Avoid bed bug infestation this summer
Posted on June 11, 2008
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Have any travel plans? Well, these unwelcome travelers can very easily find their way from your hotel room to your luggage to your home if you don’t take some precautions.
Here are some tips we stumbled upon on the Web:
Survey for signs of an infestation, such as dark brown or red spots on sheets.
Lift and look for all bed bug hiding spots, including the mattress, headboard and furniture. Bed bugs are nocturnal and tend to hide near their food source—you!
Elevate your belongings on a luggage rack away from the bed and wall, where bed bugs often hide behind headboards, picture frames and electrical outlet panels.
Examine your luggage while repacking and when you return home. Remember, bed bugs are only 3/16 of an inch and can easily fit in cracks and crevices.
Professionals can treat these resilient pests, which are extremely difficult to kill and can survive extreme temperatures.
Bed Bugs Forcing Denver Apartment Residents to Move Out
Posted on June 11, 2008
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Denver’s Environmental Health Department says they have had complaints about bugs there for more than two years.
The property is owned by Shockor Management and is telling tenants they will spray once again this week. But the bugs don’t seem to be going away.
That has prompted many to move out, leaving many of their couches and bedding in the garbage.
“I never would have moved in had I known about the bugs,” said Jackie Howe. “I have only been here two months and have had to face not only the bugs but a fire last week in which none of the buildings smoke detectors went off. This is too much I am not up for unhealthy living conditions.”
The City says they know about the history of complaints and says that every time the owners are citied, they comply and spray as they will again this week.
What is unanswered is why the spraying isn’t killing the bed bugs.
Bed Bug Bites
Posted on June 11, 2008
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University of New South Wales computer scientist Tim Lambert, desperately trying to salvage at least some credibility, goes on the offensive:
Since I’ve been critical of Glenn Reynolds, Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt it’s no surprise that all three linked to this post where JF Beck links to lot of his own posts, claims that I’ve made lots of errors and accuses me of lying. So Reynolds, Blair and Bolt linked to Beck, with Bolt declaring:
JF Beck does something very embarrassing to global warming alarmist Tim Lambert.
It is, of course, Reynolds, Blair and Bolt who should be embarrassed for linking to Beck’s post without bothering to check if any of it was true. And Beck’s claims fall apart under the slightest bit of examination.
Lambert then proceeds to nit-pick my post, earning high praise from Ken Parish:
Tim Lambert ably defends himself on scientific grounds against a concerted attack by anti-science RWDB “heavyweights”. … Blair and Bolt might be heavyweights in audience size terms, but in intellectual terms neither of them could power a flashlight globe. Or perhaps it’s more wilful stupidity than lack of capacity.
Let’s take a look at the “able defence” from intellectual heavyweight Lambert.
My post cites 24 examples of significant Lambert errors, many of them unacknowledged. Of these 24 errors Lambert questions the validity of only 3.
1. Lambert continues to insist that the word “toady” is abusive. The word itself is not abusive and my use of the word (in commenting at Deltoid) was not abusive. It is childish of Lambert to insist that I abused his commenters – toady might be a bit harsh I’ll admit, but his commenters should be able to handle it considering some of the treatment they dish out: toady is no more harsh than “troll’, which is regularly applied to any commenter who doesn’t toe the Deltoid line.
2. Lambert defends Brent Herbert’s supposed “DDT myth” debunking. He does this by attempting to show that I’m wrong about bed bugs’ development of DDT resistance. As evidence of my error Lambert cites a 1948 journal article: Johnson, M. S. and Hill, A. J. (1948). Partial resistance of a strain of bed bugs to DDT residuals. Med. News Letter., 12, 26-28. Unfortunately, Lambert neither links to nor quotes from the article so it’s impossible to determine the scope and significance of bed bugs’ DDT resistance. Hey, maybe I am wrong about the resistance issue, but that doesn’t make Herbert’s overall DDT writing accurate. Here’s the lead to the Herbert post Lambert links to:
Media stories about bed bugs are found to be full of disinformation, which is a sign of either lazy reporters not seeking out enough sources, or a disinformation campaign being launched by the chemical lobby which does not want to be blamed for an environmental disaster, such as a plague of pesticide resistant bed bugs.
