Waltham services Pest and Termite Control Since 1893
Bed bug business booming
August 30, 2010
(NECN: Peter Howe, Melrose, Mass.) It's just the latest of a string of locations in New England visited recently by a most unwelcome visitor: The C.J. McCarthy apartments on Main Street in this small city north of Boston, where officials estimate half the units are now infested with bed bugs.
After being largely wiped out during the environmental bad old days of DDT in the 1940s and 1950s, bed bugs have been making a resurgence, and some scientists estimate in the 2000s alone, the U.S. population of bed bugs has jumped by 500 percent. What's helped is how much the human beings on whom they ride travel around.
And while the economy sputters, one business sector that's booming in New England this summer is bed bug control.
"Just this morning alone, I've gotten five calls just for bed bug work,'' said Manuel daRocha, owner of Guardian IPM Pest Control in Marblehead, Mass. He is so busy, working seven-day weeks, he's hoping to hire two more employees. "They're spreading around all over the place,'' daRocha said.
At Waltham Services in Waltham, entomologist Richard Berman said, "We're getting bed bug calls virtually every day of the week, and it's just amazing that this thing has just exploded.'' He says homeowners and cleaners need to learn how to recognize the bugs -- about the size of sesame seeds -- and the stains they leave on bedding and sheets as they excrete the blood they suck out of sleeping victims.
While the thought of bed bugs is revolting to many, Berman stresses, an infestation is not necessarily anything to be ashamed of or a reflection on your housekeeping. He says he has found bed bugs in all kinds of homes in all kinds of neighborhoods, high-end hotels, movie theaters, fire stations, and countless other venues. It's human activity that spreads them from place to place.
Some of the advice experts give:
- Resist picking up discarded beds and furniture on trash day and if you do ever get a second-hand bed or furniture, closely check it ahead of time for bed bugs.
- Vacuum and steam-clean mattresses and box springs, paying special attention to seams and crevices and folds where bed bugs can hide.
- Once you're clean, or as a preventative, adding some mineral oil to the furniture cups in which your bed legs sit may thwart them from climbing up.
- And don't unload clothes in hotels or motels -- lest you get the last visitor's little friends.
"When you're traveling," Berman said, "avoid putting suitcases on beds or under beds" where bed bugs may be present. "Work out of your suitcases on a luggage stand and that will reduce the likelihood of bringing them home." There is a website www.bedbugregistry.com at which you can look up hotels, motels, and other facilities where people have reported finding bed bugs.
There's pesticide, of course, and also bed-bug-resistant mattress covers you can buy at bed and linen stores.
For their bed bug problem, according to the Melrose Free Press, McCarthy Apartments managers are bringing in PureHeat, a Yarmouth Port, Mass., company that doesn't use pesticides but instead closes off rooms and heats them to 150 degrees -- about 30 degrees hotter than what is needed to kill bed bugs.
Sandy Rubenstein started the company after using the same technology to clear a summer camp her family runs in Yarmouth Port, Camp Wingate Kirkland. She had spent 18 months and over $30,000 on other efforts to kill off bed bugs before discovering a California company called ThermaPure -- and she wound up becoming a trained, licensed technician deploying the technology.
"It reaches the places you can't see the bugs -- in-between the folds of a couch, between the box spring and a mattress," Rubenstein said. "We're going to bake those suckers -- literally." PureHeat charges about $2 to $3 per square foot of the room being cleared of bed bugs, and guarantees that in one day it will rid a room of bed bugs or come back and treat again for free.
Like bed bug battlers of all types, Sandy said PureHeat is busy. "We're swamped," Rubenstein said. "We're backed up probably two weeks right now."
With videographer Bob Ricci
