KNOCKOUT – On February 2nd, 2011 Arthur Katz responded to Ralph Gardner Jr. at the Wall Street Journal – THE MEDIA SHOULD STOP SCARING PEOPLE AND BE MORE RESPONSIBLE REGARDING BED BUGS!

February 28, 2011

RE: URBAN GARNER
Friday, January 28, 2011
Sniffing Out Tiny Terrorists

Mr. Ralph Gardner Jr.,

If it weren’t for the fact that bed bugs primarily infest our beds and crawl over us while we sleep, bed bugs and their parasitic nature would have been relegated to that of mosquitoes. And maybe even less because, unlike mosquitoes, bed bugs don’t transmit diseases, (like West Nile Disease and Malaria that kill over 2,000 people a day – the most that bed bugs do is give you “the willies”). But as you pointed out in your 01/28/11 article bed bugs have been given a position in society as an embarrassment and something to be ashamed of, the dirty little secret that no one should discover you may have in your home. It’s this attitude, and unfortunately an attitude further promoted by the media, and yes, your article as well, (your referring to bed bugs as: “terrorists”, “bogeymen”, “bloodthirsty”, “small pox”, “horrible”, and quoting a so called professional saying “Give me mice, rats, roaches, whatever compared to bedbugs”) that prevents people who have a bed bug problem from letting people know that “they” have a bed bug problem. As an owner of a professional pest management and control company since 1975, I have seen my share of bed bug infestations, and have witnessed firsthand the resurgence of bed bugs in the NY Metro area over the past 10 years. The major problem as I see it is – people are afraid to tell anybody that they have bed bugs.

Because of this taboo and almost phobic fear, people try to deal with a bed bug problem in secret, all by themselves. They use ineffective over the counter pesticides that do nothing but irritate the bed bugs, so bed bugs spread further into a home, or migrate into other spaces, like the connecting apartments, or the bed bugs will hide in a handbag and thereby hitch a ride to the office, school, a retail store, or a theater.

Then the news media talks about the enormous expense in treating bed bugs, making the public believe further that dealing with bed bugs is always a catastrophic expense, in the multiple of thousands of dollars. Then, the media picks on the most elaborate means of eradicating bed bugs from a home – the use of heat, thermal, remediation. The process of heating an entire apartment or house is probably the most ineffectual means of killing bed bugs. But tenting an entire house and raising the temperatures to a degree hot enough to require the removal of pets, plants, and plastics sure makes news. Unfortunately, bed bugs aren’t a couple of lobsters trapped in a pot of water slowly rising to a boil. Bed bugs usually just walk out of the heated areas. They either hide in wall voids or make it to another apartment or basement where the heat never reaches the necessary 130 degrees or so for the minimum 45 minutes. For an inner wall space to reach 130 degrees the open space can hit an amazing 150 to 180 degrees, and that can take a day or more. Expensive and in almost all cases not necessary. But boy, hearing about this huge “production” and hardship on the homeowner in time, having to stay somewhere else, and finding a place to put the pets, and maybe coming home to see all the plants died. That’s a good news story, but it doesn’t help the public get the real story and help deal with the growing bed bug epidemic.

The press and you write about these amazing certified bed bug detection dogs, we use them and were one of the first in New York that did, but we use them not only to determine if bed bugs are located in a space, but also for the dogs to pin point an area to treat. If the dog detects bed bugs in a bedroom mattress and a nightstand, we aren’t going to treat an entire apartment. We treat the bedroom and focus on that area. If it’s two rooms, we’ll treat the two rooms. Bed bug detection dogs work just like drug detection dogs. If a drug dogs says, “it’s in the trunk”, the police aren’t going to remove all the door panels. That’s why we use the dogs; to limit the areas of concern.

But we don’t only rely on the dogs; we perform visual inspections as well. The professional training pest management technician’s get allows them to expertly inspect a location and identifying the bed bugs favorite nooks ‘n crannies. We are familiar with the bed bug’s behavior. And when we visibly see them we manually remove them before we use any other extermination techniques.

I also keep reading that the discontinuation of pesticides like DDT are the reason for the rise in bed bug infestations, some of that may be true, but the primary reasons, besides the social stigma and code of silence, is also because people don’t vacuum as much as they used to. It may sound silly but it has merit. We use Hepa Vacuums to remove large areas of bed bug infestation. Vacuums work great on removing nymphs and adult bed bugs. More and more people are using these static dust mops these days, and at the most it just pushes around an errant bed bug, that’s made it into a home, into another area. A good strong vacuuming does a very good job of eliminating bed bugs, even when you don’t see them.