As I noted back then:
Contrary to Herbert’s claims, the MSM is hardly saturated with pro-DDT articles. A Google News search for “bed bugs” and “DDT” revealed a total of eight articles, with only one being pro-DDT.
Herbert responds:
I have done my own google news search, and found, much to my shocked surprise, that every single pro DDT story has now been pulled off the web. [Beck] reports that he found eight stories. Now only three remain, only one of which is pro-DDT. So I see that people have been busy pulling those stories, since they obviously were embarrassed by my post on Indymedia. Never let it be said that one person cannot make a difference, or that Indymedia does not matter, since apparently it does.
With this from a Herbert commenter:
It is interesting to note that, even though we have a pesticide resistant bed bug on the loose in the country, there are no media stories to be found when one does a search for the news about the pesticide resistant bed bug. You get zero results when you do a news search.
Now one must ask why this is true and one must also ask what this means. Why avoid an obvious angle on the story?
The answer is that the media is itself a large multinational corporation, and the chemical industry is a large corporate interest as well, and so therefore no news can come through to us until it has first been run through a giant corporate sieve. For this reason the media reports that ‘no one knows why suddenly we have a spreading plague of bed bugs.’ This is strange. Should not someone be asking questions so that we can find out why this is so, for to every question there is an answer.
So these two geniuses immediately assume the “missing” DDT stories were pulled as part of a corporate conspiracy not realising that Google had simply archived the stories. Relying on sources like Herbert does nothing for Lambert’s credibility.
3. Lambert disputes my claim that he is wrong about DDT being the WHO’s insecticide of choice as of 1994. Here’s his original claim:
The fact is that until 1994, DDT was the WHO’s insecticide of choice for malaria vector control.
Lambert sources the date to a 1994 journal article by C. F. Curtis, who writes:
The World Health Organization and many malariologists argued strongly that the ban should not be extended to its use against DDT-susceptible malaria vectors. W.H.O. (1984) recommended DDT as the insecticide of choice for such vectors. … the author considers that DDT should no longer be recommended as the insecticide of choice for malaria vector control.
The journal article is an opinion piece and everything Curtis writes about DDT is questionable because he was a WWF anti-DDT activist. Maybe DDT was still the anti-malaria insecticide of choice as of 1994; if so, Lambert needs to find and link to a primary source proving it.
In his post Lambert also nit-picks me for linking to my own posts in making my points about his errors. I purposely linked to my earlier posts whenever possible because it’s standard operating procedure at Deltoid; Lambert habitually self-links because sifting through multiple layers of old posts makes it difficult for his readers to judge the veracity of his claims.
Notwithstanding any errors I might have made in any of my earlier Lambert posts, Lambert has made significant errors he refuses to own up to, none of which he has denied or even commented on. I therefore challenge Lambert to address the following:
- Did you not claim that Eritrea’s anti-malaria program produced dramatic results by switching away from DDT? Is it not true that Eritrea’s DDT use actually increased during the period in question?
- Did you not say that malathion was the appropriate insecticide for use in Sri Lanka following the Boxing Day tsunami, when, in fact, it was already known that Sri Lanka’s mosquitoes are malathion resistant? (Did you not post and then remove a correction to the post making the erroneous claim? Why did you do that?)
- Did you not offer this document as proof that the WHO supports DDT use (within the context of your post) when the document doesn’t even mention DDT?
- Did you not erroneously claim that the book Fighting the Diseases of Poverty claims that DDT is banned when the book makes no such claim?
- Did you not say Tim Flannery never said that melting ice could raise sea level by 80 meters? Didn’t you provide as proof a quote that wasn’t from Flannery but was represented as such?
- Did you not say that USAID supported anti-malaria programs using DDT when USAID was, in fact, under attack for refusing to fund DDT use?
- Did you not erroneously claim that Africa Fighting malaria wanted to prevent bed net use?
- Did you not erroneously accuse Bjorn Lomborg of claiming DDT is banned?
- Did you not say that Rachel Carson never claimed that DDT was developed as part of chemical weapons program when she clearly suggested that it was?
