http://www.beyondpesticides.org/infoservices/pesticidesandyou/Winter06-07/bedbugs.pdfhttp://www.npmapestworld.org/events/conferenceProceedings/BedBugsCanada.cfm
Okay, so no one wants to even talk about this subject but we have to. Bed Bugs are a fact of life nowadays. Whether it's because they stopped using DDT or because people are traveling more (i.e. Olympics) or because they are becoming resilient to other residuals, the Bedbug problems is everyone's problem. One suggest is that 70% of people do not react to bedbug bites, some studies suggest 90% . This info was gathered from this report. (Hands-On: Developing an Action Plan for Your Facility- Bedbugs- New Approaches to an old bug)
Education is the only solution. So I ask you please to watch these presentations that were presented at the Bed Bug Symposium 2010 - Canada Conference Proceedings.
Bed Bugs in the Hospitality Industry and Multi-unit housing:Basic Biology and the Important Role it Plays in Gaining the Upper Hand
Gail M. Getty, M.S.University of California, Berkeley
LANDLORD CHALLENGESIN MANAGING THE BEDBUG PROBLEM
Canadian Federation of Apartment Associations
November 2010
TRAC Presentation toBed Bug Symposium 2010
November 4 and 5, 2010
What You Really Need to Know About Bed Bugs…Control Options and Strategies -Brett Johnston, BA,General Manager, Canadian Pest Control Ltd. November 3 &4, 2010 brett@canadianpest.com
Bed Bug Dogs: How They Work-Marcos Michelet Peter Steinfort
“Vegas” Bed Bug Symposium 2010, K9 Presentation,November 4th, 2010
Hands-On: Developing an Action Plan for Your Facility- Bedbugs- New Approaches to an old bug
These images are from the pdf above and paint the true picture of this problem.
From the Dirt Doctor- Howard Garrett
Bedbug Pesticides are Toxic
Bed Bugs
Bed Bugs - Organic Removal
This is posted on
How to kill bed bugs Organically from Pam (Radio Listener)
Eradicating a bed bug infestation organically requires a methodical and disciplined approach. It will take up to twelve days depending upon the level of infestation and many life cycles. Bed bug eggs take a week to twelve days to hatch. Bed bugs live in—beds of course, fabrics, furniture crevices and even in the baseboards. When you are first discovering that you have them night time is your friend.
Go into the infested room late at night with a flashlight and examine the previous mentioned spots where they are emerging to find a food source. This will give you a better idea of what you are up against. Also, go online and do a little research to understand the bed bug’s life cycle, residue they leave behind, and what they look like at all stages of life. Getting rid of them is a multi-tiered process.
Here is a step-by-step process on how to get rid of them using non-toxic methods.
1. Select a staging area for all the items in the infested room and closets, because you are basically moving everything out. Select an outdoor covered patio, or a garage, so you don’t contaminate another area of the house. If it is wintertime or summertime, outdoors would be best because you can utilize the extreme temperatures to aid in killing the pests.
2. Get a box of black construction trash bags and take into the infested room. Begin packing every item into trash bags so you can safely transport things to the staging area. Start with bedding, then clothing, then stuffed animals, then books, decorative items, etc. Move everything out. Leave the bed and heavy furniture in the room for the time being. You will treat the bedding in the room and you don’t want to potentially contaminate the rest of the house transporting the large items outside.
3. Start doing laundry. Depending upon how much you have, this could take days. Take a bag, one at a time from the staging area into the laundry room and carefully load the items into the washing machine. Roll up the contaminated trash bag and immediately put in outside trash bin. Every item of fabric needs to be washed and dried on HOT. Delicates may need to go into the Dry Cleaner or stored in the bag for a full month and then you can wash them. As each load is completed, fold items and put into a clean black trash bag. Seal, and stage all of the cleaned items in a separate staging area way from infested room and contaminated items.
4. As the laundry process continues, begin de-contaminating the infected room. The more of the following procedures and processes you can do, the better. It is suggested to do the processes multiple times over the coming 12 days, because the bugs need to be killed at all life cycles.
I found bed bug residue in the crevasses of drawers, so that is where I started. Remove all drawers, place each in a trash bag and move to staging area. Leave chests and shelving in place. Spray and wipe down each piece of remaining wood furniture and shelves with orange oil or another organic bug killer, focusing on cracks, crevices, especially on the inside where the drawers reside. Spray baseboards, especially if they are not sealed or caulked.
5. Rent or buy a steam cleaner and steam clean the carpet. You can add an organic pesticide into the solution if you want, but the heat, soap and suction should get most of them. Also purchase allergen bedding encasements for the mattress and the box spring. Encasements are sold in most bedding departments for people allergic to dust mites. Bed bugs are bigger than dust mites, so they won’t get in or out. Buy new pillows and toss the old ones. If you love your pillows and refuse to do away with them, buy encasements for them as well.
6. Don’t install the encasements right away. Stand up the mattress and box spring against the wall and steam clean, using the hand attachment. Also with the attachment, go along the baseboards between the molding and carpet.
7. As you are waiting for the carpeting and bedding to dry and continuing with the laundry, begin working on the other items in black bags in staging area. Everything needs to be wiped down with orange oil solution or another organic pesticide of your choice. Now is a good time to downsize and minimize! Maybe you don’t need all of those knickknacks in that room. Also, if there is something that can’t be wiped down for some reason or other, keep it in the bag, in the staging area for at least 2 weeks, or put it in the freezer for 24 hours, if it fits. Once you have decontaminated an item, move it methodically to the second staging area – the clean room.
