Eco Prevention for Bed Bugs?

If you haven’t heard about the bed bug prob­lem sweep­ing our nation, well, where have you been? Seri­ously, the prob­lem has become epi­demic with vir­tu­ally no city excluded—Columbus is one of the hard­est hit as well as the big cities of Chicago, New York and oth­ers. Bed bugs don’t play favorites and enjoy liv­ing with humans from all walks of life, and income levels—even busi­nesses are not immune. And, yes, they are in Delaware County.

So what can you do? The answer to that would take much more space than this col­umn allows, but I can point you in the right direc­tion. Think you don’t need to know? Think again. Edu­ca­tion is by far the best means of prevention.

First off, they are not harm­ful and thank­fully don’t carry dis­ease. I found some help­ful info for eco-tips in a recent Ask Umbra post­ing on Grist.org. She rec­om­mends the fol­low­ing for pre­ven­tion, as do most of the bed bug arti­cles I’ve read:

* Caulk all the nooks and cran­nies in walls and floors to pre­vent these sneaky pests, which are the size of a small apple seed, from mov­ing from room to room. This is espe­cially impor­tant in apart­ment build­ings or con­dos and other liv­ing areas where you have neigh­bors on the other side of your walls or floors and ceilings.

* Travel less—or when you do travel, be sure and check hotel room mat­tresses (along the seams) for the tiny crit­ters. Place your lug­gage on the lug­gage stand only or in the bath­room and NEVER on the bed. When you get home, iso­late and check your lug­gage (all seams) and imme­di­ately wash and dry all your clothes from the trip. Bed bugs can’t with­stand tem­per­a­tures of 113 degrees or higher…so dry for at least 30 min­utes. Unfor­tu­nately, bed bugs like to travel.

* De-clutter your home, espe­cially your sleep­ing area. Bed bugs don’t just stay on the bed. They love to set up home anywhere—in books, stat­ues, and other knick knacks, so keep these items to a minimum.

* Thrift shop­ping and garage saleing—two of my favorite activities—have new rules. If you pur­chase clothes, imme­di­ately wash and dry—even check clothes before buy­ing to find these hid­ing pests (they like it where it is dark like along seams and under col­lars). I am not so sure I would buy fur­ni­ture unless you thor­oughly check it first. Other items that can be dried or washed and checked thor­oughly should be okay.

For more infor­ma­tion, visit these help­ful web­sites and read up! The best thing to learn is early detec­tion signs, which I will write about next week and when you should seek pest con­trol. Go to these web­sites for the Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol, NYC’s bed bug blog, and the EPA and do a search for bed bugs. The infor­ma­tion is cur­rent and very help­ful: www.cdc.gov; www.nyc.gov and www.epa.gov.

Bed bugs are the new pink ele­phant. Every­one is con­cerned about it and may even suf­fer from them, but no one is talk­ing and that needs to change. It’s yucky to think about, I know, but you need to be smart and be proactive.

Tues­day Trip­pier lives in Delaware and enjoys writ­ing about green liv­ing. She has a sis­ter who has bat­tled bed bugs twice in NYC and has lived to tell about it. They both know more about the sub­ject than they want to.

Posted by Tuesday Trippier on Oct 14 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.