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By Mike Lillis - 08/10/10 01:24 PM ET
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday is warning consumers
that bedbug-battling pesticides, applied improperly, could make consumers'
homes unlivable.
"Using the wrong pesticide or using it incorrectly to treat for bedbugs can
make you, your family, and your pets sick," the EPA said in a consumer
alert. "It can also make your home unsafe to live in - and may not solve the
bedbug problem."
With bedbug infestations on the rise in urban centers around the country,
more and more consumers are reaching out to extermination companies for
relief. That's led to a subsequent rise in the number of those companies,
which don't always apply their chemicals correctly, EPA warns.
In fact, the agency suggests consumers should avoid chemical solutions
altogether.
"Prevention and non-chemical treatment of infestations is the best way to
avoid or eliminate a bedbug problem," EPA suggests.
Examples of preventative measures, the agency says, include frequent
vacuuming, filling wall cracks and wrapping mattresses in bedbug-proof
covers.
If consumers are intent on going the pesticide route, EPA says, they should
first:
Make sure the chemical is approved for fighting bedbugs. "If bedbugs arE
not listed on the label, the pesticide has not been tested for bedbugs and
it may not be effective."
Check that the pesticide has EPA approval. "Any pesticide product label
without an EPA registration number has not been reviewed by EPA to determine how well the product works."
Make sure the chemical is designed for use indoors.
The consumer alert comes less than a week after the EPA joined forces with
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to highlight the public
health dangers surrounding the "alarming resurgence" of bedbug infestations
in recent years.
"Many people have mild to severe allergic reaction to the bites with effects
ranging from no reaction to a small bite mark to, in rare cases, anaphylaxis
(severe, whole-body reaction)," the agencies wrote. "These bites can also
lead to secondary infections of the skin such as impetigo, ecthyma, and
lymphanigitis. Bed bugs may also affect the mental health of people living
in infested homes. Reported effects include anxiety, insomnia and systemic
reactions."
Ohio's Bedbug Battle Escalates with EPA Crisis Meeting
AP – In this 2001 file photo released by the University of Florida, a common bedbug is engorged with blood …
By NINA BURLEIGH Nina Burleigh – Wed Aug 18, 5:55 PM ET
For reasons still unknown, bedbugs really seem to like the state of Ohio. The problem is so dire in Cincinnati that some people with infested apartments have resorted to sleeping on the streets.
Cincinnati created a Bedbug Remediation Commission in 2007 and, like other local and national governments around the world, the city is trying to mobilize strategies to control infestations of the resilient insects, which can hide in almost any crack or crevice and can go a year or more without eating. On Aug. 10, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a consumer alert about off-label bedbug treatments, warning in particular of the dangers of using outdoor pesticides in homes. The Ohio Department of Agriculture has mounted a more unusual response to the crisis: it petitioned the EPA for an exemption to allow in-home use of propoxur, a pesticide and neurotoxin banned in the 1990s out of concern for its effects on children.
Although the EPA rejected Ohio's propoxur plea in June, the agency has scheduled an Aug. 18 meeting with state and municipal leaders to try to formulate an abatement strategy everyone can live with. Among the meeting's participants: representatives from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, no joke, the Department of Defense.
"We are hopeful that the outcome of this meeting provides a solution," says Ohio agriculture secretary Robert Boggs. "Quite frankly, something needs to happen, and it needs to happen quickly."
Bedbugs don't transmit disease, but they can be harmful to mental health, as many Ohioans can attest. Nearly eradicated for the past half-century in the industrialized world, Cimex lectularis (the second word stems from the Latin for small bed) is presenting a 21st century environmental challenge. In the Mad Men days of pest control, "you could go down to the local drugstore, buy a DDT bug bomb, and everybody could slay their own bedbugs," says Michael F. Potter, a University of Kentucky entomologist who spends hours pouring poisons on bedbugs in his lab, seeking the elusive potion that kills them without harming humans or pets.
The bugs developed a resistance to DDT decades ago, but propoxur can still kill adult bedbugs within 24 hours and keeps killing newborns as they hatch. The EPA banned it for in-home use in the 1990s on the basis of animal tests and ill effects on adult workers who were exposed to it. "We believe the window between a safe dose and a dangerous dose for a toddler is very small," says EPA pesticide chief Steven Bradbury.
But before we join Ohioans and hit the streets with "Spray, baby, spray" placards, it's worth noting that scientists don't agree on whether a silver-bullet pesticide exists. "Propoxur might work for a few years, but then we would select for the genetically resistant bedbugs, and they would be right back," says Dini Miller, an entomologist at Virginia Tech and the state's urban-pest-management specialist.
That leaves behavioral lines of defense as the most durable strategies. Dogs have been trained to sniff out bedbugs, and specialized pest companies can haul in machines that heat entire rooms to well north of 113°F (45°C), at which point the bugs die. Heat treatments cost thousands of dollars per room, but the lower-cost alternative of simply throwing out your infested mattress or furniture likely won't solve the problem - and may spread it to your salvaging neighbor.
For home infestations, the EPA recommends reducing clutter, sealing cracks and crevices, vacuuming often, drying infested clothes at high heat and using a special mattress cover so you can sleep tight without letting the bedbugs bite. Travelers should inspect hotel mattresses, box springs and headboards for the pests and the inklike streaks of their droppings.
In other words, a dose of vigilance - if not outright paranoia - is the best preventive.
"We are looking at what we did a hundred years ago," says entomologist Miller. "We need to develop an individual consciousness, like we had then. You should think twice about leaving your purse on a seat in the movie theater and storing your kids' college furniture in the basement when they come home. We need to be conscious that anybody from a group-living situation may come back with bedbugs."
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