- Did you not deem respected journalist Fred Pearce to have written “the usual Rachel Carson killed millions crap” in a New Scientist article that was actually nicely balanced in its treatment of DDT and malaria? (And is this not somewhat nastier than me calling you commenters “toadies”?)
- Did you not remove the numbered note from the end of this quote from A DDT FAQ brochure? “WHO recommends indoor residual spraying of DDT for malaria vector control.” Why did you do that? Is it reasonable to expect that the WHO promulgates DDT use policy in FAQ brochures?
- Did you not claim that DDT did not play a significant role in reducing malaria in South Africa when South African government officials say that it did?
- Is it not threatening when an EU official tells Ugandans that only DDT contamination will result in agricultural import bans but adds the caveat that mere DDT use might prompt European consumer groups to boycott Uganda’s agricultural produce?
- Why do you refuse to post some of my comments?
- Why do you flee whenever I try to discuss DDT issues with you?
I’m not holding my breath until Lambert admits to his errors and misrepresentations. I am honoured, however, to join Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt and Glenn Reynolds as a victim of a Lamberting.
Bedbugs bedevil Danbury senior housing complex
Posted on June 11, 2008
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By Robert Miller Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 06/10/2008 06:18:54 AM EDT
DANBURY — The outbreak of bedbugs that has hit the city in the past year or two has spread in Ives Manor, the 98-unit elderly housing complex on Main Street.
Carolyn Sistrunk, executive director of the Danbury Housing Authority, said Monday the complex had a problem with the bugs in 2007 and spent about $17,000 to get rid of them.
“They were here in the fall,” Alex Sixbey, one of the tenants at Ives Manor said Monday. “It took a lot of work — by the exterminators and by me — to get rid of them.”
But Sistrunk said the bedbugs returned. While last year’s outbreak was confined to Ives Manor’s fourth floor, they may have popped up elsewhere in the building.
“We’re going to treat the entire building,” she said.
Carolyn Cutler, who has lived in city housing for about 20 years, moved to Ives Manor more than four years ago and lives on the fourth floor. Last fall, she said, the pests showed up in her apartment.
In recent weeks “I found one on my sheets,” she said. “I’m changing my sheets twice a day. I’ve never seen them before. I don’t want to put up with this.”
Sistrunk said Ives Manor hired Amtech, a local exterminating company that is getting increasing experience in fighting bedbugs, to do the work. The company has even purchased a beagle trained to sniff out bedbugs to help its staff find the vermin.
The initial contract for the work is about $9,000, Sistrunk said.
Richard Monastero, Amtech’s president, said Monday for the foreseeable future people
should consider bedbugs an ongoing problem, not a one-time thing.
“Roaches are ongoing,” he said. “Bedbugs will be ongoing.”
Bedbugs are now resistant to most of the insecticides on the market. Exterminators — who stopped fighting them in the 1950s, when they seemed to be eradicated in the U.S. — have had to learn anew how to deal with them.
Bedbugs are a worldwide epidemic in recent years, showing up in the United States, Europe, Australia, Mexico, and Central and South America. World travelers can inadvertently get bugs in their luggage and bring them home.
The bugs have invaded luxury hotels, dorm rooms and housing complexes. Although lentil-size, they are as flat as a piece of paper and expert at hiding in cracks and crevices.
Bedbugs multiply rapidly — a females lays five eggs a day, and as many as 500 in a lifetime — and can spread vertically, up and down through different floors of apartment complexes, as well as down the halls.
Monastero, of Amtech, said a building like Ives Manor, which has many small apartments filled with seniors’ belongings, is a good place for bedbugs to spread. “They like clutter.”
Sistrunk said elderly housing complexes in Bridgeport, Stamford and Hartford have had outbreaks.
Sistrunk said the Housing Authority was able to track down who brought the bedbugs to Ives Manor.
“We had one resident, who is no longer in Ives Manor, who moved in with a mattress that had them,” she said.
Since then the authority has encouraged tenants to report any problems with the bugs.
“Some tenants are embarrassed,” Sistrunk said. “But for us to treat them, they’ve got to tell us when they show up.”
Contact Robert Miller
at bmiller@newstimes.com
or at (203) 731-3345.
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