8. When the carpet is thoroughly dry, dust the carpet, especially around the baseboards with Diatomaceous Earth, and rake it in. Let it sit for a day and then vacuum thoroughly. You can/should repeat one or both of the steam cleaning and the DE process in a day or two, because there may be un-hatched eggs. In fact I followed up my soap/orange oil steam cleaning with a steam cleaning using a cup of white vinegar per gallon. I feel that the change in pH made the carpet inhospitable to the eggs or larvae.
9. Every night, go into the infected room frequently to observe the bed bug activity. The residual bugs will be active, looking for a food source and you will see them. Spray any active bugs that you see. It would also be wise to create a barrier at the doorway with a thick line of DE. The bed bugs might actually try to travel out of the room. This happened to me. On the third or fourth night along the baseboards, there was a small trail of vagabond bedbugs moving from carpeted bedroom into the ceramic hallway. At that point they were an easy target, since they move so slowly. Where did they come from? I think they were hiding between the baseboards and the carpet, which is very difficult area to treat thoroughly.
10. As soon as you have treated the mattress and box spring to your satisfaction, cover each with one of the dust mite mattress enclosures and zip it up. If there are any bugs still alive or hatching, they will be unable to emerge. Continue to leave the bed in the room and examine every night to see if bed bugs are actually on the outside trying to find their way in. Keep a vacuum in the room at this point to vacuum up any strays that you may see at night, and vacuum the floor once or twice a day. Change the bag, or vacuum up the DE into the bag to kill the bugs inside the bag.
11. Take your time with this whole process because rushing through may cause you to miss a few bugs in the egg state, and then in a few months they will have multiplied and you then have to repeat this process over again. You surely don’t want to do that again. As painful as it may be for the resident of the infected room to be without their space, it would be best to wait 10 to 12 days before moving things back in. At the very least, wait until you observe two consecutive nights with no activity near the bed, baseboards and existing furniture.
12. Here’s the upside. While you have the rooms cleaned out and are waiting to move things back in, consider giving it a fresh coat of paint! That is what we did, and it was the silver lining to the whole process. We got rid of the bugs and ended up with a room that was very clean and de-cluttered.
Having bedbugs can certainly be a nightmare, but you don’t have to spend a couple thousand dollars with a pest control company and expose your family to all of those toxins which are not guaranteed to work. Take a deep breath, don’t panic, take your time, do it yourself, and do it safely.
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Bedbugs are making a comeback
Once thought to be eradicated from North America, the legendary little pests known as bed bugs have been making an unwelcome comeback in hotels and homes. Lest you think bed bugs are relegated to fleabag motels, they have been spotted in the posher locales as well.
What Are Bed Bugs?
Bed bugs are the common name for Cimex lectularius, a reddish-brown, oval-shaped insect that can grow to a quarter of an inch long. Bed bugs are wingless and survive by sucking blood from a host animal, preferably a human.Why Are They Called Bed Bugs?
Bed bugs commonly hide in mattresses, carpets, behind peeling paint or wallpaper, and in crevices in wooden furniture (like in the cracks of the wooden headboard of a bed). Bugs are nocturnal and typically bite people while they sleep in an infested bed. Bugs are usually active just before dawn.Why Are Bed Bugs Reappearing?
Bed bugs were once all but eradicated with broad-spectrum pesticides such as DDT, which killed a wide variety of bug types. Concerns about health and the environment led to many of these pesticides being removed from the market. Today, pest control methods are more focused, designed to kill a particular species (like cockroaches). Bed bugs, since they are not specifically being targeted, are slipping through the cracks.Where Did Bed Bugs Come From?
Bed bugs travel surprisingly well, and are quite comfortable stowing away in luggage and even clothing. The bugs are increasingly found hiding in beds, upholstered furniture and behind baseboards in urban hotels in America. Since they tend to stow away and travel with humans, any place that sees a number of world travelers is susceptible. Pilots, wealthy people, and business travelers can bring bed bugs along unwittingly.What Can You Do to Avoid Bed Bugs?
Look around. Bed bugs are large enough to see. Look particularly under the mattress and in the seams, in and around the bed frame, and along any cracks or peeling paint in the wall or picture frames. Check for bed bugs in the cracks of any wooden furniture, particularly antiques. You can also spot droppings from bed bugs, which may be tinged with blood.What Should You Do if You Are Bitten by Bed Bugs?
Bed bugs bite exposed skin and leave behind small, red, itchy welts. The good news? Bed bugs are not generally thought to transmit any diseases. The damage is more emotional than physical.By Charlyn Keating Chisholm,
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Bedbug Newsletter
Got Bedbug-Don't Panic
Few pests evoke as much terror as the bed bug, and a recent resurgence across the U.S. has homeowners and apartment dwellers taking desperate measures to eradicate the tenacious bloodsuckers, with some relying on dangerous pesticides and fly-by-night exterminators.
These measures pose more dangers than any perceived short-term benefit. While there is no magic bullet solution to bed bug eradication, there are many ways in which they can be effectively controlled without the use of dangerous chemical pesticides. Bed bugs can be controlled through a comprehensive treatment strategy that incorporates a variety of structural and mechanical methods, vigilant monitoring, sanitation and non-chemical and least-toxic treatments. To solve the bed bug problem nationwide, it will take a comprehensive public health campaign — public-service announcements, travel tips and perhaps even government-sponsored integrated pest management (IPM) programs for public housing and other high density areas. Read more here at Beyond Pesticides http://www.beyondpesticides.org/infoservices/pesticidesandyou/Winter06-07/bedbugs.pdf
Let's work together and educate people, because unfortunately this is everyone's problem.
