I’ve started to regard my bed with disgust. Then two weeks ago I found a bedbug in a clean T-shirt I was about to put on. It was light brown, wafer thin, and about the size of an apple pip. More and more my life seemed to be dominated by the little blighters. When I met my girlfriend’s father for the first time the other day he lifted up his shirt to show me the bites on his belly. As if acting out some primitive ritual, I responded by pointing out the scabs on my arm and neck. The following evening at the cinema there was so much scratching going on around me that it was hard to concentrate on the movie. I even happened to hear Radio 3 playing Shostakovich’s The Bedbug. “It sends people a little bit loopy,” agrees Astley. “And it breaks couples up. Often one of them is suffering more than the other and one says the other’s paranoid and it destroys things.”

The rest of the flat turns out to be clean. So where have these bugs come from? It could have been second-hand furniture, on our clothes or in a carrier bag. With rumours rife that the Tube is infested we decide to take Lola for a trip on the Northern line. When we board the train at Tooting Broadway a man is sleeping at the far end. He wakes bemused to see a Jack Russell sniffing the blue upholstery of the carriage. Lola appears to find something at the penultimate seat. It’s not conclusive proof this time, however. Astley says she’s a little hesitant and may be distracted by all the attention from the Standard’s photographer.

While one bedbug operative in the capital does put the blame squarely on the Northern line for outbreaks on its route through south London, a senior figure in the pest control industry who didn’t want to be named said the problem wasn’t confined to one section of the Tube network. “I’m aware of the Northern line having a problem but it’s not just one line, it’s the Piccadilly line, Central line and others as well. Just as with the outbreak in New York, anywhere like the Tube could transfer bedbugs on to people,” he said. He added that Transport for London had been made aware of specific outbreaks but had failed to give complainants evidence that it had taken action to resolve the problem.

According to the BPCA’s Moseley, bedbugs are known to inhabit aircraft seats and overhead lockers from where they can get into people’s luggage or clothing. The same was theoretically possible on the Tube, he said. Clive Boase, a British entomologist who runs the Pest Management Consultancy, urged people not to overreact: “I’m not saying there aren’t any bedbugs on the Tube but it’s far from common.” Pest control firm Bed-bugs.co.uk takes a more robust line in its literature and cites “public transport” as one of the most common sources of infestations. In the “Control Steps needed” for minimising the risk on public transport, it advises: “Do not sit down. Stand or get a shooting stick.”

It’s a relief to have my own bedbug problem confirmed. Astley can now prepare for the next stage – heat treatment, which costs an eye-watering £1,200 and involves moving everything on his proscribed list out of the affected room (including all food, plants, aerosols, old plasma TVs but not necessarily artwork). If you’re desperate, it may be worth it. For, unlike pesticides, which can take three weeks to kill the bugs, very high temperatures kill instantly. By the time you read this, my flat will be an oven-like 57 degrees Celsius thanks to three strategically placed heat exchangers. If all goes to plan, it’ll be roast bedbugs all round tonight. For the first time in a long while, I’m looking forward to getting into bed.

DON’T LED THE BEDBUGS BITE
The common bedbug (Cimex lectularius) feeds on blood, preferably human. It is mainly nocturnal and, since it takes 5-10 minutes to finish feeding, you are usually bitten while asleep. A single feed can sustain a bedbug for 5-10 days and it can go without food for months.
If carried into the home, a female can lay about 200 eggs over its lifetime, five or six eggs a day.

Be aware that bedbugs can live in carpets, sofas, skirting boards and picture frames. Don’t allow clutter to build up, particularly where you sleep. Don’t take in second-hand beds or mattresses.

Natural predators include ants, spiders, moths – and cockroaches.

Continue Reading More: Meet Lola London’s Bedbug Sniffing Wonder Dog

1/14/11 New BedBug Study: One in Five Americans Have Been Infested Or Know Someone Who Has With Bedbugs

NEW YORK — One in five Americans has either had an experience with bedbugs themselves or knows someone who has and a majority say the tiny blood-suckers are a source of worry for them, according to a new survey.

Seventy eight percent of respondents were most concerned about infested hotels, while others said they were wary of picking them up at work, at the doctor’s, at the movie theater or on public transportation.

“I was surprised just how pervasive the problem is,” said Missy Henriksen, a vice president at the National Pest Management Association, which commissioned the online survey of 504 adults.

Bedbugs, which are about the size of a grain of rice and flat-shaped, like to nestle in furniture and bedding upholstery and are notoriously difficult to get rid of.

Exterminators use powerful chemicals to rid apartments of bugs, an invasive process that forces tenants to temporarily move out.

Young renters who live in cities are most vulnerable to bedbugs, the survey showed.

Some respondents said they changed their routines to minimize the likelihood of encountering the bug.

A quarter of respondents have checked a hotel room for bedbugs and 12 percent have changed or canceled travel plans for fear of the pest. Others said they checked second-hand furniture and store dressing rooms.

Having a bedbug infested home can also hurt people’s social lives. A third of respondents said they would not invite friends who had the infestation into their homes, as people can carry bedbugs around on their clothing.

But the poll also found wide-spread misinformation about bedbugs. Nearly half believed, incorrectly, that bedbugs transmit disease to humans and more than a quarter thought they are more common in lower income households and dirty homes.

“The truth is that bedbugs do not discriminate in regard to cleanliness, nor do they prefer one socio-economic class to another,” Henriksen said.

“Bedbugs are found in penthouses and five-star hotels as well as in low-income housing and budget motels.”

Continue Reading More: New BedBug Study: 1 in 5 Americans Have Been Infested