What the WSJ and other media also keep reporting on is the resistance bed bugs are developing. I can attest to that first hand from the field, but insects developing resistances to pesticides is nothing new. Pest control professional have been dealing with this ongoing problem, like doctors are always coming up with new antibiotics, the pest control industry is coming up with more innovative and effective ways to kill our bugs and pests. With the added move to be green and environmentally responsible the industry has moved to thermal elimination approaches. The media dwells on the heat treatments, that’s big and turns someone’s whole world upside down, and it really makes news. Like when the Today Show showed somebody’s home in New Jersey getting their entire house treated with heat, only to have the pest control company to come back twice to treat for the bed bugs that escaped the heat. What the media seems to keep avoiding is the thermal remediation on the other scale of the thermostat. Cold Freezing cold with CO2. It’s extremely fast and effective. CO2 kills bed bugs crystallizing them in nano seconds. Bed bug eggs, nymphs, adults; bed bugs in all stages in their life cycle. CO2 not only works fast, but it dissipates almost immediately. Plants and pets aren’t affected. The CO2 reaches into cracks, floor boards, spaces in molding, inner wall spaces, and bed frame joints. This freezing process is even safe to use on unplugged electronics like clock radios and computers. Offices love having us use CO2 on office spaces, killing bed bugs hiding in computer monitors and CPUs.And CO2 is a whole lot cheaper than heating an entire house.

Finally, no qualified pest control professional would finish treating a bed bug problem without putting into place a few follow-up bed bug detection devices and offering the customer some preventative measures. The bed bugs got into the home somehow and from somewhere. Work, from a subway ride, on clothing from a store, maybe the bed bugs got through a wall space from a next door neighbor, because they didn’t properly treat their bed bug problem, for whatever reason, a bed bug treatment should end with the following: (1) Instruct he customer on all of the ways to be vigilant about preventing a bed bug infestation problem. (2) Place “Bed Bug Climb-Up Interceptors” under the legs of a bed and furniture that may have had bed bugs. This traps bed bugs that may have been missed. It doesn’t kill them, but traps them so that the customer can know if he/she has to call the pest control company back. Serious bed bug infestations can take 2 visits to eliminate the problem, or reveal the vector of the recurrence of a bed bug infestation. (3) If the bed was the primary site, the mattress and box spring should be encased, but for added protection and peace of mind, we suggest the addition of a product called Active Guard. Active Guard is a product from Europe that was just approved for use in the US. These liners actually kill bed bugs not just encase them. If more people take preventative measures there would be much less bed bug problems. (4) We also do offer heat remediation, but in a much smaller and more applicable approach. We suggest that especially frequent travelers who stay at many hotels to purchase a Bed Bug Hot Box. These bed bug hot boxes, like PackTite are nylon framed boxes that are large enough to place luggage within, (or a backpack, or shoes, or pillows, or purses, or clothes, or toys, or whatever), and they zipper closed so nothing can escape. The hot box uses a thermostat and an automatic timer. The hot box also folds down for storage. Hundreds of New Yorkers have purchased these Bed Bug Hot Boxes from us as a precautionary measure to taking public transit and returning from a trip.

Bottom line, sure this e-mail is indeed long; but maybe not long enough. I’m just tired of the media talking about bed bugs as being indestructible and playing on all the fears people have about bed bugs. New York City and the federal government hold summits on bed bugs; one is going on today in Washington DC. Then there are the disreputable companies selling worthless over the counter remedies, and others prey on fears plastering gigantic images of these tiny insects to make them even larger than life. Bed bugs are disgusting; no argument. But having bed bugs isn’t the end of world. If detected early, it doesn’t have to be that expensive. If more people called a qualified pest control professional experienced in eliminating bed bugs and not relying on a building superintendent to “quietly” handle the issue this bed bug epidemic just might be halted and maybe even brought back to 1940 numbers. Will that impact my pest control business? Yeah, but with termites, roaches, mice, rats, and the latest stinkbugs, I’m busy enough.

If you would like to contact me and arrange to accompany me and some of my field pest control technicians on a bed bug infestation call, please feel free to e-mail me, or call me at 1.800.244.7378 or on my cell. I’d be more than happy to make the arrangements and enlighten you on the subject of bed bugs and pest control & management.

Thank you for your indulgence.

Sincerely,
Arthur Katz
President
Knockout Pest Control

Comments

COMMENT BY:  Ellen Leibman – 03/05/11

Kudos! You could not have hit the proverbial nail on the head better than with this blog posting. I too am sick and tired of the press blowing bed bugs out of proportion. This past week I have begun to suspect that I may have bed bugs and I thought the world might be coming to an end. Bed bugs in my house? Never! But it may be true. Thanks to finding your blog on the internet I feel much better now about the possibility that I may have bed bugs. As a native New Yorker all my life I’ve dealt with roaches and the occasional mouse. You are 100% correct that if those decided to crawl over me while I slept they’d be up there with bed bugs. I think the media is being highly irresponsible with creating such a fervor about bed bugs instead of being the voice of rational thinking. Overall bed bugs have not been consuming the news these days but I suspect that the horror stories will soon return. I guess when they are through with exploiting Charlie Sheen and it’s a quite news day the stories about those nasty indestructible bed bugs will return. Thank you for returning me to my sanity. I now know to simply tell my landlord and make sure that he knows what to do and who to call. A professional exterminator experienced in finding and killing bed bugs.

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